This year would have been Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, so it feels like an excellent time to celebrate one of our Jane’s greatest legacies: the urge to yell “Just tell them, you fool!” at a fictional character.
Gabriela and His Grace
by Liana de la Rosa
First, we have GABRIELA AND HIS GRACE (Berkley, 384 pp., paperback, $19), the final entry in de la Rosa’s trilogy about three Mexican heiresses in Regency London.
Gabriela is the only unmarried Luna sister left — and with grasping suitors eyeing her as an easy target, she hops aboard the next ship home to Mexico. Also on board is Sebastian, the Duke of Whitfield and Gabriela’s social nemesis. He’s en route to inspect the Mexican silver mines that are his family’s last hope to stay solvent, but looming poverty is not the only thing he’s concealing.
When Gabriela’s ambitious father proves too eager to marry her off, she refuses to be trapped a second time — and ends up again on a ship with the duke, bound for London. Surprising passion compels the pair into a whirlwind marriage — and leaves them both reeling and unsure of the future. Seeing the long-pining duke almost ruin everything by holding too tightly to his secrets is the most delightful kind of frustration.
The Austen Affair
by Madeline Bell
If you prefer your historical romance on the frothier side, try Bell’s enjoyably goofy THE AUSTEN AFFAIR (St. Martin’s Griffin, 336 pp., paperback, $19). Tess Bright is a bubbly teen soap actress whose late mother adored Austen; Hugh Balfour is British acting royalty and Method to his core. They’re playing the leads in a new “Emma” adaptation when lightning strikes — and after it clears, the pair find themselves 200 years in the past.
Adaptable Tess thrives while living her full Austen fantasy; Hugh, for all his apparent rigidity, turns out, endearingly, to be “a stack of anxieties and defensive mechanisms in a trench coat.” Comic shenanigans abound as the couple scramble to fit in, but unless they can find their way back to the modern world — with its medical advances and career opportunities for women — they’ll be trapped together forever.
The time-travel element is a fun twist, and the comedy is weighted with just enough darker emotion to keep the balloon of the story from bobbing away into the stratosphere.
The Princess and the P.I.
by Nikki Payne
Payne has previously adapted two of Austen’s works (see “Pride and Protest” and “Sex, Lies, and Sensibility”), but her latest, THE PRINCESS AND THE P.I. (Berkley, 480 pp., paperback, $19), is original and utterly enthralling.
Fiona Addai is an amateur detective dead set on stealing back her late brother’s invention from a shady tech C.E.O. Raised in a strict church run by her father, she’s unused to putting herself forward anywhere except on the internet, where she reigns over true-crime subreddits as @Princess_PI.
As in any noir, her plans instantly go awry and she becomes the prime suspect in the tech C.E.O.’s murder. Posting her bail is the private detective Maurice Bennett — a guilt-ridden, insomniac, hot-but-unreliable former pill addict who’s literally haunted by the victims he failed to save, and who knows Fiona’s father’s church is hiding something sinister.
Fiona and Maurice don’t want the same things, and they’ll only trust each other as far as they’re forced to. Hard-boiled isn’t a tone many romances aim for, so when one comes along that does it this well, it’s worth shouting about.
The Unexpected Heiress
by Cassidy Crane
Lastly, we have THE UNEXPECTED HEIRESS (Bold Strokes Books, 216 pp., paperback, $19.95). It’s the late 1920s and Clara Cooper is on a riverboat cruise. She’d much rather put up with her horrible aunt’s complaints and flirt with the beautiful boat steward than stay home and marry some man she cannot love, so when she gets word that she’s the surprise beneficiary of the family fortune it’s a joy to discover that her life is her own.
Addie Barnes is only working as a steward until she can seduce some wealthy woman into supporting her, and shy, trusting Clara is tailor-made for Addie’s wiles. The two begin living it up in full flapper style — but Addie’s starting to fall harder than she intended, and Clara’s more cleareyed than Addie realizes. And with the Depression looming, a fortune can be gone in the blink of an eye.
A lot of romances pick up a trope for a single scene and then drop it for the next shiny new twist: Enemies to lovers becomes fake dating becomes only one bed. All surface and no struggle.
Crane’s book works through one premise thoroughly; by the time Clara discovers Addie’s been lying to her, the reader has had ages to dread the reveal, and it’s a marvelous gut punch. Then there’s an equally thoughtful rebuild, as Clara and Addie work their way back toward each other.
A quiet, satisfying story of two people making mistakes and learning better — even Austen might approve.
The post In the Spirit of Jane Austen, 4 Slow-Tease September Romances appeared first on New York Times.
