Tirzah Price

This Jane Austen fan fiction cozy mystery was a delightful surprise. Chosen (and suggested) to fill a prompt for a book challenge concerning a Jane Austen retelling, I had low expectations. They were easily exceeded right from the start in this page-turner inspired, of course, by Sense and Sensibility. The Dashwood girls in this story are strong, independent women, not traditional society maidens dashing about England looking for husbands, yet the two older sisters, Elinor and Marianne, do find romance. The story begins when Elinor finds their father, a successful private investigator, dead at his desk in the study. Elinor is an amateur chemist; Marianne had been apprenticing with her father; and their eleven-year-old sister, Margaret, is a budding crime novelist. The sisters suspect and confirm their father was murdered and set out to solve the mystery. The story cleverly hits all the major plot lines from Sense and Sensibility in a new and fresh way. Definitely one of the better Austen-inspired fan fictions I have read. Will definitely put the others on my reading list.… (mais)