Title: Midnight in Austenland
Author: Shannon Hale
Category: chick-lit
Publisher: Bloomsbury, January 31, 2012
Pages: 288
Source: ARC via netGalley, read on my Kindle
Star rating: 1 out of 5
Charlotte is a recently-divorced mother of two. She’s feeling left behind and lost and needs a vacation and a bit of her old zing back. She finds Austenland through her travel agent and books a trip to England to role-play for two weeks and re-set her heart and mind.
I adored Austenland, the first book in this series (review here). I was overjoyed by it and gobbled it up in a day. I still think of it fondly and was thrilled to learn it was the first in a series.
But something’s wrong with this one. There’s no life. There’s no excitement. There’s no thrilling aspect that kept me turning the pages. I read Austenland in a day, rooted to my couch, laughing and crying. Midnight in Austenland has none of that thrill for me.
And the writing. Oh, my word, the writing has some truly dismal moments. Here are two I highlighted on my Kindle:
Charlotte met eyes with the sofa. That is, if the sofa had eyes, she would have met eyes with it.
And…
An impatient sort of patient face, like an impatient face dressing up as a patient one for Halloween.
What? That’s just dreadful. Those are the two I highlighted, but there are more.
I usually try to go into the whys and hows of my feelings toward books, but this one was just so bad, such a disappointment, that I can’t write any more. I could barely finish the book, and I can barely finish the review, either.
