Not for me and skipped to the end to find out the ending. Just a little too slow to get going for my taste

I requested this book from netgalley a LONG time ago. For some reason, it has lingered on my digital to read shelf. Well, I now wish I had read it much sooner. It was an utter delight for any Jane Austen fan. The central character is Jane’s sister Casandra, who in her final years visits some recently bereaved friends with the sole intention of finding and destroying any letters her dear sister Jane may have written to avoid them being published and affecting Jane’s legacy. These letters frame the narrative for flashbacks over the course of Cassy’s long life and we hear her life story. These letters, supposedly written by Jane, are in fact works of fiction from Gill Hornby - it says so in a note at the end. But they are informed by key events in Jane’s life which are a matter of historical record. I don’t know enough about the Austen family to comment on the overall historical accuracy of this novel, but I certainly enjoyed it and loved learning about the ‘other’ Miss Austen. I now want to read Gill’s second novel featuring Jane and her relatives. Apologies to netgalley, the author and the publisher for not reviewing this sooner.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a female author in possession of a good literary heritage is never in want of present-day writers to develop and extend her oeuvre. What a delightful novel this is! I had perhaps been expecting yet another mass-produced addition to the already over-supplied Jane Austen industry, but I was most agreeably surprised. We start in 1845, and Cassandra Austen, Jane’s literary executor and now an old lady (for then!) of 67, goes to the village of Kintbury, the home of the now-deceased Eliza, who was the sister of Cassy’s former fiancé. Cassandra’s intention is to locate the letters that her sister Jane wrote to Eliza, with the nefarious (to us, leastways) determination of ensuring that nothing survives that would damage her sister’s posthumous reputation. She finds the bundles of correspondence, and we see some fictional letters that the younger Jane wrote at the end of the 18th century and later in her short life. Eliza’s daughter Isabella must clear her home, the rectory, following the death of her clergyman father Fulwar, and Cassy engages herself in attempting to help her uncertain future while carrying on the business with her sister’s letters.

The narrative is told mostly from Cassy’s perspective, with sister Jane seen as more of a secondary character, but Gill Hornby has made a fine stab at re-creating her luminous prose in her letters. There are incidents and scenarios from Jane Austen’s fiction, with a sparky observation of the complications of family life, seen with Jane’s own waspish, but nonetheless affectionate humour in her correspondence. Beneath the Austen undercurrent of sharp humour, we see the unhappy position that genteel spinsters suffered in English society at the time – financially precarious and dependent upon family members to provide a home and acceptable standard of living. It is a most entertaining read.

This book is a great piece of historical fiction. The writing was beautiful and flowed so well.
A must read for Austen fans

An ingenious book weaving the known facts into this story to make a thoroughly readable book.

Gill Hornby manages to portray a real sense of time and place and draw you into the world of the Austen's and their wider family and friends and offers a real feel of what it may have been like to be a woman in that era.

making the minutiae of domestic etiquette and detail available and interesting to the modern reader.

I really enjoyed reading it.

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A fictionalized story about Cassandra Austen. The famous Jane Austen's sister's insight to her writer sister was highly enjoyable Saturday read. I devoured it. A lovely historical piece the writing flowed and had a wonderful story line. I’ll watch and read anything that explores the life, ideas or times around Jane Austin and this delighted.

I started to read this several times and somehow never got further than the first few pages.....on a wet, windy, boring day into lockdown three I tried again. I now realise that this is not the authors problem but mine, the pace is slower than I usually read and this was rectified by another lockdown, I slowed sufficiently to really enjoy the pace of this and the language, I haven’t read Austen since a was very young, probably about 11/12 and would have loved to read this. It is brilliantly written and research and should become a firm favourite of all Austen lovers, of which there are many. Thank you Netgalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Cassandra Austen has spent the last few years of her life living alone since the death of her sister Jane Austen. She goes to stay with the family of her long passed fiance and hopes to find the letters sent to them by her siser and herself.

The story is a gentle fiction about the times. It jumps from Cassandra's present time to the past, beautifully interspersed with the letters from her sister. Plus some poetry and extracts from her books. Generally these sorts of stories are a bit slow for me but I like to mix up my reading and this was a really interesting story. The tale is well written and emotive. The ending finished the story very well. A beautiful read for any fan of Jane Austen and those times.

Why did Cassandra burn the letters written by her sister, Jane Austen? It has troubled academics for decades, but novelist Gill Hornby gives us her perspective in this beautiful and sensitive portrayal of Cassandra in old age and in flashback.

It's 1840 and 23 years after the death of Jane Austen, her sister Cassandra returns to the village of Kintbury, and the home of family friends, the Fowles.

Cassandra knows that family letters have been kept here and, as Jane's fame is growing, she wants to ensure that she protects the reputation of her beloved sister.

Academics and biographers have long puzzled over why so much of Jane's correspondence was destroyed. This novel provides a gentle, sensitive and touching interpretation of events.

The story is told both in flashback and as Cassandra reads the letters and ponders her actions. It is a believable sequence of events, which is enjoyable and thought-provoking. A lovely read!

If you like pride and prejudice then you will enjoy this book. All set in the past it just between memories further in the past and the characters present.

A lovely reimagining of the life of Jane Austen, after her death and seen through the lens of her elder sister Cassandra. Moving, informative, gently probing and fascinating, this “novelisation” of a life is one of my favourite reads of recent months.

Beautifully written and a perfect novel to cosy up with and lose yourself in for a weekend. As a huge Austen fan, I have read lots of 'Austenesque' books and often find that they can seem to 'try too hard'. This book was moving and warm and gave a fresh perspective on one of literature's great mysteries. I particularly enjoyed the spinster tales and took great joy in immersing myself in Victorian Britain for a while again! This book was exactly what I needed after reading so many thrillers and psychologically twisted murder stories!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

I absolutely loved this book. Read it during the lockdown and found the pace and storyline comforting to read.

As an Austen fan I loved this book. Well written and engaging, will be recommending to my sister and other Austen lovers

An engrossing novel partly based on true events from the life of Cassandra and Jane Austen. It is well known that Cassandra Austen burned many of Jane's letters after her death. The content of these lost letters has led to much speculation about the author's rather mysterious life and has left a gap ripe for speculation. Hornby cleverly exploits this event to weave a dual narrative that focuses on an elderly Cassandra hunting for the letters themselves as well as what they might contain. Doing so she brings to life a large and complex family that cleverly mirror familiar characters from Jane's own work, suggesting inspiration for her more eccentric creations.

Hornby focuses on the powerful relationship of the two sisters to create a really touching story of love and grief and the strength of familial bonds. Her characters have real depth and manage to be creations in their own right with just enough Austen-esque quirks to make them right at home in their setting. Extremely enjoyable.

A fictionalised story about Cassandra Austen and her insight into Jane's life.

This was a great read for me. I read this while perched under a tree while the kids were spending time with other family members. It was good to peek behind the curtain of Jane's life so to speak.

A lovely read.

What a beautiful book cover. A fabulous piece of historical writing.giving an insight into the what and why of the letters that Jane Austen's sister Cassandra destroyed. . A very different take on the Jane Austen we all love. Recommended.

You don’t have to be a Jane Austen fan to enjoy Miss Austen. I found it easy to slip into a bygone age where the pace of life in a rural community was restful and the action is on an inner level rather than outward.

I thought the format of the story worked really well, Cass staying with Isabella after the death of her father as a pretext to finding the letters in Kintbury in 1840 whilst what she finds takes us back to the late 1700’s and her life with her family and her close relationship with sibling Jane.

Characterisations are brilliant – Mary Austen raised my hackles every single time! It will be interesting to see who is cast for the TV series.

The secrets are closely threaded through with Cass’ experiences through life and it’s working through those on an emotional level where she has her own epiphany. Those realisations are the driving force behind the story (or they were for me anyway). It was great to get a perspective on Cass.

I enjoyed taking a step back through time to a gentler pace of life.

It turns out all this time I've been saying I love Jane Austen I maybe have been meaning I love her novels. I have never really bothered to read into her personal history. I loved this concept of filling in the blanks on the missing letters that history knows have been burned. I went through a lot of emotions as I worked my way through this novel. I started out disliking Dinah and really having it in for Mary. Then I remarkably became frustrated with Miss Jane Austen herself! She was portrayed as quite an insufferable woman - it tired me to read some of the middle sections in regards to her playing the victim, being meddlesome, but mostly not seeing the irony in her behaviour when ridiculing Cassy for doing to her the same thing Jane did to Cassy.

Throughout it all, though, I really came to love Cassy. Cassy proved you're never too old to need to mend your ways or change your prejudices.

I loved the little doses of Jane's beloved novels and exploring the environments they were written in. Jane despaired me a little in this novel, but that hasn't changed my love for her novels.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Gill Hornby has beautifully captured the atmosphere, language and style of Jane Austen herself without it feeling like a parody. It's a wonderfully moving story, emotionally quite complex about the relationship between Cassandra Austen and her gifted sister Jane.
Starting in 1840 when Cassandra returns to the home of her family and friends, the Fowles, secretly determined to discover a cache of family letters the contents of which she does not want revealed, the story carefully unwinds, with flashbacks to her youth and her relationship with Jane. Through this construct, the reader is able to piece together the complex and intriguing story of why Cassandra finally decided to destroy the treasure trove of letters Jane wrote, a mystery that has intrigued Austen academics for centuries.
A very thought-provoking book and definitely one to be recommended.