NB: We received two different reviews for this book, and thought both perspectives were interesting and thoughtful. We’re sharing both to encourage discussion and to highlight different expectations and results of reading anticipated books – and we definitely want to know what you thought, too!

This guest review is by Catherine Heloise.

Previously, Catherine ranted about Shakespearean rockstars and loved Chase Me by Laura Florand. She has a food blog called Cate’s Cates, where she creates allergy-friendly treats, and she also runs the Stories Under Paris website, where she creates fictional stories based on the names of Paris Metro stations. How cool is that?

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The Austen Playbook is ridiculously good fun, and this review is probably going to devolve into a Book Squee at any moment. The fourth book in Lucy Parker’s London Celebrities series, The Austen Playbook centres around Freddy Carlton, who we first met as a cheery 19-year-old in Pretty Face. She was described there as a West End veteran, who had been on the stage since the age of eleven, and a reliable workhorse who ‘missed brilliance by a hair’s width.’ Freddy is now in her early or maybe mid-twenties and has been playing increasingly serious parts, in preparation for the ultimate role – that of Marguerite, the manipulative, iconic anti-heroine of The Velvet Room, the most famous British play of the 20th century, which just happens to have been written by Freddy’s own grandmother, Henrietta.

But no pressure there…

The trouble is, Freddy’s heart really isn’t in these serious roles, and while her father (who is also her manager) and her family haven’t cottoned to this yet, one person has. And that person is London’s grumpiest TV presenter and theatre critic, ‘the witty wanker behind the scathing reviews in the Westminster Post,’ James Ford-Griffin.

“Even when she had her words straight, she was phoning it in. She’s losing her spark. Until a few years ago, she was still getting kiddie parts, and mostly took roles in musicals and drawing-room comedy. She danced and bounced her way from curtain to curtain, it was exhausting to watch, and audiences bloody loved her. Then she aged into adult characters, switched direction into pretentious bullshit like High Voltage, and obviously hated every moment of it. For some reason, she’s pursuing a determined line in the high-brow dramas, when she’d clearly rather be stamping about in puddles in Singin’ in the Rain.”

Griff, as he prefers to be called, has some pretty good reasons to be grumpy. The task of keeping his family estate together has fallen onto him, and this task is not helped by his brother Charlie’s hare-brained schemes. Worse – it is actively hindered by his parents’ insistence on building elaborate dolls’ houses out of the costliest of materials, which they sell for rather less than cost. Having been pressed into the family rescuer role from the age of twelve, Griff has a distinctly jaundiced view of sunny, creative types like Freddy, or indeed Charlie (who is so like Freddy in temperament that she regards him as her ginger, five years older twin).

Charlie’s most recent hare-brained scheme is to reopen the estate theatre (which was originally built for Henrietta Carlton, with whom their grandfather was having an affair), and use it to host a one-off, live-to-air performance of an audience interactive play, The Austen Playbook. This is a Jane Austen-meets-country-house-murder-mystery mashup, where at the end of each scene, the audience votes on the direction of the story and I want it to exist so much, because it sounds amazing. Mind you, it also sounds like a nightmare to perform – the script is so long it ‘makes War and Peace look like a novella’, as the actors have to learn multiple variations of every scene, not knowing which they will be called upon to perform until minutes before they reach them.

Freddy is offered the role of Lydia Bennet, which she gleefully accepts, and the story is off and running.

There is a lot of plot in this book, far more than we have seen in Parker’s other work. In fact, in that sense, the book reflects the play being performed – ‘it’s fun, it’s funny, it’s a bit of whodunnit, a bit of snogging under the stairs.’ And some of the twists and turns in the plot do almost feel as though they were chosen by a mischievous audience. In particular, the ‘hero and heroine are stranded in a spooky gothic house overnight’ scene is one that *this* audience member would certainly have chosen. It’s one of the most laugh out loud parts of the book, and initially feels as though it doesn’t fit with the rest of the story (though in retrospect, it works brilliantly as a Northanger Abbey homage) – but in fact, it is vital both to the romance and to the mystery plot. Indeed, Parker does an excellent job of juggling a lot of complicated plot threads and difficult characters; it does sometimes feel as though the balls are certain to be dropped, but everything does get caught in the nick of time…

There are a lot of difficult and painful family dynamics in this book, made more complex by the slow emergence of family secrets as the story evolves. Much of Freddy’s character arc revolves around her trying to come to terms with the fact that what she wants for her career and what her father wants for her career are not compatible things – and Freddy, while incredibly direct and brave in her romantic life, has never really been able to say no to her father, who saved her life as a child and was seriously injured and lost his career in the process. Meanwhile, Griff, who is otherwise a dangerously perceptive individual, has put his younger brother firmly in a box marked ‘useless’, from which his brother spends much of the book trying to escape. It should be noted that the hare-brained scheme that starts the book is actually significantly less foolish than it appears at first glance.

One of the things that I love most about Parker’s work is that she knows how to write a character who is super nice without being saccharine. Freddy is a lovely, sweet, kind, optimistic person who sees the best in everyone, wants the people around her to be happy, and is determined to do the right thing at all times. She is also extremely sarcastic and has no problem whatsoever giving as good as she gets when dealing with Griff:

“I’ve never see anyone do DIY in a tie.” Freddy glanced at the beam he was fixing, then walked over and bent to grab another handful of nails from the bag at the foot of his stepladder. She held them up for him, and after a pause, he took one and drove it into the wood with one vigorous bang of his hammer.

“Thanks.” He pulled another one from her raised hand. “The cast is here, then, are they?” His tone conjured images of empty chocolate boxes, and the aftermath of a party, and missing the bus by thirty seconds, and all of life’s fleeting moments of gloom.

“Dude. You might want to dial it down a notch there. The enthusiasm is embarrassing.”

He caught his finger with the hammer and swore again. She’d always thought he had a very inspiring vocabulary.

“If you are going to be rude enough to visibly grasp for patience,” she said, “I would suggest keeping your eyes open. At least while you’re whacking nails into a board.”

Griff, on the other hand, while sarcastic, cynical, decidedly Slytherin, and more than a little misanthropic, does genuinely care about the people around him, and he is one of the most reliable heroes you will ever come across. His habit of viewing himself as the only sensible person in the room – and honestly, once you meet his parents, it’s impossible not to have sympathy for this opinion – and Freddy’s surface resemblance to the flightier members of his family, do cause conflict between them, however. Griff is in the habit of just fixing things behind the scenes, and Freddy, whose own family members share Griff’s Slytherin tendencies, has had about enough of being seen as a silly young thing who can’t handle her own problems. In his defense, Griff doesn’t actually see her like that for very long… but a lifetime of being the fixer is hard to overcome.

The romance between Freddy and Griff is delicious. The chemistry is just there from the start, to their mutual bewilderment, and they also figure out very quickly that they really do care about each other. Their first kiss is absolutely electric.

“I don’t know why I find you so beautiful now.” He’d regained control over his pitch, and he said it like he was commenting on the weather, but the words fell into the silence between them with the impact of a heavy weight shattering a piece of glass.

Freddy dropped her hand and stared at him, and he turned his head. As compliments went, it was a bit backhanded, but somehow it didn’t come across that way.

There was a moment of quiet breath and assessing eyes.

“I don’t know why I fancy you so much,” she said, with equal frankness.

And then a few minutes later:

“I promised not to interrupt your work,” she said, on the exhale.

“Yes.” A familiar note of the sardonic, which was actually a relief in the current tension. “That lasted about as long as I expected.”

She cast him a look over her shoulder. “Foresaw this, did you?”

“No. This definitely wasn’t the scenario I imagined.”

“I expect not. After all the very gallant things you’ve said about me over the years. Just think, if this had happened earlier, you might have given me a better review for Masquerade.” She reflected on that for about two seconds. “No, you wouldn’t.”

He snorted and said at the same moment, “No, I wouldn’t.”

The relationship feels pretty solid pretty early, despite the various bumps along the way. One thing I love is that while their love makes them happy, it doesn’t change who they fundamentally are. Freddy is always going to be the friendly, optimistic Hufflepuff, and Griff will always be the grumpy, sardonic Slytherin, and they enjoy each other that way. Yes, Freddy needs to become a bit more ruthless in protecting herself (her willingness to lay herself completely open is frankly terrifying to Griff), and Griff does need to soften and begin to value his brother, but fundamentally, both personality types are validated.

There is also a persistent defense of frivolity and fun as a part of life – one that is just as important as ‘worthy’ drama. Here’s Freddy early in the book:

“I like to make people happy, I like to hear laughter and see them leave smiling and humming the songs. I like popular fiction of all kinds and I think it’s just as important as the lit that gets taught in class…. Parts of life are shit enough. I look for the light where I can find it.”

It’s a very Northanger Abbey moment – Henry Tilney would certainly approve. And it’s worth noting that Griff, the serious theatre critic, never suggests otherwise, even at his most grumpy.

I love this book. It’s laugh-out loud funny, the central relationship is sweet and awkward and hot, and there are just so many delicious details, from the extremely unusual aesthetic tastes of Griff’s grandfather, to the unexpected depths found in some of the minor characters. As always, the dialogue is a delight, and really begs to be read aloud. (You have to use your best Alan-Rickman-playing-Severus-Snape voice for Griff, though. It’s the rule.)

But perhaps I’m being too effusive for a book inspired by Jane Austen. Perhaps it would be more apt to say, with Henry Tilney:

“It is only a novel… or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.”

Did I mention that I loved this book?

Grade: A, for Absolutely Delightful and Adorable and Also I read it twice in a row and then read it out loud to my husband.