Well reader, I was wrong. I read this book up to the 31% mark and figured it was a DNF due to an over-reliance on clichés. However, I started skimming the middle of the book and had to back up and read the whole thing. Jane in Love is a wildly uneven book which I expect will be a love it or hate it book for readers. I enjoyed Jane Austen as a curious and insightful character, and I enjoyed the arc of Sofia, a modern actress. However, I did not believe in the romance and the time travel aspects of this bittersweet romantic comedy were predicatible.

Here’s the deal. Jane Austen is miserable in Bath and failing to find a husband. She gets a witch to cast a spell that will allow Jane to find love. To her immense confusion, Jane is transported to modern-day Bath, where she runs into Sofia, an actress on the set of an adaptation of Northanger Abbey. Sofia has had a lengthy career as an actress and sex symbol. She is horrified to be cast as the comic relief instead of the heroine. Sofia has a hot brother, Fred, who is an extra in the movie and with whom Sofia is staying while Sofia recovers from a sudden divorce (from the director of the movie, ouch).

When Jane shows up, Sofia assumes that Jane is an actress who is method acting and who is determined to stay in character twenty-four hours a day. Frankly, no one in this book, not even Jane, displays much in the critical thinking department until well into the book, when Sofia and Jane wake up a little. Jane and Fred (Sofia’s hot brother) are attracted to each other. Jane tries to figure out how showers work and marvels at washing machines and how modern women reveal their ankles – you know, the usual time travel hijinks. If you have ever seen or even heard of a time-travel or fish-out-of-water romantic comedy you will recognize all the clichés in the first 40% of the book. There isn’t a moment here that most readers and viewers won’t have seen or read already someplace else, until Sofia accepts that Jane is the real article.

I want to deal with two problems before I deal with the meaty parts of the book. One is an insistence that Jane is, in my words, “not like other girls.” She can’t get a husband because she is “different.” She is “special.” She likes running around in the woods and getting dirty, not shopping for finery! She doesn’t talk about shallow things like the actresses and fans around the set!

I think we can all agree that Jane was, in fact, different and special in the sense that she was one of the greatest authors in history. However, she actually did like shopping for hats, and she loved fashion, although her finances did not allow for extravagance. The “not like other girls” trope strives to make a woman special not because of her own qualities but because these qualities are perceived to be lacking in other women and because the things that “other girls” like are often things that are socially coded as “Feminine” and therefore bad. Jane was brilliant, so yes, she sure was different, but it had nothing to do with her interest or lack of interest in fashion.

I also had a problem with Fred. Once Jane comes to stay with Sofia and Fred at his house, his behavior made me uncomfortable. He is contemptuous of filmmaking and, despite being an English teacher, has never read a Jane Austen novel. He wears a towel around the house in which a female guest is staying. When he accidentally walks in on Jane using the shower, he offers to show her his penis to even things out and jokingly starts to unbutton his pants. He’s kidding, but the joke made me uncomfortable. When it is most vital that he believes Jane, he does not, and when it is most vital that he put her happiness first, he does not (initially). It is Sofia who supports Jane and tries to give Jane options. Fred contributes nothing. Fred is not a path to love. Fred is an obstacle.

Thank goodness, eventually Jane buckles down to exploring her new environs with a real sense of curiosity, which I enjoyed. Her character is insightful and interesting, and deeply interested in everything around her, although she isn’t given much to do. Her friendship with Sofia becomes delightful and her experience in a modern hospital which can’t fix everything despite all its modern technology is poignant.

I very much enjoyed Sofia’s character arc, which involves a romance with a librarian and her own coming to terms with the end of her Hollywood ingenue years. Her story is the best part of the book, but it didn’t need Jane, who, other than one wonderful bit of advice towards the end of the book, is not involved much in Sofia’s professional or personal life. It doesn’t need the romance, either. Sofia works out her issues just fine by herself.

As a result, this is a book of discrete enjoyable parts that never form a cohesive whole. The time travel aspect never works because of the cliches. The Jane/Fred romance doesn’t work because Fred is a git. Conversations that should be cathartic feel false. But Sofia’s story has a depth of pain that feels real, and her success at finding peace and happiness feels earned.

With regard to the Jane/Fred romance and how it ends:

In short, what I thought after the first few chapters would be a DNF turned into a read that was sometimes enjoyable, sometimes dull, and sometimes infuriating. I certainly found myself with a lot to talk about. I think this will be a divisive book, with many readers enjoying the charm and others feeling it trods ground we’ve already trod a million times. As a Jane Austen fiction and history nerd I can’t not overthink this one, and overthinking is death to the romantic comedy. The messages about fulfillment, happiness, and creative ambition were frustrating, as was the “hero” who was nothing of the sort. It was a mix of hits and misses for me.