I’ve had this book on my shelf for quite a long time, but since I’m so close to the end of the year and not quite at my reading target for the year, it was time to finally read it – at only 55 pages I thought it would be perfect for catching up.

Unfortunately, even though it was Jane Austen who is by far my favourite author, I didn’t really find it that brilliant, I’m sorry to say. It’s a set of short stories (some shorter than others), but it seemed to lack the finesse of other Austen books – you can tell that it’s one of her earlier works.

Definitely darker than Pride and Prejudice, the stories include heavy drinking, murder, babies biting off their mother’s fingers – not what I would have expected!

I think it was partly because the stories were short, and partly because the stories were completely not what I expected, but I just couldn’t relate to the characters at all. One of the strongest parts of an Austen novel for me is that I can always imagine myself as friends with the main character, but definitely not here.

I supposed I can’t really hold it against her, since these are her earlier writings and she never intended them to be published – I do wonder what she’d think if she knew that they were now published to the world?