This was the first classic I've read in years, but I'd never given it a chance before and when my friend Ellyn raved about it to me, I decided I would. I generally don't like classics much (I know, I know, hold your bricks, please), and this one definitely suffered from the biggest problem I have with many of them: every character took 6 paragraphs to say what a sentence would have sufficed. I think, if you cut out all of the overly repetitive bits of dialogue, this book would've been a solid 25% shorter, yeah?

That said, I had a good time reading this and was reminded yet again that Jane Austen is the essential mother of angsty, pitiful pining in romance stories, which I enjoy to no end. Wentworth's letter was precious, the commentary on equality of the genders was fantastic (especially for its time), and despite 99% of the characters being horrendously unlovable, Anne is a new favorite romance heroine of mine. All in all, it was time well spent!