Researchers from the future travel back in time to meet Jane Austen and rescue a lost manuscript? YES. SIGN ME UP RIGHT HERE.

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This book was just so great. It follows our main character Rachel, a disaster relief medic from the distant future, who is recruited for a mission to go back in time, befriend the Austen family, and rescue Jane Austen’s completed manuscript for The Watsons, previously thought to be left incomplete. It delivers on every aspect: the sci-fi element is enough for a convincing premise without overpowering the story, a glorious fish-out-of-water scenario in Regency England. Rachel and her research partner, Liam, get to live out a fantasy every Austen fan dreams of: speaking to, and getting to know, the elusive Jane Austen herself.

Rachel was a great character to read from, and it was gloriously entertaining to see her and Liam try to assimilate to life in 1815, from dressing the part to hiring servants to trying to keep up with the etiquette. The amount of details and thought that the author has clearly put into every aspect of the story, drawing on everything we know about the Austen family and what they were all doing in pretty much every month of span of the novel which really helped to bring everything to life and root it in reality. It gave the time-travel/research element a lot more credibility too, and helped us understand what was true and what was fiction about these people’s lives.

It wouldn’t be a book about Jane Austen without a romance, of course! Not only is there a great romantic subplot between the two main characters (made even more entertaining and suspenseful because they’re posing as brother and sister), but there are proposals, love triangles, scandals, everything you would expect!

If you love Jane Austen, you will love this book. It’s the perfect blend of original and Jane-Austen-inspired. I had a massive grin on my face the entire time I was reading it because it was just so glorious!