I have always been intimidated by Austen's books as they are very lengthy. However, when I found out Persuasion was under 300 pages, I decided I would read it for my "one classic novel a month" challenge. Because of the "old English" vocabulary and the unfamiliar sentence structures present, this story took me a lot longer to read than a modern book of the same length. However, I am glad I persevered through these difficulties. Persuasion, at its core, is a love story and I just adored the main character, Anne. I was rooting for her to find happiness and love throughout the tale. If you are also intimidated by Austen's work, I would recommend starting with this one, as it represents her writing style well. It is also short enough that if you do not enjoy her writing, you are not "stuck" with the story for 400-500 pages.