First Impressions

This was a trainwreck of a novel, and only the fact that the author is obviously a true book lover keeps me from giving it one star. Where do I start? Maybe with the fact that the author appears to know nothing about women, and his heroine Sophie is more caricature than character. Throw in not one, but two, slightly creepy relationships between young women and older men (purely platonic but still somehow icky), a villain who might as well be twirling his mustache and a love interest who barely registers, and of course let's not forget the completely and frankly absurd portrayal of Jane Austen and you've got a mess. Only the fact that the chapters were very short kept me reading in a state of semi-disbelief that the author was really trying to pull this off. Sadly, my first impression of this book was exactly the same as my final impression: not a great read, and not an author I will follow.