Finding some echoes of Austen in my High Summer Readathon TBR

 

Hello again, folks and happy to be back in the blogging saddle, so to speak. Hope your summer has been a good one so far, especially when it comes to reading.

With July nearly over with, we have the High Summer readathon from Seasons of Reading (hosted by Michelle Miller) to look forward to. It runs for the entirety of August and a 24 hour reading event is included as well.

There’s no set theme here, although I gave myself one and that was to choose books with the word “summer” in the title(innovative of me*eyeroll*). However, I also found that traces of Jane Austen could be detected in the novels that I selected or so it appears to me. Look over this list and see if you agree:

First up is Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood, a follow up of sorts to an earlier book , Not in Love, which I happened to recently read.

Maya has had a crush on her older brother‘s best friend Conor for years, especially after he came to her emotional rescue after a bad breakup in college.

However, Conor refuses to go beyond the bounds of friendship seeing as not only does he have a business partnership with Maya’s brother, there’s a fifteen year age gap standing between them. 

She equally refuses to completely give up on the possibility of a relationship and after some time apart, Maya and Conor find themselves thrown together at a destination wedding where they wind up sharing a villa in Sicily. Can they make that love connection work or is this just a summertime thing?

Since I did read Not in Love, the familiarity with the characters that I already have should make this smooth sailing. Plus, this central relationship reminds me of Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Knightley, who also share similar circumstances of age and family ties to complicate their budding romance as well:

Next up is Carley Fortune’s One Golden Summer , which also happens to be a follow up to a previous book, only I didn’t read that one (in fact, this will be my first read with this author).

Alice has always loved photography, particularly when she was seventeen and visiting her grandmother’s cottage by the lake. She took a photo of three of her peers in a speedboat that made more of an impact than she ever imagined.

Years later, while helping her grandmother try to enjoy their summer at the cottage, she runs into Charlie, one of the subjects of that photo. They manage to make the connection that wasn’t possible before yet can it last beyond Labor Day?

I’ve heard that this story works as a standalone despite being connected to Every Summer After(it’s the basis of a new online series entitled Every Year After)and I have heard good things about Carley Fortune’s work so this seems to be a good place to start. Also, this story is very close to the second chance romance subgenre enough to give Persuasion vibes:

And lastly, I decided to round this list out with These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean.

Alice Storm is returning home after many years apart from her complicated family due to the death of her controlling father Franklin. In order to gain their inheritance, she and her other siblings must complete a set of tasks within a week or forfeit any of the family’s wealth.

Alice’s situation has two major problems; the first being that she has to spend the entire week with her  troublesome family at their private island home and the second being that the executor of Franklin’s will is Jack Dean, a man that she had a brief romantic encounter with on her way to the island.

Fighting on more than front-Jack is staying with the Storms to monitor their situation here-Alice is getting pulled emotionally in several directions but which one of those is the one that she truly wants?

Word of mouth on this book has been great(especially from Book of the Month Club readers as this was a popular selection last year) and I do like an engaging family drama with a bit of romance added in for extra flavor. 

As for an Austen connection, this does make me think of Sanditon, in which the offbeat antics and small scandals of the Parker family greatly gave that adaptation some special summer seasoning indeed:

If you are interested in signing up for the High Summer readathon, I have included a link in the second paragraph of this post to lead you towards the SOR site to do so, with more information available there. 

Hope to see many more reading friends join in the late season fun and thank you in advance to Michelle Miller for hosting this excellent literary party.

Now, you may be saying “What’s with all the Jane Austen mix and matching here?”and well, Austen is very much in my mind and not just because I’m rereading Mansfield Park at the moment.

Arriving in theaters this fall is a new film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility that is directed by a woman(Georgia Oakley) with a screenplay written by a woman(Diana Reid) and starring such notable actresses as Daisy Edgar-Jones, Caitronia Balfe and Fiona Shaw.

The first trailer has been released and this looks like a winner to me. As much as I adore the 1995 Emma Thompson version (and enjoyed the 2008/2024 TV movies as well), this feels like a brand new introduction to Austen’s debut novel for generations familiar and fresh to her classic work.Definitely worth braving the summer heat for: