Product Description

How could he have failed to know himself so completely? Captain Frederick Wentworth, lately returned to England from a distinguished naval career fighting Napoleon, had re-visited the scene of his romantic defeat of eight years previous at the hands of Miss Anne Elliot to find his former love a pale, worn shadow of herself. Attracted by the libely young ladies in the area who regarded him as a hero, he had ignored Anne and entangled himself with Louisa Musgrove, a headstrong young woman who seemed all that Anne was not. Now, because of his careless behviour and Louisa's heedlessness, his future appeared tied to her just at the moment when it had become painfully clear that Anne was still everything he truly wanted. In honour, he belonged to Louisa, but his heart was full of Anne. What was he to do?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #141253 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 228 pages

Customer Reviews

I was disappointed
I have to say that when I finished this book, I was very disappointed. I read the first book, "None But You", and couldn't wait to get this second book. It started out very good and I was really excited about it. Unfortunately, where the original novel leaves off, and Kaye takes over the story line, things go down hill quickly. The characters become false to the original. Anne seems to turn into some silly romance novel character. The marriage of Frederick and Anne is pulled off in a completely uncharacteristic manner. It is completely untrue to the original and for me, ruined the book. Miss Anne Elliot would never have behaved in such a manner.

Furthermore, I feel Kaye had an opportunity to satisfy the reader as to the reactions and opinions of all in the circle of Anne and Frederick as to their "sudden" attachment. However, she barely touched on this point at all. We are left to see some characters very rarely, and others not at all. She also has left open the story line of several characters...some her original characters, that we have no other information on. I was extremely disappointed to not know how their stories were concluded. My biggest disappointment in Persuasion has always been that we didn't know a lot about how everyone reacted and got on after Anne and Frederick became engaged and we didn't know much about their life together. I was hoping that Kaye would address this more, but despite a large portion of the book being devoted to their post-engagement, we really learn little about it.

The end of the book feels like a cheap romance novel. If you are a fan of that sort of fiction, then it may be to your liking. However, I felt it completely deviated from not only Persuasion, but also from the 1st book and the majority of this 2nd book too. The last scene of the book is cheesy and unbelievable.

My final complaint about the book is that there is a horrific amount of errors in it. There is at least one typo on each page, but most pages have 2 or 3 typos on them. It appears as if it was not only never edited, but that the author simply wrote it and never went back to re-read it herself. Most of the mistakes are simple misspellings, added or missing words, or incorrect punctuation. However, there was at least one place where a sentence was left half finished. And more than one instance where the incorrect character was referenced. And there are many sentences that are confusingly wordy. I found myself having to read some of them over and over in order to understand what she was trying to say.

Again, I want to state that I really was looking forward to this book. I enjoyed the first one (despite the editing issues present in it as well) a great deal. And I had a hard time putting this second one down until the point where all the material was Kaye's original. I wish she had taken a bit more time to edit and perfect this story. Finishing out the story lines and giving Austen fans more of what they want would have been the better way to go. But the book is worth a read...especially if you enjoyed the first book in this series.

I am editing this to add that I did read on Kaye's blog that she needed to get back to writing Book 3, A Word, A Look. Now, my copy of Book 2 says that it is a 2 book series. So I was under the impression that we were not going to get the end of the story lines. If there is going to be a Book 3, it will certainly be good for the story lines, but I am concerned that Kaye will make the book a typical "romance novel" given the taste we were given at the end of book 2. I don't know if I can tolerate reading an entire book where Anne behaves so silly and unlike herself. Just thought I'd better add that hint at a 3rd book in here, so you can be aware.

Let Down
I could not agree more with the review posted by Ms. Osburn, I also read the first book, loved it and greatly anticipated the second, wish I was still anticipating it instead of having read it. While I found some of the 'new' characters annoying or unnecessary what really turned me off was the ending. Persuasion is such a beautiful, mature story, of hard earned and longed for second chances, to reduce it to silly, uncharacteristic behavior and farcical circumstances is unforgiveable.

an enjoyable read
I very much enjoyed this book as an inside look into the life of Frederick Wentworth. I think Ms. Kaye has captured the essence of his character and it seemed to me a very accurate representation of the Austen hero, according to my perception.

I especially liked getting a glimpse of his conversations with Edward while he stays with him. I also liked how she portrays the Admiral and Mrs. Croft, and the interplay between the three of them is very realistic and witty. For the most part, I think the characters are very true to the Austen originals, which I very much appreciate. I loved seeing Frederick's thought process as he prepared to approach Sir Walter asking for his consent. The entire conversation between those two was at the same time funny yet sadly realistic, and it was very much in character for both men.

Overall, it was a very well written book, with numerous very witty lines. The quip about fireworks especially made me laugh. There were admittedly a few more typos than I would have expected, which surprised me.

The post-engagement scenes were very fun to read and left me more satisfied than in the original Persuasion about what happened afterwards. I liked the elaboration she adds as to their conversations which is left vague in the original novel. I think it filled in the gaps Jane Austen leaves yet leaves just enough to the imagination. Although I cannot say I entirely agree with the plot twist at the very end, as Anne's reaction seems out of character a bit, I will say the book overall was a fulfilling read.

I think this book was well worth the money, and I would recommend getting it along with the first one. I think there is just enough left hanging at the end to make a promising start to a sequel. It is by far one of the more well written sequel/alternate points of view of an Austen novel I've read (of which there are quite a lot).