"Jane of Austin" by Hillary Manton Lodge (again)

This book is such a joy.  It's a retelling of Sense and Sensibility set in the modern world and... please don't throw things at me, but... I like it better than S&S.  I do.  There are multiple characters in this that I like better than their S&S counterparts.  There are plot points and relationship tangles that work better for me here.  And this one has the sweetest service dog.  

I mean, obviously I do like Sense and Sensibility.  I led a chapter-by-chapter read-along of it, after all.  I just like this better.  

Jane and her older sister Celia make their living selling tea in a trendy tea shop in San Francisco after their father leaves the country.  And then, their landlord dies, and they get turned out of both the apartment and the shopfront they rented from him.  Desperate to find somewhere that they can live and remain guardians of their younger sister Margo, plus find a new space for their shop, they accept an invitation from a cousin they barely know.  He offers they can live in his guest house while they find a new shopfront.  The only problem?  He lives in Austin, Texas.  But moving halfway across the country is not that big a deal, right?  It only means leaving behind their home state, Margo's school, and the man Celia has been dating for years and years.

They move.  Jane falls in love with a handsome country singer.  A friend of their cousin's, a wounded veteran, falls in love with Jane.  Jane falls out of love with the handsome country singer when he turns out to be despicable.  And so on.  I really love that this retelling is told from the Marianne character's point of view because I never feel like I get to know and understand Marianne very well in S&S.  This book also has a lot of chapters from the POV of the Colonel Brandon character, Callum.  He's an absolute sweetheart, gentleman, and hero.  

Also, there are lots of yummy recipes included.  I'm going to make the tea-infused Texas Sheet Cake today to take to a potluck :-9

(From my Instagram)

Particularly Good Bits:

Kissing Callum was like finding a favorite thing I hadn't known I was looking for (p. 295).

"I don't think it's ever wrong," I decided, "to love what you have more than what you had" (p. 299).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for a plotline involving an unwed pregnancy, mention of marital infidelity in an off-screen character, quite a few non-steamy kisses, and mention of characters "making out."  Also, Callum deals with a lot of emotional trauma from the combat situation where he lost a leg.  Not a racy book, no bad language, no real violence.  Clean, but not something all younger teens would be ready for.