Jane, Actually - Giveaway Results

I'm happy to announce the winners of Jane, Actually by Jennifer Petkus.

Louise Currie and Ao23 won paperback copies, and MonicaP and Ceri won ebook version.

I sincerely hope you enjoy the novel as much as I did, and I'm sure the author would appreciate reviews on your blogs, or Goodreads, or any other venue you may prefer.

Jane, Actually - wonderful summer book, GIVEAWAY of 4 copies!!!

I've read a fair number of Austen-inspired novels and stories over the years, but believe me when I say that Jennifer Petkus's contribution to the genre--Jane, Actually: or Jane Austen's Book Tour--is unique, inspired, and an awful lot of fun.

I strive to avoid providing synopses of books in my reviews as I figure that most people know these already or can easily find them out, but it's impossible to provide thoughts on this novel without doing so.  In a nutshell, Jane Austen is back amongst us courtesy of the Afternet, which is a lot like the Internet but it also allows dead people (aka the disembodied) to communicate with each other and the living.  She has an account that has been verified (much like how Twitter celebrity accounts are verified) by a panel of Austen experts, and she is on book tour promoting her completion of Sanditon.

Petkus does a marvelous job providing the disembodied Jane with a strong voice and a real personality--she can be funny, sympathetic, weary, egotistical, petty, loving, engaging, and wise in the way that only someone who has been a keen observer of life for the past 200+ years can be.

The people, mostly living but a few dead, who constitute her current world are equally real, from the anxiety-ridden publicist, to the conflicted avatar (yes, Jane needs an avatar because she has no corporeal body, and a young actress named Mary Crawford gets the role), to the lovelorn Kiplingesque Janeite who is chatting her up in Afternet chat rooms.

The tension is also real--will a nasty Austen scholar prove that our Jane is not, in fact, the Jane?  Will Jane overcome her writer's block?  Will all hell break loose at the Jane Austen Society Annual General Meeting?

The plot was fun and the characters engaging, but I think I most enjoyed just seeing the whole Austen industry from inside the fishbowl.  I always say that Trekkies have nothing on Janeites and this book just goes to prove it.

I can think of no more perfect summer book than Jane, Actually.  It's part sci-fi, part chick lit, and pure fun.

Thanks to the author, I am offering some giveaways.  There are two paperbacks up for grabs, one for U.S. and one for international (non-U.S.), as well as two ebooks.  I'll be taking entries for one week--until 8 pm MT on Friday, August 9.  You get one entry for a comment (and please provide email, U.S. or international location, and whether you prefer paperback or ebook), and an additional entry if you also tweet about the giveaway (just let me know if you do tweet it).

Also, make sure you visit Jennifer Petkus's website for gobs of info on the book, Austen, and our wacky Janeite world.

BTW, the RoofBeamReader is hosting Austen in August - check it out for reviews, giveaways, etc.

First Chapter - First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - Jane, Actually

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter-First Paragraph in which she, and those of us who join her,  posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she is reading or planning to read.  

Next week our family is headed to Disneyland for a last hurrah before the last chicks leave the nest for college in August.  I plan to read Jane, Actually: or Jane Austen's Book Tour  by Jennifer Petkus on the plane ride.  

A woman writer, especially one long dead, should think seriously before turning down any offer from a publisher, even if it be for completing a book that one had long ago abandoned. After all, the passage of time, circumstances and not least the loss of one's body, affords a new perspective.

While this opening is delightful and full of promise, I feel that I have to provide you with the Amazon blurb because this is one of those genre-defying novels that you just can't make any assumptions about.

With the invention of the AfterNet, death isn’t quite the end to a literary career it once was, and Jane Austen, the grande dame of English literature, is poised for a comeback with the publication of Sanditon, the book she was writing upon her death in 1817. But how does a disembodied author sign autographs and appear on talk shows? With the aid of Mary Crawford, a struggling acting student who plays the role of the Regency author who wrote Pride and Prejudice and Emma and Sense and Sensibility. But Austen discovers her second chance at a literary career also gives her a second chance at happiness and possibly even … love.

I read and enjoyed Petkus's other Austen-inspired work, My Particular Friend, and I know that I will love this romp through Austenmania and sci-fi with some beloved Colorado landmarks thrown in for good measure.  Maybe I won't even wait until next week.  I want to read it now?  How about you?

My Particular Friend: 5-star review and giveaway!

Sherlock Holmes stories were among the first non-kid books that I read as a teenager, and I've revisited them many times over the years, each time relishing the nostalgic feelings I get reading them and enjoying the characters and stories and absolute cleverness of Doyle and his masterful creation.

My Particular Friend, by fellow Coloradoan author, Jennifer Petkus, is a glorious reworking of Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. John Watson.  Reincarnated into Regency England as Charlotte Holmes and Jane Woodsen, My Particular Friend recounts the adventures of the pair as they solve mysteries matrimonial rather than murderous. 

The book was enormously fun to read on several levels.  First, the stories themselves are interesting as are the characters of Charlotte and Jane, as well as the servants, friends, and clients who surround them.  I loved seeing characteristics from the originals shine forth in their Regency-lady-versions--Charlotte is every bit as clever, self-assured, and focused as Sherlock, and Jane is a tireless sidekick, taking notes, offering theories, and serving as a sounding board, foil, and companion.  I also liked the fact that Petkus threw in a bit of romance for Jane in the form of the dashing Dr. Wallace (be still my beating heart!).

It's also great fun to catch the author's many references and allusions to her favorite authors, including Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse, Oscar Wilde, and Shakespeare.  The book is scattered with # symbols, and you can visit its website to read the footnotes associated with each # sign.  The footnotes include tidbits explaining Regency dress, customs, and other details of life as well as literary allusions.  I didn't read an ebook version of the book, but I imagine the # signs are hotlinks to the footnotes, which is very cool.

I recently reread The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, which contains some of my favorite stories, and I had to smile to see the Conan Doyle story The Naval Treaty reworked by Petkus into The Affair of Brotherly Love. Petkus did a marvelous job translating it to her own fictional world and reimagining the challenge of removing a valuable document from an impregnable stronghold.  It is a story worthy of the original--clever, full of blind alleys, and immensely satisfying to read.

That said, I have to admit that my personal favorite story was The Affair of the Reluctant Bachelor, in which a Bertie Wooster character, recast as Bertie Worcester, finds himself engaged to two women at the same time.  Charlotte and Jane must help Bertie as his faithful valet, Cheevers (Jeeves, in the P.G. Wodehouse stories that inspired this one) is not on hand to tell him what to do.  I laughed through the whole story--loved Petkus's Bertie as much as I've loved Wodehouse's Bertie, and felt the whole was light, bright, and sparkling.

I'm hoping that Petkus is working on volume two as I'm not nearly tired of reading Charlotte House stories and just hope she never feels compelled to send her creation to Reichenbach Falls.  My Particular Friend is charming, literary, and witty--basically, everything I look for in a particular friend, and it turned out to be a particularly good read!

I am happy to announce that Jennifer Petkus has offered up two versions of My Particular Friend for a giveaway. 

A paperback version is available for U.S. residents, and a Kindle version is available for non-U.S. residents. 

To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment below and include your email address so that I can reach you should you be one of two happy winners.  The contest ends on Saturday, July 14 at 8 pm MDT.