What We Thought: Solicitor, Anne Reed, is a Jane Austen fan. She works hard but fantasises about living in the early 19th century and attending the balls and pump rooms mentioned by her heroine. While suffering a bad case of ’flu, she visits an odd apothecary’s shop where she is given a medicine to take. Next morning she wakes in her own flat in the Queen Anne house in London where she lives, to discover that she and it are now in the year 1816.
Naturally confused, she realises that the ‘Apothecary’ has granted her wish to experience life in Jane Austen’s time. She is now Lady Arabella Clyde, married to Sir Andrew, who bears a striking resemblance to her colleague Andrew Hargreaves, her senior partner’s son. As her relationship with that Andrew was difficult, she finds the prospect of matrimonial relations with this Sir Andrew disconcerting.
The Apothecary visits Anne and tells her she will spend a year in the past but this will only amount to twelve days in her modern life, where the real Arabella will take her place. Under the guise of having lost her memory in a fall, she tentatively begins her life in Georgian times.
Anne meets Arabella’s friends, relatives and servants and must pick up what information she can about her new life and the woman she is supposed to be. She makes various discoveries about Arabella and her companion Hortense, an overbearing Frenchwoman, and about the strained relationship between Arabella and Sir Andrew. Anne is, at first, homesick and desperate to return to her own times. Life in 1816 is not as glamourous as she had imagined. The Apothecary tells her she must remain until November 1817.
Though she never gets to meet Jane Austen, Anne has various adventures and eventually comes to enjoy her new life. She makes peace with Sir Andrew and grows to care for him and her friends. As November looms, she finds herself reluctant to return to the 21st century.
The transitions in time are plausibly done and the period detail rich without seeming research-heavy. Characterisation is good and the protagonists are all changed by circumstances. Occasionally, a little more detail would have been welcome – a ball comes and goes without much description – and more information on Hortense and her strange powers would have been interesting. If you are a fan of timeslip novels, however, this one certainly fits the bill.
You’ll enjoy this if you like: Georgian Romance, Georgette Heyer etc
Avoid if you dislike: Timeslip novels.
Ideal accompaniments: A hot posset.
Genre: Timeslip Fiction/Light Romance
Available on Amazon
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