There was a lot I enjoyed about Austentatious, but also a fair bit I found problematic. The novel scored big points with me early on by dropping a reference to The Princess Bride without belaboring it with an explanation. And I enjoyed its breezy, nerd-culture-reference-spiked tone throughout. I'm generally favorably inclined toward modern spins on classic Austen plots, and I was distinctly intrigued by the notion of Austen's voice being brought literally into the 21st century by a supernatural More...

Nicola James is an engineer with an MBA whose life follows The Plan she made at age 13. Except she's got no life and no romance; she's too busy following The Plan.

Enter a quaint-looking diary with a mysterious quote from Jane Austen inside:
"...I dedicate to You the following Miscellaneous Morsels, convinced that if you seriously attend to them, You will derive from them very important Instructions, with regard to your Conduct in Life."

Nicola buys it for a vintage-obsessed younger cousin, but whi More...

What a lovely romp of a read!!! I easily devoured it in one sitting – laughing and smiling.

I absolutely adore this Jane Austen-esque book. It is full of wit, comedy, magical journaling and utterly cute and ahhh worthy romance. Goodnight has done an excellent job capturing the essence of Jane Austen and her characters – creating a modern world for them to live. While there aren’t direct correlations to Austen characters (well, except for Nicola and Sean), there are plenty of references to them fo More...

E' verità universalmente riconosciuta che qualsiasi prodotto letterario che vanti una qualunque forma di parentela con le opere di Jane Austen sia destinato a finire nelle mie mani. E' superfluo quindi dire che a questo Austentatious è bastato il titolo per volare senza esitazione fra i miei scaffali. I risultati di qeusta mia predilezione sono stati nel tempo altalenanti. Se la "Zia Jane" è garanzia di qualità, le sue emule si collocano invece ina una vasta gamma di definizioni che varia tra la More...

Nicola James is a serious, career-minded woman. She is on a path that she set as a teenager. The only things missing are love and romance but, practical and sensible, she is not about to risk it all with fool hardy risks.

When Nicola finds a beautiful blank journal in a boutique in Austen, Texas, she is intrigued. It is shelved alongside Jane Austen novels, her favourite. She buys the journal, initially as a gift. She is so drawn to the journal that she decides to use it herself, and once she doe More...

Originally reviewed at Novel Escapes

3.5 Star

A mystical, magical novel, Austentatious takes us on a fairy tale ride merging Jane Austen with Austin, Texas and takes a girl who has a plan and stubbornly refuses to take any detours from it until an unusual journal pops into her life and makes her question everything.

I had an extremely slow start to this novel partly due to some things in life that left me with less reading time, but I also think it was because I wasn’t entirely immersed in this nov More...

AUSTENTATIOUS was not what I expected. I somehow got the impression that protagonist Nicola James was in college when I first noticed the book. Instead, she's an engineer, several years out of college, and looking to be promoted. The book starts when Nic buys a journal in a SoCo (South Congress) shop for a present, but accidentally spills her drink on it. She then uses the journal for herself and finds that words in her entries disappear to display messages from a mysterious person. She decides More...

Anyone who knows me knows how I am a Jane Austen fan, specifically for her Pride and Prejudice novel; It is even my all time favorite movie and any book that has any relation to Jane Austen grabs my attention immediately! Austentatious, from its title, had me sold. Picture you finding an old journal at a used shop and then writing in it, normal right? then the next time you open it to write some more, you find a REPLY BACK to your journal entry! and by none other than the lovely Jane Austen hers More...

As a fan of Jane Austen (especially Pride and Prejudice!), I love coming across books that take a bit of Austen into the story without trying to rewrite or add to the original (sorry, not a fan of the "sequels" written about Mr. Darcy or Elizabeth Bennett). Usually these types of books are a lot of fun and seem to be written with the rabid fan in mind. This author is obviously a Jane Austen fan herself, and she wrote a really cute little story here. I liked most of the characters overall, and an More...

Posted on Romancing the Book's blog
Reviewed by~Patti
Reveiw Copy Provided by~ARC from Publisher

Having never read any of Jane Austen’s books I was a little nervous that I would be totally confused and lost reading this. I am very pleased to tell you I was not; I enjoyed it very much actually. There were references to her novels, but they were made in such a way that I got the gist of what was meant. I am sure if you are a Jane Austen fan those same references would probably have more meaning to yo More...

Fabulous!
This one was such fun and edge of your seat what will she do now? Both what will Nicola, the main character, do now, but also her "Fairy Jane" who posts in her antique journal with instructions to follow. Whether Nic follows them or not and how very serious-minded, down-to-earth Nic can wrap her mind around the possibility of the journal's magic is half the fun.
I think to really get the full enjoyment of this one, you should be at least passingly familiar with Jane Austen's works, the More...

"Slightly envious, I splayed my fingers over the bumpy back leather cover and had even gone so far as to dip my unpolished, trimmed-short fingernail into the tiny keyhole. I'd instantly felt an unexpected little zing that had sent goosebumps chasing each other up my arms and nerves spiraling down like a roller coaster into the pit of my stomach. Startled, I jumped back, jostling my full-to-the-brim cup and sending a cascade of warm, spiced tea down onto the little book, staining the pages, buckl More...

I heard about Austentatious while en route to Philadelphia. Two women sitting behind me on my British Airways flight to Philly were talking about it--one was raving about it, the other was in complete agreement. The first woman swore any fan of Jane Austen ought to read this book. I don't know if I would go that far--I know many Jane Austen purists who would be totally against anything derived from Austen's original novels--but it was an enjoyable read and it accompanied me on many a visit to St More...

“ Miss Nicola James will be sensible and indulge in a little romance.” Twelve little words in a journal, the problem being that Nicola had written several paragraphs earlier and this is all that was left. Nicola is a straight-laced engineer living in Austin Texas. She is probably one of very few people who doesn’t own one of the city’s signature Weird t-shirts. She has a PLAN for her life and she is going to stick to it.
The plan starts to derail when she purchases a small antique journal that s More...

3.5 Stars, actually

This is a very light-hearted, geek-referenced (Princess Bride quotes and all) Austin, Texas-flavored romp of a romance.

Geek-engineer Nicola James is strait-laced, focused, and too busy for a social life (other than the Friday night lesbian karaoke parties next door.)

Enter a strange journal she picks up in an antique store that has a very strange way of altering the words she writes down. The first thing it tells her is "Nicola James will be sensible and indulge in a little rom More...

This book is so Magical! I seriously could not stop smiling and laughing while I was reading it. I didn't want it to end at all. I loved that the chapter titles were the bits of advice from the journal and I loved the Jane Austen Quotes. This books makes me want to pick up the Collected works of Jane Austen and rediscover their magic.

Nicola James is one of my favorite female main characters that I have read about in a long time. She is funny and quirky, awkward and geeky and I loved all of her More...

Nicola James is a woman who knows her own mind. She has “The Life Plan” firmly in place for her career: a managerial position is eminent. But while she is a determined engineer, she is still enamored of all things Austen-esque. Finding an aged journal with a quaint old dedication for a gift is a stroke of luck; spilling tea on it is not. Deciding to keep it for her own journaling is fate, or is it magic? Soon, nothing is going according to “The Plan.” She is passed over – again – for a promotion More...

I really, really loved this book! It hooked me from the very beginning and didn't release me until the very end.

When I first read the synopsis of this book, I immediately thought of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. (I am a huge Harry Potter geek fan. So anytime a connection can be made, it usually pops in my head.) I loved that once I hit chapter 3 of this book, there was a Harry Potter reference and Luna Lovegood zing! But, this book was so much more than my initial thought and so much More...

Either I am too picky or my expectations were too high after reading all of the rave reviews for this novel. I was so excited to get my hands on a copy so I could devour it myself. Oh, how disappointed I was. It was a chore to get through. The writing was painful to me and the story was only mediocre. I loved the premise of a magical journal that allowed a correspondence between Austen and today but that is where the creativity ended. I could have cared less about the main character and found it More...

Note to self: No more books with a Jane Austen tie-in, or where the author is heralded as "the modern Jane Austen" or maybe even evokes Jane Austen in the review or the cover copy. To a one, they always disappoint.

To be clear, I think Alyssa Goodnight can write, and someday down the road, I'll perhaps peruse one of her books and see if she has (A) found an editor and (b) quit writing like she is getting paid by the word (see A).

I didn't find Nicola James likable, and was unsure if she was a 30s More...

Austentatious! What a fun, hot novel! I was swept up in a whirlwind of kooky advice, humorous characters and steamy romance.

When Nicola James beings writing in an antique-looking diary, her life begins to change. Once her journal begins writing back, she must decide if she is going to cling to normalcy, predictability, and her life plan, or throw caution to the wind and cross over to the weird side. After all, the unofficial motto of her hometown, Austin, Texas, is “Keep Austin Weird.” And who More...

Nicola who is the main character in this story, is an engineer and a very goal oriented person. She has planned her life since she was thirteen! Then she stumbles on a journal in an antiques store and all her life plans start to go out the door. This journal is a little magical and she dubs it fairygod mother Jane. The journal guides her by using Nic's words that she writes in the journal. At first Nic doesn't want to believe that the journal is doing this, but she enlists her mentee who encourg More...

While some of us may make general life plans and long-term goals, our heroine Nicola James has taken planning her life to the extreme. Creating a “Life Plan” at the age of thirteen and strictly adhering to it for the rest of their life is not something most people are in the practice of doing. But because Nicola's dad made promises he never kept and plans he never followed through on, Nicola has decided that everything in her life must strictly coincide and adhere to her Life Plan. Which include More...

I think that I would have given 5 stars to this novel if I hadn't found some odd things (motorbikes that appear and disappear, for example), or if I were a native speaker of English. Or even better, if I were a native from Texas. The author uses acronyms a bit too much. Maybe those acronyms are clear for people whose mother tongue is English, but I didn't understand them and sometimes I was a bit lost about what they were talking about. And Nicola, the main character, is the kind of character th More...

First off, let me mention that I received this book as a giveaway from Goodreads. As it's not typically the type of novel I read, I shelved it for a while as I finished up several other books. Finally, I picked it up and started reading. What a surprise! I really enjoyed this book. It was very well written and kept me interested in the story right up until its conclusion. The premise of the book is this - a self-proclaimed nerdy engineer (Nicola James) has been following a life Plan since she wa More...

I'd heard a lot about this one--I thought what I heard was positive.
The book was fine. Predictable, not much conflict. The main character was a little bit annoying. I particularly disliked having the heroine tell me how her story was like Pride and Prejudice, If it was, I wouldn't need to be told. the heroine also told us how she didn't want to do anything and how skeptical she was, I would prefer to be shown the characters' actions, not told everything.
The book wasn't awful, it wasn't amazing. More...

E' verità universalmente riconosciuta che qualsiasi prodotto letterario che vanti una qualunque forma di parentela con le opere di Jane Austen sia destinato a finire nelle mie mani. E' superfluo quindi dire che a questo Austentatios è bastato il titolo per volare senza esitazione fra i miei scaffali.
I risultati di qeusta mia predilezione sono stati nel tempo altalenanti. Se la "Zia Jane" è garanzia di qualità, le sue emule si collocano invece ina una vasta gamma di definizioni che varia tra la " More...

I really like the premise of this story. The plot, writing style, and many of the characters really delivered. It has a large dose of Jane Austen, but you need not know a thing about Austen or her books to appreciate this story.

Obsessive Test Engineer, Nicola James, who has everything plotted down to the crossed 't's and dotted 'i's in her life stumbles upon a magic journal in a curiosity shop. The journal leads her on a little romantic adventure kicking and screaming all the way. Her romantic More...

Her "current-day" cultural references will cause future readers to scratch their heads. And the author has a strange fixation with lesbians/lesbianism. I mean, just because two women go out together, the thought actually crosses the main character's mind that others might think she's a lesbian?? Really????? And near the end of the book, I read a phrase that was so offensive. I can't quote it exactly, but it was after the new boyfriend sang at the next-door neighbor's Friday gathering, which was More...

GENRE: YA Fiction
THEME: Romance/Drama
RECEIVED: For Review for The Teen Book Scene Tour
BLOG: http://seeingnight.blogspot.com/

REVIEW:
I’m such a sap when it comes to anything Jane Austen; I always love the strong female lead and the wonderfully crafted romance. Alyssa Goodnight has written a story that every Jane Austen fan would love to have happened to them, Jane Austen herself giving advice, especially romantic advice. I immensely enjoyed Austentatious and look forward to reading more from Alys More...