** spoiler alert ** I read this book on a recommendation from my mom. She billed it as a modernized Sense and Sensibility, with a very different twist at the end. I felt like Sense and Sensibility would be a very difficult Austen novel to modernize - would we not, now, just demand explanations from the vanishing suitors? Do people still have secret engagements? I did not know.

But this novel comes off surprisingly fresh, which is not an easy thing in the oversaturated Austen niche market. I liked that the author aged all of the women to their fifties. Being penniless in your twenties these days is more expected than frightening, but making the sisters older and in financial distress lent the story more resonance.

It is also interesting to see an Austen story play out in a world of modern sexual mores. The 'Edward' character is lured into an engagement because he has unwisely had sex with (and allegedly impregnated) his house sitter. And yet, the fact that he once slept with the 'Elinor' character is one of the ways in which she knows that her feelings for him were returned, at least in part.

Some of the characters transfer very well from the original Austen novel. Felicity is a spot on update of Fanny. Cousin Lou is a wonderful incarnation of Sir John Middleton and Kit Maybank is as unscrupulous a rake as Willoughby ever was. Betty, as the matriarch of the family, has a larger role but stays true to type. And the modern day Brandon, a semi-retired lawyer named Roberts, is very nicely done indeed.

Overall, the characters are extremely faithful to their archetypes, even while the ending of the book diverges wildly from the original. I love that the 'Marianne' character falls in love with and decides to marry a woman. And I am willing to accept that in this version, an Annie and Roberts pairing makes more sense than an Elinor-Brandon match would have in the original. Having Annie eventually reject Frederick after all his ridiculous drama seems a bit of a feminist victory. I think the ending is where the book really succeeds in telling its own version of a clasic story.