Book Review: Trusting Miss Austen by Angela Pearse

Hilarious, twisty sequel to Visiting Miss Austen.

I adore Angela Pearse’s brilliant heroine, Felicity Fitzroy. I’m so glad she’s back in this third Jane Austen-inspired book, where she’s more delightful, determined and mischievous than ever, in the face of some quite shocking events and revelations. Read on...

A masked regency ball! What could possibly go wrong?

You didn’t think a notorious rake like Dorian Hart was going to go quietly, did you? Without giving too much away I can at least tell you that, like a particularly persistent wasp at a picnic, he has a habit of coming back to pester Felicity Fitzroy in so many unexpected ways.

The incredible lengths to which Felicity and her extended family go to prevent a series of scandals engulfing them keeps the reader laughing and guessing all the way through.

Angela Pearse reminds us at the start of the book that, although people often think of Jane Austen as being straight-laced and prim, she was a comic writer and told her sister Cassandra in a famous letter that she couldn’t imagine trying to write a serious novel even to save her life. This third Austen-inspired novel is very much in the Pearse mould – frivolous but intelligent, as well as having some genuinely nail-biting, edge-of-the-seat scraps and scrapes and delightfully cringey awkward moments.

I also really enjoyed watching the development of Felicity’s relationship with her steadfast, loyal, husband, Max Fitzroy, who demonstrates himself to be a capital fellow, and more devoted to his wife than ever.

And I have to add that I absolutely love these covers with original illustrations by My Lan Khuc Valle - https://www.instagram.com/laolanart/ – I think this third one is exceptional and I look forward to seeing more My Lan – Angela Pearse cover collaborations and a lot more from this imaginative, witty writer, which is why I’m delighted to now be a fixture on Angela’s ARC reader roster and get to read them before everyone else!

To find out more about Angela's other brilliant books visit https://angelapearse.pub/