Jessica recommends... Six Weeks by the Sea - Paula Byrne

Jessica says... An escapist summer romance for all Jane Austen fans! Written by Austen's biographer, Paula Byrne, this imagines the summer Austen spent in Devon, and the meeting with the man she might have married. Fans will enjoy references, tropes and even dialogue taken from her novels, and you even get to the point where you think you are reading a novel by Austen, rather than about Austen, and ultimately hoping she gets the happy ending that she gives her best heroines.

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1801, Sidmouth. The Austen family descends upon a fashionable seaside resort in Devonshire for a six-week holiday. Jane's brother, Frank, is on leave from the Royal Navy, and dearly wishes to unite his sister with his friend Captain Peter Parker. But another holidaymaker, a handsome stranger, catches sight of Jane and is determined to make her acquaintance. This rival to Captain Parker is Samuel Rose: a lawyer, literary man and abolitionist. As the weeks pass, Jane's relationship with both men brings about unexpected surprises. By the end of the summer, the course of her life will have changed forever.