Review by Booklist Review
In August 1820, Fanny Knight of Godmersham Park, the setting for and title of Hornby's previous novel based on Jane Austen's family, received a marriage offer from widowed country neighbor Sir Edward Knatchbull. Having run a household and cared for younger siblings since age 15 with limited prospects for future offers, Fanny hesitantly accepted. As the years unfolded, there were reasons to believe she had overestimated her skills, and her young stepdaughter, Mary Dorothea, has suffered the consequences. Her journey to discovering her true worth is peppered with sorrow, joy, and admirable strength. As Hornby illuminates Fanny's experiences as a second wife and reluctant stepmother and her internal monologue justifying her actions, readers glean the prevailing social attitudes of the time. By revealing how Fanny's struggles affect Mary Dorothea's choices, Hornby details the rigid rules restricting most women's lives. Thanks to the author's ability to make her characters and their struggles engaging and relatable, this is an excellent work of detailed historical fiction and a timeless story of family and love. Interactions between extended families create natural opportunities to reference Jane Austen as a writer but more importantly as a beloved aunt and sister. This is a novel to savor.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Hornby (Miss Austen) continues her series devoted to the family of Jane Austen with a supple tale of Fanny Knight, the eldest daughter of Jane's brother Edward. In 1820 England, 28-year-old Fanny seems resigned to a life of caring for her siblings on their widowed father Edward's estate of Godmersham Park. Then Fanny receives a marriage proposal in the mail from Sir Edward Knatchbull, whom she met when he recently visited for dinner, and with her father's blessing she agrees to marry him and care for his five children. After the wedding, Fanny and Sir Edward move into his home, Mersham-le-Hatch. Fanny eventually gives birth to a daughter with whom she shares a tighter bond than with her stepchildren, especially Mary Dorothea, Sir Edward's only daughter. Though Fanny is often distant towards Mary Dorothea, the girl enjoys spending time at Godmersham Park with Fanny's siblings, and eventually captures the attention of Fanny's brother, Ned. Sir Edward, however, refuses Ned's request to marry Mary Dorothea, who must consider whether her own happiness is worth defying her father. Hornby breathes life into the characters, highlighting the societal restrictions faced by women in Regency England and their roles as daughters and wives. Fans of Hornby's earlier Austen novels will be satisfied. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Hard on the heels of Miss Austen and Godmersham Park, her two earlier novels about Jane Austen's circle, Hornby draws on the extant diary of Fanny Austen Knight, niece of Jane, to relate a juicy scandal. (Like Miss Austen, this latest is in development for a TV series.) When Fanny marries after minding her widowed father and his 11 children for years, she is eager for her new role. She relishes having her own noble space, the home called Mersham-le-Hatch. Her new husband, a curmudgeonly baronet, has six children from his first marriage; he and Fanny add nine more to that number. With such propriety and property, what could possibly go awry in this stately life of luxury? Hornby answers with a deed that has Austen's world reaching for its smelling salts--the elopement of Fanny's brother Ned with her stepdaughter Mary Knatchbull. This novel boldly makes Mary's father and stepmother into the countryside's most sanctimonious villains VERDICT Just as Austen would, Hornby zeroes in on rich character development, witty irony, and insightful asides about social status and marriage to make this domestic novel a winner.--Barbara Conaty
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An affecting, and even somewhat feminist, return to the world of the Austen family and its offshoots. Fanny Knight--Jane Austen's niece and a principal character in Hornby'sGodmersham Park (2022)--appears early in this pleasingly long ramble through the life cycles of two families, the Knights and the Knatchbulls. When she accepts Sir Edward Knatchbull's proposal of marriage, she becomes stepmother to his five children as well as the tie between her family's modest estate, Godmersham Park, and her husband's grander one at Mersham-le-Hatch. But the heroine of this third volume based on Jane Austen's relations is Fanny's stepdaughter, Mary Dorothea Knatchbull. Just 13 when her father remarries, Mary conducts a war of détente with Fanny that might have impressed Napoleon, peppering their infrequent exchanges with deadly pauses: "…Ma-ma." As Fanny falters under her husband's defenses of the status quo, Mary Dorothea lives with the Knights for a bit and discovers a happier lifestyle, becoming close to Austen's nieces Louisa and Cassy. There's a method to the author's impeccably researched look at 19th-century manners: Not only does she get to the titular event (never fear, there's an Austen-worthy young gentleman involved), but she shows the choices available to the era's women. For every mother of five or seven or even 15 (like Austen's niece Lizzie, who lived to "a long and happy old age"), there's an interfering Lady Banks, a coquettish Lady Elizabeth Bligh, or a stalwart helpmeet like Miss Cassandra Austen (who, in real life, burned many of her brilliant sister's letters after Jane's death). Fortunately, as Mary grows into her own, readers will find observations from her and others that underscore changing notions of how women can gain a measure of control, even if it's only over whom to marry. At her coming-out dance, Mary thinks: "It was almost as if humans only truly examined their own selves, and took little to no notice of others." Austen herself would approve. Janeites, rejoice! This novel is long enough to suit the largest pot of tea, and non-Janeites might like it, too. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
