The heart wants what the heart wants, and our hearts want books.

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Darling Readers, life has just gotten in the way of our planning schedule this January. It seems that 2023 has decided to kick life into overdrive in ways that we haven’t been prepared for since the beginning of 2020. And with that, we’re putting Virtual Book Club on hold until further notice. If we were to announce a February book now, we would all be scrambling to get it from the library and read it in time to discuss. So, we’re pushing hosting a public Virtual Book Club for now. But, if you’re in the mood to discuss a specific title with us, you know where to reach us and we’d be happy to get YOU a personal VBC set on our schedules.

Let’s start at the very beginning, it’s a very good place to start, and Alexander McCall Smith, prolific British author born in what is now Zimbabwe and lives in Edinburgh, dedicated this book to his two daughters, Lucy and Emily. The 74-year-old author studied law at the University of Edinburgh where he earned his PhD and proceeded to teach at the Queen’s University of Belfast and then at his alma mater in Medical Law. McCall Smith has written over 100 works of fiction for both children and adults, as well as numerous academic texts. The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series, set in Botswana and started by Madame Precious Ramotswe – an African woman of color, is what has made McCall Smith a household name. Often referred to as “Sandy,” McCall Smith lives in Edinburgh with his wife Elizabeth, a physician, in a renovated Victorian home and doesn’t seem to be slowing down his writing any time soon.

Emma: A Modern Retelling was exactly what I wanted a retelling to be. And if it weren’t for the vagaries of life, I would have settled in to read it in one or two sittings rather than the week it took me to read the 370 page homage to Jane Austen and modern British country life. McCall Smith places every character and location from Emma into his witty and sarcastic prose. What I really loved about this modern version is that we get the background on Mr. Woodhouse’s obsession with health and how his mother called him a “valetudinarian.” When I read this word in Emma earlier this month it sent me to the Kindle dictionary. I loved what McCall Smith did on page two to hearken back to a modern person’s reading the original novel:

“To dispatch one’s friends to a dictionary from time to time is one of the more sophisticated pleasures of life, but it is one that must be indulge in sparingly: to do it too often may result in accusations of having swallowed one’s own dictionary, which is not a compliment, whichever way one looks at it.”

We also receive more background on how Miss Taylor came to be the Woodhouse sisters’ main caregiver, the intriguing story of Isabella’s and John Knightley’s romance, and the best snippets of Emma’s real feelings and thoughts with her inner monologue. We get more understanding of Emma’s motivations and personal growth as a character. If Emma isn’t an Enneagram 1, with her desire for everything to be in its proper place and everyone to be better than they are, especially herself by the end, then I don’t know my own type. The friendship between Harriet and Emma is a delight of surprises and secrets revealed at the end of the book.

I’m giving Emma: A Modern Retelling four solid stars! I will recommend this title to everyone and will be adding some of McCall Smith’s backlist to my TBR, but don’t foresee myself re-reading it. I wish every classic novel was given a new, modern interpretation as reverential to the original as this one. If you can find me some more, I’d love to read them with you!

~Ashley

Darling readers, let’s have a little chat today.  I want to chat about adaptations and retellings.  First, let it be known that I did not dispatch myself to a dictionary to discern the difference between the words, so I’ve more or less been using them interchangeably, until now.  My understanding now is that an adaptation takes the story into a new media form, whereas a retelling is to tell the story in a new way, in the original medium.  Is that what I expected them to mean?  Nope, but here we are, with my own story of being dispatched to a dictionary by Emma Woodhouse.  

Ashley has already given us some great comments on what quirks are included in Emma: A Modern Retelling and I have a couple more things I want to add to that.  First, while you can read our full review of The Emma Project here, I’ll add to it, that retelling adapts the story across time, place, and culture.  Today’s title retells the story in the same place and culture, and merely updates the time.  If we also look at adaptations, such as Clueless, we can see more of the difference here, as it’s in a similar place and time as The Emma Project, but a very different culture.  Here’s the point – Emma: A Modern Retelling changes the time, but still sets the story in an English village, with all the same names and characters you’re expecting.  John Knightley is perhaps the most different character from the original, as I don’t think a younger son reading the law in the 1800s is very similar to becoming a photographer and hiring a voice coach to adopt a Chelsea Cockney accent, although I get that modern John as a barrister doesn’t fit either.  There are other minor differences, but they also serve to modernize or add dimension to the story, including the details of Mr. Elton’s background and trip after Emma refuses him, the specifics of Mrs. Goddard’s school, and the business the Martins operate.  Other than the specifics of John’s quirks, the cast does feel like the modern version of the classic, which I genuinely enjoyed, perhaps most of all Miss Taylor / Mrs. Watson, because as a governess, yes, even in the modern version, she does have an almost Mary Poppins feel to her, without the magic.  

McCall Smith has definitely earned his backlist a place on my TBR with his careful, considered treatment of this classic, his understanding of the updated social norms, and his gorgeous writing.  Like Ashley, if life hadn’t gotten in the way, I’d have consumed this book.  It’s engaging in its own right, and then you add in that it’s a retelling and I am reading for an updated treatment and how he hides those Easter eggs because we all know how this is going to end…without enough epilogue, just like the original.  I’m delighted to give Emma: A Modern Retelling an emphatic four stars.  I definitely encourage lovers of the original and those who enjoy an amusing (not spicy) tale of fumbled romance in the English countryside to pick up this title.  I won’t likely read it again, but I’m looking forward to reading the other half of this modern retelling series and more from McCall Smith!

What’s a title that was everything you didn’t know you wanted it to be?

~Nikki 

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The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.  As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!

The open invitation to provide your input into Heart.Wants.Books Virtual Book Club is soon to come to a close, so get those comments, emails, and DMs in so we can consider your thoughts and opinions.  We want to make the most of our reading and chatting time with you!

Readers, you know we adore Sonali Dev because we’ve read and reviewed Recipe for Persuasion and A Bollywood Affair.  For me at least, The Emma Project by Sonali Dev is no different.  As with any romance series, this delightful title allows readers to revisit characters from previous novels in the Raje series (which are all Jane Austen retellings) and it ends with a HEA. But, with a modern retelling, we also have a strong idea about how the story would progress.  All that said, I won’t cover the basic plot, but I do want to highlight that, as in the original, there is more than one couple who finds their HEA in these pages!

The Emma Project follows Vansh, the baby of the Raje family, as he comes home for a time after pursuing mission work across the globe.  I say baby, but he’s 26, and finds himself with what family friend, and his older brother’s ex, 38 year old Naina, calls “an Emma Project.”  Naina has been pursuing some pretty focused mission work and the two end up thrown together professionally.  I won’t spoil more of the fun, but it’s a very fun hang.  Both have some pretty significant family of origin issues which they are very conscious of, and both still have a lot to learn about themselves, and especially each other.  Personally, I really appreciated the scrappy nature of nonprofit work being featured, even if I don’t understand the intricacies of the international pieces.  From Naina’s awful office her funder pushed on her, which was so eloquently described I could have been sitting there, to the power dynamics that have to be navigated to get the work done, it was so familiar, and quite accurate to the experiences of many in the sector, unfortunately.  

My favorite part of The Emma Project was the well-rounded cast of characters.  Those from the previous novels (even though I’ve only read the first, second, and now fourth), and new characters are so dimensional, and I really appreciated more time with the aunties and learning new details about cousin Esha’s story, which has been building since book one.  I’m giving this title a solid 4 stars, which as a reminder equates to loving it, highly recommend, not likely for top 5 titles of the year (out of an anticipated 100-140 total), so not 5 stars, but still high praise!  

Now, I do feel like I need to warn readers a bit.  While reading this title, I listened to the Failure To Adapt podcast discuss Jane Austen’s Emma and Amy Heckerling’s Clueless thanks to a friend of the blog.  They had a discussion about the “hot Janes” in Austen novels, and the lack of a Jane Fairfax like character in Clueless.  Following that listen (which is NSFW and hilarious), I was looking for which characters in the retelling aligned with which characters in the classic, as most of the names did not reveal that information.  I could argue Jane’s presence either way, but I noticed no Eltons, thankfully.  If I’m on team Jane, then Frank Churchill’s character is brilliant.  Also, Mr. Martin’s character is quite different from the classic, but fits his Harriet with perfection, although our Emma does not try to set her up.  To tie it all together, my absolute favorite part of this novel is how the characters observe each other, including all the pieces they pick up on and the ones they don’t, because that is what makes for an amazing, and real, relationship in real life.  What is done and said is important, but for those of us who are still healing from brokenness, having friends and loved ones (romantic and otherwise) who see what we can’t yet verbalize and pick up on all the differences we show in non-verbal ways is so magical and fantastic because that helps us to feel seen and valued, and it makes all the difference.

What do you need in a retelling, modern or otherwise, to make it rise above the rest?

~Nikki  

Readers, I love to admit that part of what I love about Jane in January is that we don’t have to explain the plot of each re-telling title and can get right to the business of what we thought about it. Additionally, I don’t have give you a whole overview of author Sonali Dev’s work because I already did it last January when we reviewed Recipe for Persuasion. Does that seem a little lazy? No, I’m working smarter not harder here people! And, I do feel justified in thinking that my reading life takes up the time of a part-time job. I’m not sad about it, just stating the #facts. Additionally, ANOTHER BIG ENNEAGRAM ONE PLOT TWIST, I STILL have not read books 1 and 3 in The Rajes series! Is it probable that we’ll read book three in a future Sense & Sensibility Jane in January?…oh you should expect no less. I’m beyond surprised at still not having read Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, but, there we are. Surprisingly, Amazon’s First Reads for December 2022 included the newest Sonali Dev title, The Vibrant Years. If you didn’t purchase it for free with your Prime account last month like Nikki and I did, it is currently available through KindleUnlimited. Plus, there seems to be another title coming from Dev in September 2023, because Amazon is a TEASE.

What do we love?! Retellings! Why do we love them?! Because they bring a ‘tale as old as time’ into a modern era. And ya’gurl finds the rhythm of the originals tedious and problematic (most of the time, and specifically in the case of Emma). Do you know why else I loved The Emma Project? Because we have a gender swap of the main characters. Emma’s character is represented by Mr. Vansh Raje and our Mr. Knightly is represented by the older and more, dare I say, EnneagramOne-ish, Ms. Naina Kohli born Knightlina Kohli. I think having the older character be female, really brings the 12 years difference in age between Knightly and Emma to be seen as more ‘problematic’ for the opposite sex, when it can be JUST AS PROBLEMATIC for the more ‘typical’ situation where the woman is younger than the man. The age-gap is a discussion topic near the end of the book where the families start giving their opinions on their relationship, and Naina doesn’t stand for that patriarchal bullshit. 

I am also giving The Emma Project four solid stars. Highly recommend, and there’s also the bonus of delicious sexy-times. You know by now that such antics alone are worthy of a 3 star review…most of the time. And, obviously, we’re working our way through Dev’s backlist and here for anything she writes in the future.

~Ashley

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The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.  As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!

As we are now solidly in the new year, or at least back to our routines, and very soon we’ll have an announcement to make about Virtual Book Club, so if you have thoughts and opinions you’d like us to factor into our plans, we welcome them in our DMs, in the comments below, or in our emails.  If you love it, but don’t want to participate, or if you would love to participate but can’t because the day or time is bad, or the books just aren’t for you, please share with us!  If you want to be involved, we want to know what would make it better for you!

As I sit here deliberating on the words of Ms. Jane Austen and the characters and plots she created, as well as while I was reading the words this week, I feel as sickly as Mr. Woodhouse feared his family would become. A debilitating cough, a scratchy throat, a frustrated voice, and a sinus headache that just won’t quit… I thank my lucky stars for the miracle of modern medicine and not the lackluster attentions of Mr. Perry of Highbury, but I digress… Emma was published in 1816, the last of Austen’s four novels to be published in her lifetime. The other two were published after her death in 1817. One of the foremost female English novelists of all time, Austen still doesn’t pull me into her world with any enthusiasm. Being a Comedy of Manners, fully dependent upon the understanding of the social norms and mores of the time, it requires a little bit more research on the modern reader to be fully enjoyed or understood. I did not do that research. So, the entire time as Emma Woodhouse’s internal monologue conjectures over how her friend Harriet Smith makes a large social climb by being matched to Mr. Elton the vicar and not by being married to Richard Martin the prosperous farmer, I’m wondering why it would even matter at all since she is the natural born daughter of some random man we don’t know the station of until the final chapter of the book! (Thank you, Ms. Austen, for at least putting a big bow at the end of every novel.) It took me at least until 30% to be invested in any character, and what I really wanted was an explanation of regency social calls and a map of the dang town. Why were there complaints about how far Donwell Abbey was from town when Mr. Knightley the owner walked to and fro multiple times in a day, and then on to the other homes of consequence? Was this supposed to be comedic, when it was just very frustrating. 

Overall, another meets expectations novel from Jane Austen. Glad to have read the book, yes. More interested in the forthcoming retellings, ALSO YES. I don’t love giving three stars to these classic novels, but I can’t say that I enjoyed it. The beginning was a slog and I was distracted by my lack of knowledge about the way society worked. I never got my questions answered from the book and honestly I’m not interested enough to do research into the life and times of the fictional characters. Emma, you sure know how to dangle a carrot and then drop it in the mud. Maybe I would like it more if I could see the plot on screen…

~Ashley

Because I’m sure you’re dying to know, here’s my current rankings of the Novels of Jane Austen:

1. Persuasion
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. Emma
4. Northanger Abbey (only because I did read it in high school but have forgotten everything)

Unranked: Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park

This wasn’t my first reading of Emma, but darlings, it might be my last.  While I do love Pride and Prejudice in many forms, I do enjoy Emma the movie more than I enjoy Emma the book.  Yes, I said it.  I will note that finding the Easter eggs for all the couples did make the read more entertaining than a typical romance reread, and also, the Knightley brothers, along with the Watsons are my favorites.  I think the piece that caused my struggles is Emma herself.  I know I’m supposed to root for her, but she’s a spoiled brat and I just can’t until the end when she FINALLY realizes how awful and immature she’s been, and even then it’s a struggle.  As a reader, I really want characters to root for and have DNFed books because I just didn’t care before.  Thankfully, there were a couple of other characters I could root for, including sweet, poor Harriet who was just caught up in Emma’s storm.  

Here’s the deal about classics though, sometimes you just have to read them to get the joke.  Clueless is more fun with an understanding of Emma.  The movies make more sense having read the book, yes even if I do prefer the movie because when Emma breaks the fourth wall it’s so obnoxious unless you know it’s in the text.  Here’s the big redeeming part for me – I love reading about a woman who shoves her foot so far down her throat and then recovers from it, because we’ve all been in need of a good recovery and I like reading that is a tale for the ages.  

I’m giving Emma 3.5 but not rounding up.  I also wanted a map, and I enjoyed the dialogue (except when I wanted to smack a character, or a few), but it was just a meets expectations of a friends (in-laws?) to lovers romance, with a lot of misunderstandings and awkwardness while getting to the HEA, and I wanted it to be something more, yes, even on a reread.  Here’s hoping the retellings are going to be more to our tastes (and so far so good on #1).  

What’s a book that didn’t live up to your expectations on a reread?

~Nikki

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