Jane Austen Marriage Manual by Kim Izzo

Jane Austen Marriage Manual might make Jane Austen roll over in her grave. 
I received this book as a gift, but I liked the idea of it and eagerly started reading it.  It started off well enough; Kate is a freelance magazine writer, approaching forty, single, and living at home.  In a very short time span, she loses her job, the family home, and her beloved grandmother.  A lifelong Austen fan, Kate decides to make some cash writing an article about how Austen's marriage advice is still applicable in modern society.  The story drastically shifts when Kate decides to actually live it, and starts pursuing rich men to marry.
Her friends, Brandon and Marianne (Sense & Sensibility anyone?), purchase her a tiny plot of land in Scotland as part of a conservation project (what??), and thereby the plan unfolds to pass Kate off as a wealthy landowner of Scottish descent who was born and raised in New York.  To start, she travels to Florida to pursue the wealthy polo set, and befriends Fawn, a recent divorcee.  Together they meet some men, who are rich and single and therefore eligible for Kate to marry.  She returns to NY, then flits off to Switzerland (thanks to wealthy Fawn), and finally to London.  Along the way, she steals a wealthy investment banker, Scott, from his very young Slovenian girlfriend, and the two finally get engaged.

Despite Kate's insistence that she's a big Austen fan, (and carries around a dog-eared copy of Pride & Prejudice as proof), she fails to grasp the concept that Austen's heroine's may pursue a wealthy husband, but they marry for LOVE, not for money (Mr. Darcy, Mr. Knightly, Mr. Bingley, Colonel Brandon). 

As Kate starts pursuing these men, she becomes a very dis-likable, self-absorbed, rather vile person who cares about no one other than herself.  Even knowing her motivations for doing it, (get the family home back, pay back her mothers gambling debts, etc), it still doesn't excuse her behavior. 

I won't read this again, and will probably donate my copy.  I think Izzo needs to re-read her Austen!

We were liars by E. Lockhart

I read Gone Girl a while back and loved it.  I knew really nothing about it and loved the suspense and intrigue of it; I couldn't put it down.
I found We were Liars on a book list titled something like "If you liked Gone Girl, you might like..."  I downloaded on my Kindle and read it a few weeks later.
Since I was expecting the suspense! intrigue!  mystery! I had high expectations of this book.
It didn't quite deliver.  I read with so much anticipation of being shocked, that it diminished the actual shock value.
Cady (Cadence) is the oldest grandchild of a wealthy New England family that summers on the same idyllic beach island that they own.  One summer, Cady wakes up on a beach with a head injury and no memory of what happened. Her besties, Gat, Mirren, and Johnny are vague and don't have contact with her for the next two years until Cady returns to the beach.  Although her injuries cannot be medically explained, Cady is left with debilitating headaches, fails out of high school, drops sports, hobbies, and essentially falls off the life grid. 
Eventually the mystery is explained.  I didn't quite see it happening, so that was a welcome surprise, but I also didn't quite buy the story.  It is a good book, worth the read and its a very quick read, I just should have read it with lesser expectations.

Chasing Shakespeares by Sarah Smith.

 I was introduced to the concept (conspiracy theory) that William Shakespeare may not have have written any or all (depending on the theory) of the works attributed to him in a book called Interred with their bones. I LOVE the book, read it a few years ago and still think about it. Ironically, the sequel was God awful and I couldn’t even finish it. Many people, usually called “Oxfordians” believe the actual author was the Earl of Oxford. Either way, Chasing Shakespeares compounds upon this notion that Shakespeare may not be the glover’s son from Stratford who was an essential nobody, wrote the greatest things ever produced in the English language, and then died.

Chasing Shakespeares follows Joe, his friend Mary Cat who leaves graduate school to pursue the convent, and Joe’s new friend Posy, a very wealthy Harvard student, who are all obsessed with Shakespeare.  Joe was given free reign over the (fictional) Kellogg collection, which is a collection of Shakespearian things collected over a lifetime by a Shakespeare horder. In it, he finds a letter he thinks is authentic, leading credence to the theory that Shakespeare was actually Edward de Vere, a little known noble connected to the Earl of Oxford. Posy and Joe go to London to pursue leads and get the letter authenticated.
The ending was surprising; it was startlingly vague. I read the afterward in which the author stated she wanted the book to be less about finding out who Shakespeare was and more about pursuing the imagination of researchers. Joe and Posy are grad students, who imagine a different way of thinking and pursue their thoughts relentlessly.  It worked for the book. My single legit complaint was that the author is female (Sarah Smith), and does not write men well. At all. Until it was specifically addressed, I thought Joe was female.
Otherwise, I’m always up for a good literary book about literary things.