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!
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