Kate Shaw may be husbandless and turning 40, but she has a fantastic writing career, great friends, and a love of all things Jane Austen. However, when the economy turns bad not only does she lose her job but after her grandmother dies, a financial disaster leads to the selling of her family home. Both Kate and her mom move in with Kate’s sister while Kate tries to figures out what she’s going to do now that she is unemployed and homeless. But her luck seems to change when she is presented with a freelance opportunity to write an article questioning whether the works of Jane Austen hold up as a guide to making a good marriage and whether it’s better to marry for love or money. Kate begins to write the article, not really believing in this idea of marrying for money but she soon starts to wonder if the answers to all her and her family’s problems could be solved if she could find a rich man to marry.
Can Kate become a golddigger to save her family?
First off, can I just say a 40-year old heroine? Yes, please. This book was lighthearted and fun. I enjoyed reading about an older heroine with problems I could relate to.
This book is filled with Jane Austen references (I don’t think I caught them all, but I’m sure they are there). It is clearly a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice with Kate in the Elizabeth Bennett role so you kind of already know the arc of the story.
Although I liked Kate, I did find her to be annoying at times. She is described as tall, thin, beautiful (everyone keeps commenting that she looks 30 and are shocked when she tells them she’s 40), she had this awesome job in fashion, everyone thinks she super rich, but she sets her marrying sights on practically the first guy she meets because he’s attractive and mega-wealthy but he also has a girlfriend that she has to lure him away from. It just seemed like there would be so much work involved when she had all these other things going for her and I kept wondering why she didn’t just find someone who was unattached.
I also thought Kate was super hypocritical because she got mad at her mom for gambling all her money away and going into super amounts of debt (which caused them to lose the house) with the idea that once she won the lottery or jackpot she would be rich so it wouldn’t matter. But Kate was doing the exact same thing – spending all her money on plane trips and clothes chasing after this guy with the notion that once they got married she would be rich so it wouldn’t matter.
Some of the things the characters do are also a bit outrageous. Kate is 40 and yet she drinks like she’s just discovered alcohol. The amount of alcohol that she and her rich friends consume is crazy. Maybe it’s a rich person thing, I don’t know, but I would not be able to keep up with all the alcohol consumption.
Despite the few times I wanted to shake Kate and ask her what she was doing, I thought this was a fun and lively novel. I enjoyed all the fashion and trips in private airplanes. The ending was a bit predictable but that’s okay – aren’t all romance endings predictable?
I read this book in one sitting.
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