When Jane Austen abandoned writing her novel called The Watsons she did so after just five chapters, and in Emma Watson Joan Aiken finishes off the task, or that’s what I thought, but in reality this book contains no writing from Jane Austen at all. Joan Aiken just takes up the tale from where Austen left off, it’s not exactly a success in my opinion.

I suppose it depends what you’re looking for, I expected the book to be written in Jane Austen’s style but it really wasn’t, and as it went on it became more like something written by Georgette Heyer, with less of her style and wit. Otherwise it was quite entertaining, and maybe I’m being unfair, it might just be too difficult to get into the Austen mode, but it did seem to me that really no effort was put into it. There’s nothing of Austen – it’s all Aiken, goes into topics which Austen would not have and, although I like Aiken’s writing in general, this was a disappointment.