Hi, my name is Ellie Dashwood.
And today we'll be going over three novels you may love if you liked
Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.
Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen's lesser known works.
And in fact, it's quite a deviation from her other books like Pride and
Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.
It's essentially Jane Austen meets murder mystery.
Or was there a murder?
This story follows young Catherine Morland, who is about
17/18 years old in the story.
Catherine Morland is a very young and naive girl who loves Gothic romances.
Now during Jane Austen's time, and these books were very popular
and they were essentially the 1800 version of, well, Twilight.
They had ghosts, ghouls, damsels in distress, over the top,
like, "Oh, I love you" romances.
And Catherine Morland eats them up in this book.
Which feeds her already extremely vivid imagination.
So while she is in Bath, she makes a lot of friends, both good and bad.
Including Henry Tilney, who is a very dashing young man.
And of course, sparks her interest immediately.
He invites her to stay with them at their country house called Northanger Abbey.
And that's where the book gets its title.
And it's this old Gothic looking Abbey that sparks her imagination to think,
"Oh, like all these romance novels.
I was reading with all these like ghost and ghouls and murders and mysteries
are happening here at Northanger Abbey."
And so this book is really kind of like how she lets her imagination run wild
and gets her in a little bit of trouble.
I also really love this book because it delves into friendship.
And what is a true friend versus a false friend.
It delves into reality.
Like what is a novel?
And how is that different from reality?
Some of the best quotes from Jane Austen about novels comes from
this book and they're actually from Henry Tilney in the book.
And it's just really great.
And it's sort of like the Jane Austen mystery novel, which is great.
And she should write more mystery novels because this one's pretty good.
And if you've never read this book, you may have seen the movie
or if you've read the book, but not seeing the movie you should.
It's from the early two thousands, I think.
And it started at JJ Field and Felicity Jones.
And I love this adaptation of Northanger Abbey.
It's incredibly done.
It catches the spirit of the book very, very well.
And, of course, it has JJ Field in it, and he's super cute.
So you should go watch it.
And I also, I mean, JJ Field has like one of the best voices ever, and it's
not just as awesome British accident.
I mean, I just love his voice.
And he's just cute.
So go watch your Northanger Abbey.
If you have not already.
So if you like Northanger Abbey or the idea of Jane Austen meets murder
mystery, I would suggest that Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale.
Now Midnight in Austenland is the sequel to Austenland.
I think it's debatable, whether you need to read the first Austenland book
to really appreciate this one because Austenland and Midnight in Austenland have
two completely different main characters.
The only reason this is a sequel is it's this other character
also goes and visits Austenland.
Which is a sort of tourist attraction experience where rich women can
go and pay to live for a couple of weeks in this old Regency house and
dress up in empire waisted of gowns.
And they also have actors they're playing dashing, suitors, and pretending
to sort of play out their own Jane Austen romance while they're there.
And it's supposed to be a very, sort of nice and controlled atmosphere where they
drink tea and they go for walks in the park and it's all very innocent and fun.
However, in the sequel Midnight in Austenland, it follows the
main character Charlotte Kinder.
Who is a 30 something recently divorced woman whose kids are
going to go stay with their father and his new wife for the summer.
And so she doesn't really know what she's going to do with
herself while they're gone.
And so having just finished reading all of Jane Austen's work, she finds out about
Austenland and decides to go visit there.
And she was looking for just a nice escape.
The only problem is she's pretty sure she saw a dead body somewhere in Austenland.
Who would have thought that's going to happen?
And so the rest of the book is sort of dealing with, did she see a dead body?
Is she just trying to avoid dealing with all her issues?
And it's just a really great, like Northanger Abbey mystery
meets Jane Austen era.
And of course it has a really, really sweet romance and I absolutely love it.
And it got a little bit of Mansfield Park in this book here too.
But I would definitely suggest reading this.
And Shannon Hale is a great author.
She writes a lot of young adult novels.
You maybe familiar with stuff like Princess Academy and Goose
Girl, and a lot of other young adult novels that I like too.
She's a great author.
I also really liked this novel because it deals with other themes such as
fear and, you know, being too nice versus standing up for yourself.
And even though I'm not anywhere near being a 30 something divorced woman
with kids, I still really felt like I identified with the character even
more in Midnight in Austenland than I did in the original Austenland.
In the original Austenland, the girl kept being like, I'm so embarrassed
by my, you know, love of Jane Austen.
And in this one, she doesn't have that.
Cause I'm like, "I'm not embarrassed to my love of Jane Austen.
Everyone should love Jane Austen.
What is wrong with you if don't?"
You know.
But, so that's why I liked this one.
And also if you've seen Austenland the movie, but you haven't read
Austenland the book, I suggest reading the book because the book is
way, way different from the movie.
So the second book I would recommend if you like Northanger Abbey or Jane
Austen meets Murder Mystery, would be The Secret of Pembroke Park by Julie Klassen.
Now this is a very, very old, used copy.
And honestly, it's from the library and that's why it looks like this.
But if you ignore how wrinkled it looks, which was not my fault, it was the
library, but it was really, really good.
And I liked it because it wasn't just a romance novel.
As I first started reading it, I'm like, "I don't like romance novels
where their whole point is romance."
And I could do a whole other video on what is a romance novel, what
is not a romance novel, because as contrary to what people say, Pride
and Prejudice is not a romance novel.
But back to the point of this book, this follows a young woman named Abigail
Foster and she lives in Regency England.
And if you don't know what Regency England, go check out my Dashie Notes
Episode four on"What is Regency England."
And pretty much what happens is her family loses their wealth.
But an unknown, rich relative says, "Hey, I have this old Manor house.
Come move into it and keep it up for us for awhile."
And so they do.
But once they get there, they discovered not all is as it seems.
There's all this talk of murder and secret treasures and people sort of
searching the house for the secret treasure and the whole backstory to it.
And of course all the little surrounding villagers get really weird about stuff.
And she's like, what's happening here.
So of course there is romance in this book and I really loved it.
It's a very good clean romance book too.
But it also has to deal with her figuring out what is the secret of this house?
Why is everything so weird?
And once again, a very Northanger Abbey.
Julie Klassen writes a lot of books that are sort of romance is set in this era.
So if you are interested in that, you should go check out her book.
This is the only one I've read from her so far, but I really liked it.
And it had good character development and everything.
So check this out.
So the third book I would recommend if you like Northanger Abbey is "And
Only to Deceive" by Tasha Alexander.
This is actually the first book of a series where this main
character investigates different murders and mysteries in each book.
The very first book we get to meet her as Lady Emily Ashton, who's the very
young, very, very wealthy widow in Victorian England, of a count or actually
he's a viscount, who's recently died.
And she's just coming out of Victorian mourning, which is one of the wonderful
things about this book I love is it makes Victorian England and its manners and its
culture seems so real and so relevant.
You can almost imagine living there.
And so she does a wonderful job of world building.
The main character Lady Emily Ashton is very strong and independent woman.
But at the same time, she still loves the clothes and going to balls,
which I love because while being a strong, independent woman is great.
You also need to go to the balls.
And that's where you going to meet all the really cute
guys, as she does in this book.
Well, actually she meets them in places other than balls, but you should
still always go waltzing in the books.
Anyway, well, it does have romance.
A lot of it is really mystery based and it's also a very self-development book.
I mean, characters developing a lot and coming to realize that she
just doesn't have to be a society lady, but she can have academic
interests and other things like that.
But it really does a great job of combining the whole murder
mystery with the very, you know, awesomeness of Victorian England.
And I love it.
And you should check it out.
I wish they would make a movie of this series.
Like the BBC should seriously make like a mini series or like
a TV show based on these books.
If you know anybody who like runs the BBC, you should tell them this idea.
It'd be brilliant.
So that has been my three book recommendations today, or if
you loved Northanger Abby.
And I hope you will check one of them out, if not all of them and come back
and watch my other videos, you can also find me on Twitter @elliedashie,
also on Facebook, instagram.
I love Instagram.
I think that's my favorite social network.
So if you're going to follow me anywhere, I go follow me on
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I pin a lot of Jane Austen pictures.
So if you love Jane Austen pictures, go follow me on Pinterest.
We'll be great friends.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this video and had an awesome day.