I love Jane Austen! Some of my consistent re-reads as a teenAger were her Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. Along with Georgette Heyer, she remains only of the few authors from my early reading years that I love going back to, more recently in retellings. Which is exactly the reason why I picked up Elizabeth Gilliland’s What Happened on Box Hill, the first in the Austen University Mystery series. I loved this book and am excited to share it with you today. 🙂 Let’s take a look at the synopsis and content notes first:
What would happen if you combined all of Jane Austen’s characters into one modern-day novel?
Murder, of course.
When Caty Morland’s roommate, Isabella, falls to her death on Initiation night, Austen University is quick to cover up the scandal and call it a tragic accident. But avid true-crime lover Caty remains convinced that Isabella didn’t fall; she was murdered. With the help of Pi Kappa Sigma President Emma Woodhouse, Caty organizes a dinner party with the most likely suspects, including familiar faces such as Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, Knightley, and Marianne Dashwood. The theme of the night is murder, and Caty has three courses to find out what happened to Isabella–and to try to keep the killer from striking again.
Content Notes: Death, loss of a loved one.
Thoughts on What Happened on Box Hill
Box Hill was an important place in Jane Austen’s Emma so it made sense to see many familiar names from the Emma cast. What I found refreshing was that Emma was the main character. Caty Morland, the heroine from Northanger Abbey (which I don’t have much memory of sadly) took the lead in this book. I loved the detective/crime angle with which Elizbeth approached the Jane Austen characters. Caty will always be one of my favorite detectives, though she still has a long way to go before she can make a living from doing that. Her diligence in collecting information, sneaking into rooms and turning to lessons other detectives have shared in the podcast she follows was a lot of fun to read.
The Plot
Isabella had been her best friend. However, her possessiveness and single-mindedness had created a rift between the two. When Isabella has an accident, and sadly passes away, during a sorority party on Box Hill, Caty already has some regrets on how the two had been by the end. Her sleuthing senses tell her that this was no accident. Instead, a murder has taken place and she must find out why. She starts talking to people who know Isabella and uncovers a number of possible leads. Working with Emma, she hosts a dinner party where she reveals her suspicions and tries to find the murderer of her once best friend.
The Format
I love the format of What Happened on Box Hill! Going back and forth in time while at the same time annotated with Caty’s notes, it is an engaging read and like Caty, I felt like I was on a journey to uncover the secret behind my best friend’s murder. But as it happens when we investigate deep into anything, sometimes we find things we didn’t really want to know.
The Setting & Characters
The setting of the book at a university and sorority offers a tense atmosphere. There is an expectation of bickering and back-stabbing and since Isabella was all about indulging, a lot of the claims around her have to be addressed. For the characters that I was familiar with, I felt that I knew them already from Jane Austen’s books and this setting worked so well around them! Emma and Knightley’s relationship felt true to the book. I recognized key scenes from some books and quite enjoyed their retelling in this modern society. Though Pride and Prejudice has Caroline Bingley as a minor antagonist, I felt that this version of her is exactly who she would have been if she had been more outspoken. There were others like John Trope that elicited a reaction from me. More on that in the interview.
The World Building
The sorority and university setting also allowed certain traits of the characters to be highlighted and I felt this for Knightley and Darcy in particular. As a Southern and modern retelling of Jane Austen, there were two main differences from the originals. The first was in terms of diversity – though the characters shared names and history from Austen’s originals, ethnicity and culture wise, they were more true to the modern times. I asked Elizabeth about this and she said she wanted to be true to the Southern community in representation. This got us chatting about how adaptable Jane Austen really is! Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Bride and Prejudice (the Bollywood version) are two of my favorites and I honestly need to find more, so if you know of others, tell me in the comments.
Elizabeth also took this opportunity to share feminist views that the characters would possess in this day and age and I enjoyed how that affected the investigation of murder.
Overall, What Happened on Box Hill is a fun read! I read it in two sittings and inspite of leaving it for a few weeks since life was crazy, I was easily able to pick it back up and finish. 😀 If you enjoy Jane Austen do check this out!
Thanks for reading my review. In collaboration with Elizabeth, you can read an excerpt from the book here. Stay tuned for our interview, coming out on April 10th.
Will you pick up this book?
Find this book on Goodreads, Storygraph, IndieStoryGeek and Amazon.
Many thanks to the author for providing me a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Cover Photo on Unsplash
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