Okay, I kind of hated this book... but I also kind of loved it? It's a strange contradiction to hold. On one hand, it's arguably the most boring book I've ever finished. People sit in rooms... and then they talk in those rooms... and that's pretty much the extent of the action? Don't ask me for a detailed plot summary because honestly, I'm still not entirely sure anything actually happened.

But then there's the prose itself... and my god, Jane Austen is simply unmatched. Her writing is dense in the best possible way, layered and perfect and so achingly beautiful that the linguistic divide just melts away. She can write circles around anyone, turning the most mundane drawing room conversation into high art. It's a maddening combination. I respect the absolute hell out of her craft... even if the experience of reading it occasionally made my eyes cross. If you want a masterclass in sentence construction, read this. If you want something riveting to actually happen... maybe look elsewhere. For me, it lands squarely in the middle, a book I admire far more than I actually enjoyed.