My eyebrows are dangling from the ceiling.” For all of her independence and superpowers, Juliette never moves beyond her role as a pawn in someone else’s schemes. Overreliance on metaphor to express Juliette’s jaw-dropping surprise wears thin: “My mouth is sitting on my kneecaps. Fast-paced action scenes convey imminent danger vividly, but there’s little sense of a broader world here.

The ending falls flat as the plot devolves into comic-book territory. But Adam belongs to a resistance movement he helps Juliette escape to their stronghold, where she finds that she’s not the only one with superhuman abilities. Unfortunately, he’s a soldier under orders from Warner, a power-hungry 19-year-old. Adam, it turns out, is immune to her deadly touch. After months of isolation, her captors suddenly give her a cellmate-Adam, a drop-dead gorgeous guy. Juliette’s journal holds her tortured thoughts in an attempt to repress memories of the horrific act that landed her in a cell. Juliette was torn from her home and thrown into an asylum by The Reestablishment, a militaristic regime in control since an environmental catastrophe left society in ruins. It’s considerably more aristocratic and less nuanced than Austen’s middle-class world, but Austenites-especially those whose favorite scenes involve shopping and balls-won’t mind.Ī dystopic thriller joins the crowded shelves but doesn't distinguish itself. Doyle’s gift, on display in earlier historical fantasies ( Bewitching Season, 2008, etc.), lies in creating vivid female characters and the bonds between them. Peregrine’s rather dull, an amalgam of Austen heroes (Darcy with a dash of Captain Wentworth).

Prejudice upsets Sophie, but status and wealth shield her from disability’s harsher consequences. At ball after ball, befriended by Peregrine’s impetuous cousin Parthenope, Sophie witnesses “accidents” to War Office leaders tasked with defeating Napoleon, recently escaped from Elba. Though her own magic’s been unreliable since her illness, Sophie recognizes its use-this was no accident. (Sophie’s ditzy aunts have dreadful views on attire.) At her first ball, Sophie draws the attentions of handsome Peregrine, Lord Woodbridge, who rescues her father from a falling statue. At least she’s smartly clad for her first London season, thanks to a family friend’s intervention. The polio that killed her magic-working mother and sister left Lady Sophie nervous and self-conscious about her withered leg. Though it bucks the fan-fiction trend of making Jane Austen a character (often of the undead variety), this cheery Regency fantasy qualifies as major homage.

Bewitching Season by Marissa Doyle