Ok, first of all I just want to make a little disclaimer. When I started reading this book I was feeling very confused, I mean how could this be a Jane Austen's book? But I did my research. I know she was very young and these stories are a parody of romantic novels and she wrote these to entertain her family so she never meant to release them. I understand this book shows how clever and mature she was for her age, since she was able to observe, analise and criticize the literature of her time. I get that.
Even after knowing all of this I couldn't bring myself to enjoy this book. In fact I was already midway through it and I stopped reading it for about a month because I felt so unmotivated to read. Yesterday I decided it was enough and I restarted the whole book and finished it in almost two hours and a half and now it feels like it wasn't that bad but oh well.
So this book contains two main stories and a few other smaller ones and all of them are written in the epistolary form. The first one, "Love and Freindship", is the biggest one and it was the one I disliked the most. The never ending fainting spells, the idea that girls must always disagree with their parents choices of fiancés even if they like them, the judgmental characters who praise "sensibility" above everything, not to mention how the story was overall irrealistic, are just some of the reasons why I just could bear it. I really tried to enjoy the satire, but I just couldn't. Maybe I'm a way too serious person for this kind of books.
The second story though, "Three Sisters", was more interesting, I mean it wasn't great, but I was enjoying it. Too bad Jane Austen never finished it, now I'm left alone with my thoughts and all the possibilities of what could have happened.
Last, but not least, the small letters at the end tell nice little stories. They are not big enough to have developed plots but they give a nice insight of how society was back then.
Even though the first story was awful, the rest of the book made it a little bit better. Nevertheless, I am conscious that this book doesn't reflect the rest of the author's novels and I'm still very excited to put my hands on some other Jane Austen's masterpieces.