Elizabeth Von Armin’s ‘The Enchanted April’ follows four women who opt to leave their husbands and life in London for a month and rent a medieval castle in Italy. It is a book of female empowerment and agency as they split from patriarchal structures to pave their own way, and is set in such a vivid location full of beautiful descriptions of such. Each of the four women have so much life and character and are each distinct and recognisable, which I find is more often not the case in books of this period and genre, hence identifiable and lovable characters is certainly a pro. The characters do however falter a little when it comes to Lottie Wilkins, the one of the four who is the closest to the definitive protagonist, though all of she, Rose, Lady Caroline and Mrs Fisher have pretty equal weight, as despite her liberating actions that first defined her character she is quite whiny and ultimately

very quickly falls back into obliging to patriarchal systems, quickly dragging the other women to this conclusion and even determining it a correct conclusion and better the way it was

, which subverts the message of the opening of the novel which I believed would be the dominant one throughout. 

I do also give bonus points because this was narrated by Wanda Mccaddon (who I fell in love with the narration of when I read Emma), and her narration is simply brilliant!