I definitely think this is closer to a 3.5/3.75 but Goodreads clearly doesn't like half measures, so here we are.

'Godmersham Park' felt like easy reading. I love the time period, I LOVE stuff happening in stately homes and the writing was compelling enough to make me keep turning the pages. I also immediately added Hornby's next historical novel to my TBR and considering my interest with Jane Austen, there was little doubt that I wouldn't enjoy this book. And yet I ended it feeling a little bit...odd. Satisfied, certainly, that I'd read a good book and enjoyed the process, but wondering whether there was more that could be told. And also, wondering where some plot threads ended up when they clearly weren't resolved within the book.

In its pursuit of historical replication, the book's dedication to gentility can become rather monotonous. Indeed, I had a distinct sense of deja vu through Acts 2 and 3 as the same points were laboured over, the same problems appearing and being solved in a matter of minutes. The world itself is delightful: if you've exhausted yourself of Austen's small canon, 'Godmersham Park' will scratch that itch remarkably well.

I found Anne an irregular character. At one moment, she's decrying men and pushing a frontier of an individual life doing as she pleased, and the next she was berating herself for stupidity and silliness that she had completely overblown in her own head, which seemed entirely out of sorts. I'm not sure her character changes much at all across 400+ pages. I was also bewildered as to why Anne ends up in the final pages the way she does - it all seemed to be done in metaphors and minute glances that never quite clarified why things go the way they do but for trying to correctly replicate history.

Also, and it's a very minor thing, but so many characters spoke with many words in Italics, which often made it sound sarcastic or cruel when that might not have been the author's intention?

Nevertheless, I'll keep reading. I enjoyed it!