As a modern day retelling of Persuasion by Jane Austen; I thought By the Book was a cute, easy to read story. I enjoyed the writing style and thought the pacing was perfect for the genre.
If it wasn’t compared to Persuasion I probably would have rated it 5 stars. Going into the story I had high expectations though, because I LOVE Austen, and it just didn’t meet them.

By the Book is a delightful read. I didn't want it to end. The author has a realistic grasp on being a college instructor, the publish or perish dilemma, and dealing with a personal life. All of the characters are very believable and flow well together. My favorite character was Larry since he was terrific but flawed, but also because I had a colleague named Larry who was very special to me as this one is to Anne. It's a pleasure to read a book about people who love and cherish books.

I was originally drawn to the book because it was described as a modernized adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion, which is one of my favorite books. Admittedly, it was not as good as Persuasion, but it would be hard to match or top such a classic.

When I separate By the Book from the comparison to Persuasion, I enjoyed it a lot and thought the characters were well developed. This is a great vacation read, entertaining and quick, albeit fairly predictable.

This is a delightful, fast-moving, highly readable romantic novel. If you love books, libraries, reading 19th century novels, or just want an engaging story that involves boyfriends from the past, love triangles, and interesting secondary characters, this will be right up your alley!

Anne is an English Professor trying to earn tenure. She teaches about the works of female authors, including Jane Austen. Her love of literature transcends to her students. She is able to teach so that students understand a difficult subject. She loves her job. With her job comes great responsibility. To gain tenure she has to have a book written and going into publication before deadline.
Meanwhile her new school President is her old fiance from 10 years previous. It is not an amicable breakup, so there is tension.
A quaint read. Interesting. Great characters. Loved Larry!
5 Stars

A modern retelling of Austen’s Persuasion. I enjoyed how the author stayed true to the original but made it her own. Retellings are hard because readers expect to read the familiar, but for a retelling to work it has to capture the modern world and its dilemmas in life, relationships, and love.

The characters of Larry and Anne were complicated and loveable. I wish Adam had a little more depth, but he served the story purpose. Rick was supposed to be unlikeable and he certainly was, the reader was never supposed to root for him and the author did a nice job of showing why Anne could fall for him, if he was even close to the person he pretended to be.

All in all I loved this book. It was a perfect read in front of the fire on a snowy and cold day.

3.5 stars
I love classic's retellings and I love second chance romance so as soon as I read the blurb I was interested in this book. By the Book is a modern retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion. It's charming and lighthearted. The writing style is engrossing, the pacing is great, and the characters are very likeable (except Rick). Our main characters, Anne and Adam, went to college together and even got engaged. But something happened around their graduation and they broke up. A decade later Anne is teaching English in college in California when Adam comes back into her life as the new President of the college and her new boss. They are drawn to each other despite past hurts.

One thing that left me disappointed is how little time Anne and Adam spend together. What I love to see in second chance romance is the couple reconnecting, working on their relationship and resolving their issues. I missed it in this book. Anne and Adam have very few scenes or dialogue together and don't have many interactions until very late in the book. For most of the book Anne is dating Rick who is a real jerk. I wanted a lot less of Rick and a lot more of Adam. I wanted to love By the Book and even though I did enjoy it, I wasn't entirely satisfied.

This is a funny and sassy re-telling of jane Austen's Persuasion. It was clever to have it set on a college campus with the protagonist trying to write a book and get tenure. The plot moves right along with a predictable ending, but a fun read and a sweet romantic ending.

By the Book is immensely engaging and captivating. Initially you are drawn into the foundation of the story: college life from a professor’s perspective coupled with her own reflecting milieu. Anne states that at the start of the new school year, it is the day school started and the day finals began. So, too, is it for Anne’s journey through the semester. Being a professor does not grant her immunity from the same emotions or experiences as the students: new loves, missteps and failures to understand. This is especially true when she learns the new college president is her former fiancé. They long ago lost touch after the break up.
The relationship of Adam and Anne is not the only one happening. Anne’s best friend and associate meets actor Jack and begins a covert relationship. Anne meets the college author in residence and their relationship is fraught with trouble and general messiness. Through it all, you see how Anne finally takes the reins of her life and forges through to the end of the semester.

I am a huge Jane Austen fan and love to read retellings of her books so I was thrilled to get a chance to read this one. I loved the college setting, loved Anne, and enjoyed the story. I did feel like the book had too much going on though with the distraction of another romance for Anne with a visiting writer and the whole story with her best friend Larry and his romantic problems. While I liked Larry, I really could have done without his story line. I also had a problem with the ending. Anne and Adam do not have much interaction throughout the book until the very end, it all seemed a bit rushed. While it wasn't the perfect retelling of Austen's classic, I did still enjoy it.

sweet and simple romance. I really enjoyed it! It was fun and heartwarming. I usually read suspense or fantasy romance so this was a good break away for me! Truly was a good read.

An overall great read. Very different . I feel the ending came too quick. .Very cute and good though overall.

Funny, smart, and full of heart, this modern ode to Jane Austen’s classic explores what happens when we run into the demons of our past...and when they turn out not to be so bad, after all.

A old romance becomes part of current life at a small liberal arts college

Retellings are difficult. For one thing, fans of the original already know the story, so the plot arc is predictable. A lot of innovation is required to get over that obstacle. In addition, the new author has to deal with the love for and loyalty of fans to the original author - another large impediment. But it’s not impossible, and there have been numerous attempts to retell favorite books by both Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen. This book purports to be a retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion.

Persuasion told the story of Anne Elliot, a young unmarried woman of 27. She had been engaged to Navy Captain Frederick Wentworth seven years before, but Anne was persuaded to break off the engagement for various reasons having nothing to do with love. In the original book, after seven years she encounters Wentworth again, who is dismayed to find Anne is courting someone else. After overcoming pride and prejudice however, the two manage to get together once again.

This protagonist of this modern version by Sonneborn is Anne Corey, a 32-year-old English professor struggling to get tenure at a small liberal arts school named Fairfax (of course), in California. As the book begins, Anne finds out, via her BFF colleague Larry, that her first love and ex-fiancé from ten years ago, Adam Martinez, is about to be installed as the college’s new president.

Anne teaches a course called “Introduction to the Nineteenth-Century British Novel,” in which students are encouraged to engage in critical analysis of the books by Austen and Brontë, inter alia. Unfortunately, Anne herself performs no such critical analysis, and is oblivious to the fact that her own life is coming to resemble the plot of Persuasion, her favorite book that she has purportedly read countless times.

Anne is also trying to finish a book of her own - also about nineteenth-century women writers - in order to quality for tenure. Maybe her lack of insight comes through in her manuscript. Publisher after publisher turns it down, as we learn from rejection emails intermixed throughout the text.

Anne keeps running into Adam, and through her reminiscing about him, we find out he was pretty much perfect back when they were engaged, and he is pretty much perfect now - in fact, much more so than is realistic. But in any event, Anne refuses to see it, and lets herself get swept away by new visiting professor and “writer-in-residence” Richard Chasen, who is a best-selling author. But that isn’t all. As Anne described him: “He didn’t look like a writer. He looked like a mountain climber, or an Australian movie star, or a Nautica model.” And best of all, he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and acted interested in Anne.

The story also is interspersed with texts between Anne and Larry. Larry is an over-the-top caricature of a gay man, who preens, pouts, whines, squeals, dresses ostentatiously, gets crushes on attractive men, and in general does everything imaginable to embody a stereotypical image. Larry is working on a new relationship also, and so Anne and Larry both cheer each other on and commiserate with one another, as required.

But of course we all know how it will turn out for Anne, at least if we have read Persuasion or seen the movie. The ending is rushed however, with the author of this book much less convincing than was Jane Austen about the evolution of the protagonists’ feelings.

In fact, there is much in this modern book that just doesn’t hold up well in comparison to the original. For example, in Persuasion, Anne Elliot breaks off her impending marriage to Wentworth in part for economic reasons, which was a very real concern in Regency England. Anne Corey in this book has no such realistic excuse, which diminishes her appeal as a character. The original Anne is also less of a jerk to Wentworth than Anne Corey is to Adam (which, however, does nothing to lessen his feelings). When Anne finally does turn to Adam, it is more because Rick dumps her than because she comes to learn about letting go of pride and discarding prejudice.

The side plot about Larry was borderline offensive, and the purpose of his behavior or the relationship he sort of had didn’t make much sense to me.

Finally, the author passed up a great opportunity to add all sorts of “meta” moments into the story by getting more use out of the fact that Anne Corey was teaching a course on Austen.

Evaluation: Generally I love retellings, and while this author makes a good effort, I think the book needed more polish. I liked it; I just felt it could have been better for the reasons elucidated above.

By the Book kept my interest from beginning to end. I loved the larger than life characters and found myself laughing many times as I read. I look forward to reading more by Ms. Sonneborn.

An overall great read. Very different and relatable. Although I feel that the ending came too quick. Oh I’m still in love torn you but let’s get married. Very cute and good though overall.

I found By the Book to be an endearing read. While I have never read Persuasion by Jane Austen, I still fell in love with the characters and the story in this modern-day retelling. I didn't mind the fact that the story was fairly predictable, and I loved learning about Anne's life-especially the work and details it took for her to publish her own book.

I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

Just like Anne Corey, Persuasion is my favorite book. Also, I'm currently working on my own modern adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, so this book hit the mark with me. Adam Martinez is hot in the way men you imagine in your head always are and Anne was so relatable. My favorite character was by far Larry; I need to add a gay best friend to one of my books sometime. I zoomed through this book. It was readable and heart-warming and everything you want a book like this to be. I couldn't put it down. I kind of want to read it again already. I definitely recommend it!