Jane and the Final Mystery by Stephanie Barron is book number 15 in the series, but is a standalone novel. The story begins in March of 1817 when Jane Austen’s health is declining. Her nephew, Edward, and Jane travel to Winchester College to help the solve the mystery of Arthur Pendergast’s death. Jane’s dear friend, Elizabeth, is very upset that her son has been accused of the murder.

I was captivated with Jane the Final Mystery from the first page. This delightful mystery is filled with wonderful aspects of the time period. It is carefully researched and allows you to walk with Jane Austen through her final months. The author’s attention to details made this fascinating, the mystery kept me wondering, and learning the story of Winchester College was intriguing. I enjoyed the footnotes that referenced Jane’s letters, the historical notes of the area, and historical biographies.

I enjoyed unraveling the mystery with Jane, and the story had a very satisfying ending. The author has the gift of bringing you along with the other characters. As a huge Jane Austen fan, I felt like I was getting inside information on her books, life, and family. I highly recommend Jane and the Final Mystery by Stephanie Baron. I can guarantee you will thoroughly enjoy your time visiting with Jane.

I was given a copy by the publisher and not require to write a positive review.

Stephanie Barron’s writing from Jane Austen’s perspective was well done. The manner in which she and the characters spoke make you feel like you are part of the story. I enjoyed reading the footnotes that the author provided. It helped to give details about Jane Austen’s real life and was very interesting.

I enjoyed the mystery, but I felt the story was a bit too long. If you enjoy mysteries, historical fiction, or are an Austen fan you’ll like reading this story. This was the first book I have read in the series. It can be read as a standalone since I didn’t feel that I had missed any details that were connected to this case.

I received a copy of the book through Austenprose as well as NetGalley. I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions are my own.

I love Jane Austen styled books, this is the second book in this series of 14 that I have read —even though it is the last book in he series it is able to be read as stand alone but having some knowledge of Jane Austen helps. The authors prose and writing is quite good and mimics Jane Austens eras style of writing. The story was a slow start for me but the writer does a good job with the historical aspect of Jane and her illness and about 40% in — the murder mystery aspects starts— This is when it really started to get more interesting and intense for me. I really enjoyed this book - especially Jane’s musings and internal thoughts as well as the deductive investigative mind she has in the book- The historical information in the afterward was really interesting -recommended !


Thank-you to Netgalley and the SoHo Press for this ARC , this is my honest review.

I was very surprised to see that there was going to be one last book in this series because the previous one was a good, satisfying ending. But as a long-time fan, I had to see what was going to happen next.

One of the strengths with this series has been the author's ability to channel Jane Austen's voice and the complete plausibility of Austen's keen skills of observation making her suited to solving mysteries. This last book makes a good coda to the series by referencing characters from the first book and making a return to a courtroom setting. Being set just before her death, I feared that we may lose something in her ability to pursue the solution, but there was no issue there. This book will appeal to fans of the series and British mysteries.

While there was something satisfying about going back to the start for this final volume, I did feel like I wanted more of a pay-off ending. There is nothing wrong with this book, but in my head-canon, this can be switched in order with Jane and the Year Without a Summer.

It's hard to believe this is the end for Stephanie Barron's excellent Jane Austen mystery series.
In the spring of 1817, Jane's health is failing, despite the best efforts of physicians and her family. Working sporadically on her latest manuscript, Jane is alarmed to hear from her nephew Edward about the accusations of murder lodged against her friend Elizabeth's son William, a student at Winchester College. Jane travels with Edward to see her friend, and ascertain if anything can be done to save the young man before it's too late for both of them.

A fitting end to the series, "Jane and the Final Mystery" is intricately plotted and brings the series to a satisfying conclusion.

In Barron’s JA Mystery series it is the murder mystery genre that serves as model for the 15 novels, providing structure and storylines, themes of historical detection and murder. The vocabulary, to some extent, and the aphorisms borrowed from Austen are used as touchstones in these mysteries. Barron’s initial idea of the literary deceit/device was clever, timely, and unique in 1996: adopting the first person POV of an amateur detective, our early 19th-century Jane Austen, who is here writing as a diarist. The “editor” of these 15 mysteries chimes in with footnotes and afterwords, supplementing these unearthed journals, and the historical minutiae meant to inform today’s readers. All this of course is the “hook” working for the series as it continued across two and a half decades, drawing in the curious contemporary reader. Each mystery sets a particular time in Austen’s life and the place where she was living or visiting, aligning biographical and fictional characters, while portraying Austen family members and their connections to Jane. The research and clever plot ideas in the entire series were drawn from biographical details of the Austen family, greatly embroidered.
Any woman of her gentry class would have been restricted in her movements and freedom within society. These restrictions of Regency England are for the most part suspended for the sake of the action, with Jane as protagonist. In this last installment (Jane and the Final Mystery) she is accompanied by her nephew (of Memoir fame), eighteen-year-old James Edward, largely because she is very ill in the last few months of her life. The choice of subject, a boy’s school at Winchester, in particular its harsh treatment and hazing among boys, is an odd one although a fact of life for boys sent to school, but it provides the grist for a murder or “self-murder” (suicide) theme that Jane undertakes to solve at the request of James Edward. Before she leaves her home at Chawton one last time for Winchester where she died, she somehow manages to solve the murder, which takes up the social tropes of inheritance and primogeniture, sans the diction, art, satire, and humor of the real Jane Austen.

Barron wrote in her afterword that she is indebted to the voice of Jane Austen from Deirdre Le Faye’s Jane Austen Letters, 1995. But Austen’s voice developed across her six novels is singular and matchless. No one of course writes as Austen did, then or now.

I'm sorry to see this wonderful series come to an end -- and although I haven't read all of them, I can pretty safely say that this one has got to be among the best. Readers who have been enjoying these for years will be very happy, but it is written so that anyone new to the series could certainly jump right in and start with this, the last book. Witty, low key, and lots of suspense! I look forward to recommending this title.

I've loved reading about a possible Jane Austen life story that this series presents. The accuracy of many of the real events and people is impressive. And I'm sorry this was the last in the series...

I was thrilled and saddened to receive this ARC: thrilled because I have been reading this mystery series for half my lifetime and saddened because it is, as the title suggests, the final installment. The end of the last mystery was so poignant that I was a little hesitant to start this book. Once I read it, however, I found that this book was far less emotional than the one before it. The mystery was intriguing and dark, being an examination of the dark side of English boys' public schools, but both Jane and the narrator were surprisingly detached from her deteriorating health. In a way it made the reading process easier, but I would have liked a bit more heart to those sections. As usual, however, Barron's characterization of Austen and her friends and relations are wonderfully adroit. I will miss this series very much.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. I promote the Jane Austen mysteries every year when my classes read Pride and Prejudice as some of the best writing in the Austen spin-off genre. Stephanie Barron meticulously researches each book for historical accuracy and includes whenever possible actual historical figures to give her writing credence. This book is no exception, which I especially appreciated because this part of Austen's life - the last 16 months- tends to be that with which people are least familiar.

This time Barron connects Jane with Winchester through Elizabeth Bigg and her son William Heathcote, who was attending Winchester College at the time. Accompanied by her "favorite" nephew Edward Austen, Jane visits these friends (and Winchester earlier on the timeline) and finds herself caught up in her final mystery as someone tries to frame young Heathcote for murder. Jane pushes herself with the aid of her nephew to clear Heathcote before he is ruined. In the process, she meets the doctor to whom she will eventually turn for her last attempt at healing. Many of the scenes are set in the famous Winchester Cathedral, and it's a bit eerie to think the Jane praying in the pew will be also buried there in the not-too-distant future.

Barron's description of Austen's demise is painful. We helplessly witness her wasting away as her friends and family do, as she herself does. This is perhaps the strongest writing in Barron's book. We are privy to Austen's trying to be practical, to make peace with her condition, to entertain hopes a bequest of money will make expensive doctors and a life extension possible, to have those hopes dashed and refuse to give in to self-pity or bitterness. She hints that she recognizes the unfairness, but she doesn't waste what's left of her life dwelling on it. Instead, she participates as fully as she can even though she has to rent chairs now to get around rather than walking vigorously like Elizabeth Bennet. It's quietly beautiful and courageous.

We aren't with Austen when she dies. There is an afterward by Barron, but I wish she'd more strongly tied it to the editor's forward she used in the first Austen mystery. If you've loved the other books, you'll love this one. All that's left is to re-read them, and fortunately, there are a lot of Jane Austen mysteries to re-read.

A good, albeit melancholy end to a great series. As always, Jane's character is the highlight of the story, even as modern readers know she is facing her death. Although I figured out the villain relatively early in the book, the motivation was a surprise. I'm sad to see this excellent series end.

My only regret about this, the fourteenth and last book in the series, is that I didn't discover it earlier. In this series, Jane Austen uses her amateur sleuthing ability to solve mysteries. In this book, Jane's nephew's best friend is in trouble. He is accused of murdering the bully in his school. Jane, despite her withering health, intercedes to find the real murderer.

Many period books introduce the reader to the ways of the time. But this book, through the use of dialog and description, actually takes the reader back to the period in which Jane Austen lived and wrote. The plot was well done. Characters were well drawn.

Okay, I lied. My second regret is that this is the last book in the series. But at least I have the solace in knowing that there are the previous thirteen books to read!

After 15 novels in this exemplary series, author Stephanie Barron has finally arrived at a terminus. Jane Austen died in 1817, and that is the year in which we find Jane, working on her new manuscript while suffering through the disease that would shortly kill her - as well as the attention of doctors intent on bleeding her. Even so, this final volume has her summoning the strength to investigate the murder of a senior pupil at an elite boarding school. Suspicion falls upon the son of a dear friend, and Jane soon becomes entangled in the bizarre world of Winchester College as she works to clear his name. The plotting is top rate, but it is the voice of Jane Austen and the carefully calibrated setting of early 19th Century England that stands out. A superlative achievement in historical fiction and a highly satisfying read. Farewell, Jane.

thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC
Stephanie Barron's Jane Austen mystery series has been great from the first book. I'm sure that all fans of these well-written and well-researched books are sad to see and end, but we knew that it was inevitable...
That said, the final mystery doesn't disappoint, and Barron's presentation of Austen rings true. As always, Barron has found a plausible historical tidbit to base her plot on, and involves Jane's nephew James (her eventual biographer) in the story as well.
Jane gets involved with helping an old friend and her son who live in Winchester where the cathedral and its attached school play a big part.
Thanks to Ms. Barron for giving us a bittersweet but necessary end to these books - I would start at the beginning and read them again!
Recommend for fans of Jane Austen, cosy historical mysteries (this is the last of a series, so not particularly standalone)

I have really enjoyed reading this series and am sad that this is the last installment. The author always does an excellent job of capturing the language and feel of the Regency era in the context of a cozy mystery. This last novel is a bit of a bummer as poor Jane reaches the end of her life, but reading this novel definitely gave me more insight into how her final days might have been. The writing is wonderful and the mystery is a solid one for readers to work on solving. I highly recommend this novel and the entire series for those interested in Jane Austen, the Regency era, or just a good mystery. Thank you Stephanie Barron for giving us the gift of more time with Jane through your novels!

I absolutely adore Stephanie Barron's Jane Austen mysteries! I have loved the series from the beginning and this is a great mystery and send off to the series. I would recommend this series for traditional and historical mystery fans alike!