I'm sorry, but the cover is the best part of this book 😭 (the found family fire crew is a far second, but they're nowhere near compelling enough to make up for everything else.)

Hi, my name is Veronica, and I once spent five months reading every modern Jane Austen retelling I could get my hands on, so yeah, I kind of like modern takes on Austen's classic, but I also kind of have a lot of thoughts about them (more so than other books, if you can believe that.)

As your friendly neighborhood Asian American book blogger and Jane Austen retelling enthusiast, I had to pinch myself when I discovered When Give Me a Reason and found a copy in my inbox. Not only was it a modern Austen retelling, it featured an AAPI cast and had gorgeous cover art (shout out to @einlaup), but it was a Persuasion retelling?! I honestly think Persuasion is one of Jane Austen's more underrated books and deserves so much more love, so I'm always on the lookout for more. I also get that it's a hard story to modernize since it features a quiet protagonist and an incredibly slow slow-burn that relies more on second-hand information from other characters than the main characters actually interacting with each other, but here's my thing: if you're going to write an Austen retelling, write an Austen retelling. If you aren't going to try to honor the source material, write your own second chance romance and leave poor Anne Elliot out of it--the girl's been through enough 😩

I'm going to split this review into two parts--reviewing it as a Persuasion retelling and reviewing it as a story in general--because I get that it can be hard to have your merits as an author judged with the specter of Jane Austen's ghost lurking around (though, again, if you're setting out to write an Austen retelling, I feel like you kind of set yourself up for it.) Unfortunately, Give Me a Reason gave me zero reasons to like it on both accounts.

As a Persuasion retelling, Give Me a Reason is incredibly disappointing. I get that a book where the main characters don't interact until chapter 8 (if half-catching the other person's eye and hearing his voice counts as "interacting") might not go over well in the day and age of BookTok, but Jayci Lee doesn't even capture the spirit of the original. Persuasion is a story about regret. It's a story full of angst and longing, yearning and heartache, with a slow-burn so smoldering a snail's pace is faster than the pace of this romance.

Give Me a Reason has none of the subtlety or aguish we find in Persuasion. The original can be agonizing slow (even for the most diehard K-drama fans who've gotten used to (or been resigned to) holding hands being a big deal,) but it fit the story and made the eventual payout all that much more satisfying. Again, I get that you might need to change up the pacing when modernizing Persuasion, but, at their core, Anne and Fredrick are very different characters in Give Me a Reason and their dynamic is completely different from the way Austen portrays it.

In Persuasion, Anne is someone who's so easily persuaded by the opinions of others she ends up letting the love of her life go and now has to deal with 8 years' worth of regret, and Captain Chip-on-his-Shoulder Wentworth is a dork in denial about the lingering resentment Anne's rejection left him with. The two are thrown into the same social circle and suddenly have to deal with the aforementioned feelings of regret/resentment while trying to avoid the other person at all costs and also avoiding the inconvenient fact that they're still in love with the other person.

I can't help but wonder if Jayci Lee and I read the same book because her version of Persuasion seems way more focused on attraction than angst. Give Me a Reason, starts off pretty antagonistically right off the bat--Anne chases after Fredrick, who's curt and rude--and then continues to be an emotional see-saw of alternating (forced) antagonism and attraction (lust). Unlike Wentworth's "cold politeness," Fredrick is openly mean to Anne. I can't say isn't warranted but it...isn't Wentworth? And Anne will become all sultry and flirty at the most unexpected times, which is a rare enough trait for any Austen heroine, but is definitely not something that seems appropriate if your name is Anne Elliot. Not only do both characters feel extremely out-of-characters, but they're also extremely aware of the other person's attraction to them. Even if Lee tries to write it off simply as "chemistry," that's not Persuasion. It's bad enough that I had to read the words "pity sex" in anything with even remotely associated with Jane Austen, but Fredrick is far from the Captain looking to marry "any pleasing young woman who came in his way, excepting Anne Elliot." When he isn't sharing too much information about what's going on in his nether-regions, he's constantly waxing poetic about Anne and gives off major "man written by women" vibes. I'm willing to overlook that since he is based off the man who wrote "you pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope" and "I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago," but I can't overlook the fact that his character lacks any kind of depth or meaningful development.

The biggest travesty is that we were robbed of a romantic, climatic scene. I still remember the first time I read the "half-hope, half-agony" scene and swooning and squealing and screaming at my friends because where has Captain Wentworth been all my life?? But the "I'm torn between hope and agony" was a lot less impactful since the reason for Fredrick's conflicting emotions stemmed more from the mixed signals he and Anne kept giving each other. (Seriously, if denial is a river, these two were drowning in it.) The reason the miscommunication trope is such a hated trope isn't so much because miscommunication isn't a realistic source of tension but because it's often lazy writing used to create unnecessary drama, and my biggest issue with Jayci Lee's version of Persuasion is that she never gives me a reason to believe that Anne and Fredrick can't be together. The two are willfully ignorant about the other person's feelings even when they're spelled out in flashing neon lights. I mean, Fredrick spends way more time with Anne than Bethany (the stand-in for Louisa,) who really only appears when it's convenient to have a love rival, but it's so inconsistent I had a hard time believing Anne thought anything was going on between her cousin and Fredrick.

I get that incorporating a letter into a modern romance can be hard, but it's the iconic scene from Persuasion. If you're going to tackle a classic, you need to at least try to capture the magic of the original, even if you don't totally nail it, but the letter writing itself felt so forced, I couldn't even try to appreciate the scene because I was too incredulous at the way Lee shoehorns it in. What makes the Captain Wentworth's letter so powerful in the original is that Anne and Wentworth spend a good chunk of the book being worse than strangers and when they're finally on the brink of coming to an understanding, some swarmy cousin pops onto the scene to ruin everything. It seems that all hope is lost when Wentworth writes this gut-wrenching, swoonworthy letter, and you're texting friends "where was this Wentworth for the past 233 pages?!"

But the letter scene in Give Me a Reason falls woefully short because the build-up leading up to it is a chaotic amalgamation of misunderstandings and every other romance trope under the sun except the ones that actually fit the story. "Let's just be friends" and drunken confessions and slightly aggressive bouts of possessiveness are all well and good, but if you want to include them in your book, don't 👏🏻 call 👏🏻 it 👏🏻 Persuasion.

I made it through about 40% of the book before I finally gave up any hope of getting a book that resembled Persuasion in any meaningful way and tried to judge Give Me a Reason as a standalone second-chance romance for the rest of the book, but it didn't fare much better.

It's fitting that the story opens up in a second-grade classroom because it sounds like an eight-year-old wrote it. It's all telling, no showing, and has absolutely zero feeling. The writing itself is overly simplistic and is even grammatically incorrect at times, but most importantly, fails to convey any kind of emotion. (This is more a personal preference, but the humor just isn't for me. It comes across as cringe and trying too hard and is like salt on the wound when combined with the stilted and robotic storytelling.) The story is primarily made up of the narrator is telling us every single thought that goes through our protagonists minds and breaking down every emotion Anne and Fredrick have (including gems like "she wanted to wrap herself around one of his legs like a koala hugging a tree and never let him out of his sight," "what kind of man because aroused touching a woman's /nose/?," and "her ex looked extremely handsome and virile.") Everything, from Anne and Fredrick's inner dialogue to each person's motivation, is spelled out for us and because there's no real plot, the whole thing just falls flat.

Even after I gave up the hope that Give Me a Reason would be the Persuasion retelling I've been looking for, it was such a struggle trying to be emotionally invested in the story. I just couldn't bring myself to care about either of the characters who are so bland and undeveloped I could barely think of any distinct characteristics by the time I got to the acknowledgements section. Anne's character arc feels forced and clunky, and both she and Fredrick are so hot-and-cold it's hard to believe either of their motivations at any given time.  

It doesn't help that the story has no cohesion. Instead, it jumps from scene to scene--which, in reality, aren't so much scenes as much as excuses for Lee to throw Anne and Fredrick together--but there's nothing to hold these forced interactions together. I get that Jane Austen isn't necessarily known for writing the most plot-centric stories, but if you're going to take creative liberties with a text, why not give your readers some better transitions between scenes?

It's bad enough that I was subjected to sentences like "she was too beautiful for his sanity" and "he was far from a womanizer but no monk," and "a rush of respect and affection lit a bonfire in her chest. She was afraid smoke would billow out of her mouth if she opened it," but the weak storyline and bland characters were the last straw. The best character is a firefighter's wife who barely makes an appearance, which says a lot about the quality of the cast.

I appreciate the attempt to bring some diversity into a oft neglected Jane Austen book, but this really didn't work for me.

Review: 3.75 stars

I’m a suck at pretty covers, and when I saw this cover, I decided why not!
I have read the author's previous works, which are more fantasy romance, and this was a nice change for a rom-com.

This romcom is based on a retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion and is about a second-chance romance featuring Anne and Frederick. They met when they were in college and broke up due to Anne’s family circumstances and her leaving the USA to pursue an acting career in Korea. They unexpectedly meet again 10 years later and discover that Frederick’s close friend and lieutenant, Joe, is engaged to Anne’s cousin, Caroline. Can they put their painful past behind them to rekindle their romance?

Oh boy, talk about the emotional roller coaster ride this one put me through! Given their painful past, Frederick harbours some resentment towards Anne…which Anne feels that it is her fault. The angst between them and the shimmering feelings when they interact just throw me for a loop, especially when I feel like this problem could have been fixed if they communicated. Instead, both assume things, leading to more misunderstandings, especially in the book's first half. This does drive me crazy at some moments, especially when both choose to wallow in their misery…but it remains true to the story.

This story is told in the dual POV of Anne and Frederick, as well as some flashbacks of their past and current state. I admire Anne as a character; she displays quiet strength and is always there for friends and family so much so that she chooses to leave school and leave Frederick to support her family's needs and was never given so much thanks. Since then, she has come such a long way that she is now choosing to do what she wants and putting herself first. The supporting cast of characters featuring Frederick’s crew and Anne’s family and cousins throws in some interesting moments and fun.

Given that this is an adult romcom, there was some smut, and the epilogue tied everything up perfectly. It stays true to Persuasion, featuring the most romantic of letters in the end. If you are looking for a second chance romance with the feels and love of Jane Austen, this one shouldn’t be missed.

Thank you, SMP/Gryffin, for the lovely eARC