10.9k reviews for:

Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen

3.83 AVERAGE

adventurous challenging emotional funny medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Realmente he disfrutado muchísimo está historia, que si bien es simple está muy bien escrita, es irónica y divertida. Di carcajadas en varios momentos. Se puede ver el crecimiento de Catherine, me hubiera gustado que el romance se hubiera desarrollado mucho más.    

"Nadie que hubiera visto a Catherine Morland en su infancia habría podido imaginar nunca que esté llamada a ser una heroína".
funny lighthearted slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

in one ear out the other. 2.5/5

I didn't remember much from my first read in Croatian years ago, I suppose the original helped me enjoy her wit and irony much better!
nickcarrawayisababe's profile picture

nickcarrawayisababe's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 23%

I felt it was too slow and I felt no connection to any of the characters 
funny hopeful lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

It was good, but I guess having read her other more popular books first just left me expecting more. I do wish there was a littleeee more plot around the abbey, but it was Austen poking fun at gothic literature which I do feel she achieved. All I can say is I smelt the plot a mile away, and the plot twist effect was lost on me, I'm sure if I couldn't tell where the story was headed it would've been a higher ranking for me. God one thing she achieved was making me annoyed at the Thorpes omg, did John annoy me, not even Darcy annoyed me this much and he called Elizabeth plain looking to her face lmao. Isabella was at least a little likable regardless of the fact she was such a liar and so fake. Overall, I really did love Catherine as a character, she's lowkey me... read too much and delude myself into thinking it'll happen to me talk about a #hopelessromantic. Anyways, it's hard to hate Austen novels as a romance genre lover.

She carefully opened the heavy wooden door, the lazy squeaking causing her hair to stand on its end. The slice of light slowly grew larger on the dark stoned pavement. She breathed the humid scent of nectarine while keeping her eyes down, until the slice was now 90º wide, moment on which she raised her eyes to find...

An empty room.

This is how Northanger Abbey sounds like. It is often referred to as a parody of the gothic. I think it is, in fact, more of a parody of impressionable young girls who hope to find in the real world everything they read. If Jane Austen lived in our time, this book would have probably been about impressionable teenagers looking for their sparkling vampire or something similar. However, one must take account of how this work also defends the legitimacy of reading gothic novels. Henry Tilney, the love interest, is in every aspect a virtuous man and admits on reading gothic novels and enjoying them to a great extent. But, despite his passion for gothic literature, he is the most reasonable person anyone can hope to find.

Now, Catherine, the heroine, is of a completely different breed. She is nothing more than a teen – she’s 17. The result of Henry teasing her results in her belief of potential horror scenarios that, overall, turn out quite disappointingly.

I think it a bit unfair to portray Catherine so childishly at times, perhaps because I remember too well being exactly like her and browsing woods and abandoned houses in the countryside when I was younger (younger than 17, more like 8 or 9, but still). There are not many happy moments in my adult life which surpass those on which I procured an adventure relentlessly as a kid. I sometimes wish I had stayed like that my whole life.

Other than this aspect, Northanger Abbey is no different from every Jane Austen book. It has been some years since I last read my last of Austen’s, but I also get the impression that this one is a much easier read than the rest. But the social critique is here and so is the happy ending, Austen never deceives the reader in this aspect! However, I might note this ending seemed rather rushed and it would have been nice to have had a more solid narrative in the last few pages.

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature.”
slow-paced