A review by berlinbibliophile
Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid

3.0

All in all I really enjoyed this book. Edinburgh Fringe is a wonderful stand-in for Regency Bath and McDermid kept all the characters recognisable while giving them modern preoccupations, like John Thorpe's car. Especially Isabella Thorpe is pitch-perfect, and her texts and emails are an unreadable delight. The only bit I really didn't like is the changed ending, the reason for General Tilney throwing Cat out in the middle of the night. The entire time,

Spoiler

the set-up has been the same as in Austen's original, that he's obsessed with money and status and thinks she'll inherit from the Allens. But at the end Henry reveals that it's actually because Tilney thought Cat was a lesbian, and in love with Ellie Tilney. That makes no sense and hadn't been set up at all.

If it hadn't been for this one revelation in the last 20 pages of the book, it would have gotten one star more. Still, the majority of the time I enjoyed reading this re-imagining of Austen's hilarious classic.