The States is a modern retelling of Persuasion. I enjoyed getting to know Woodsey's characters and the setup was a good recreation of the Persuasion story. The pacing of this story felt very slow to me which was disappointing. Overall, this was good, but slow.

⭐⭐⭐ 3.5 Enjoyed, would recommend
Format: Kindle (ARC)

As someone who loves Jane Austen, I was excited to check out "The States" by Norah Woodsey, even though it's not my usual sci-fi vibe. It's been ages since I read "Persuasion," but you don't need to remember it to enjoy this book.

Tildy isn’t happy with her life and so she finds happiness through virtual reality using a computer program that lets her live the life she’s always wanted and “dreamed” of. 

However, it’s just all a dream…like Persuasion, this is a story of second changes.

I’m starting off this month with an extra book review! I was contacted by Simone Jung from Books Forward again and she suggested I check out The States by Norah Woodsey on NetGalley. A little slice of life with a dash of speculative/sci-fi sounded fun, so I went ahead and read it. It’s self-published and was released yesterday (April 30th). I must thank Simone and NetGalley for access to an ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. Let’s get to it.

The States follows Tildy as she struggles to free herself from an overbearing and demanding family. The problem? She doesn’t know if she wants to keep up with her current life or revisit a past she has already run away from once. An old friend approaches her about a new study in lucid dreaming aimed at helping people make difficult choices. Tildy signs right up, but can she keep the dreams and reality separate?

This book is supposedly a reimagining of Austen’s Persuasion. I’ve never read that one, so I can’t tell you how well this book does on that front, but I can tell you how it is as just a book. Short version: not good. And that’s sad, because I really liked the premise and wanted to like the book. I tried to enjoy it. I read the whole thing. And while it has potential, it falls on the amateurish side of everything (plotting, pacing, character development, the writing in general, etc.). That’s not to say it’s bad and couldn’t be made better. With some rewriting, it could be a solid book. It’s just not there yet.

Plot and pacing. There’s a super slow build for the first half to two-thirds of the book and we get a lot of information, but what we get is filler while the actual story gets glanced over. Her past in Ireland plays a big part of Tildy’s dilemma, but instead of showing us what happened, we get blurry little snippets that never really come together to give us the information the reader needs. The present storyline is the same way. Lots of information, but the story itself is only viewed in the periphery. The last third of the book is beyond rushed. The stuff with Jude and the lawyer’s daughter comes out of left field like it was tacked on as an afterthought. The whole relationship with Aidan is just barebones plot points that haven’t been fleshed out and connected yet. It needs a ton of work.

Characters. First off, there are way too many to keep track of and most of them can be cut or meshed into other characters without losing anything. Secondly, none of the important characters are remotely likeable. I have zero sympathy for Tildy. She’s an heiress (granted, her family is hemorrhaging all their money away) who was smart enough to get her own job and be able to support herself, but she lets her father and sisters treat her like shit? Go no contact and get on with your life. She’s whiny and weak and just a super annoying protagonist. Jude’s a douche and not even a charming one. Aidan is supposed to be the main dude, but he isn’t even a character at this point. He’s just a placeholder for a character. I think the characters could be much better if the plot and pacing were ironed out and they were given room to grow in the actual story, but it’s not there yet.

The writing. It’s not great either. In my earlier writing classes, I was told that my writing was stepping on itself and I needed to stop that. Basically, I would write a scene depicting a certain emotion and at the end, I would have a sentence or two telling what the emotion I just showed was. It was me not trusting myself to convey things clearly. I learned quickly to recognize it. This book is full of stuff like that. There’s also a ton of repetitive and mundane description that could be trimmed, especially early on. And a lot of the dialogue is stilted and/or used to give the reader information the characters would already know. People don’t talk like that.

Ultimately, The States felt unpolished and disappointing. It sounds like a great premise, but the execution was poor.

Overall, I gave it 2 out of 5 stars. One and a half, actually. One for writing it and half of one for self-publishing it. But I don’t really recommend it. There have to be better reimaginings of Persuasion out there.

I loved this book. At first, the slightly sci-fi/ black mirror-esque storyline threw me for a loop but I am glad I stuck with it. Really unique and interesting and I look forward to reading more by this author!