It’s no secret that I love Jane Austen. Although I didn’t fully respect Persuasion for the nuanced story that it is until I entered my mid to late twenties, it is now probably permanently cemented as my favorite Austen novel.

While lacks a lot of the comedy and witty banter you find in her other finished works, there is more sense of feeling and maturity to this story. This is the OG second chance love story and I’m here for all of it. Second chances are the hope everyone needs in life!

I’ve just finished my re-read tonight, and I’ve never felt so in sync with Anne Elliot as I do today. She was a young woman in love, pretty and full of life. Someone interferes and she loses her love and over the course of the next eight years finds herself disappearing from life. She retreats, she quietens, and she blends into the background. She lives for her family and cares for them with a goodness of heart and spirit and yet no one thinks to care for her. As I was reading this portion of the story I couldn’t help but compare her to myself. While I don’t think I could ever be called overly “good,” or quietly retiring as she is, I relate so much to her lot in life. I sometimes find myself disappearing and retreating from life after a unfortunately similar circumstance. It’s downright maudlin, but there you have it.

Anne however, has a happy ending as Captain Wentworth returns!! He returns a little bitter and prideful, but a man still in love. *Swoon people... we start swooning here!!* I who have always been a super fan of the Darcy’s, Thornton’s, and Sydney’s of classic literature find myself giddy at the thought of Wentworth. He’s book bae material on par with Gilbert Blythe book bae! There’s no artifice or witty banter, but just beautiful love and devotion. Well there’s a little witty banter but not on the same level! Then... then ladies and gents we come to his letter. His letter so distractedly written and nervously given... it speaks to my very soul! Any man who wrote me a letter like that would find himself in front of the justice of peace before the ink dried. Seriously imagine the letter he could right when not distracted