This was my third time reading this book and my second for a class. I found it truly marvelous and full of wonderful insights about human perception and relationships. The annoyance I once had for Emma herself has been overpowered fully by my love for the story and my realization that her faults, frustrating as they are, are so similar to mine that I really have no business being angry at her but rather ought to learn from her and seek to avoid her mistakes.

I think this rating has to be a 4.5 or 4.75 simply because I do not like that

Spoiler

Mr. Knightley is so much older than Emma and tells her he's loved her since she was thirteen.

That, along with other interactions between the two near the end of the book, spoiled my enjoyment just enough that I can't call this book perfect. But it is nearly perfect. And it is good, and you should read it.

“I cannot make speeches, Emma...If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.”