Jane Austen may have read and been inspired by this book, but I'm really hoping she didn't like it. I found this book almost painfully dull, and Evelina herself so annoying I wanted to slap her. Sometimes it felt like I was reading a poorly done fanfiction or even YA novel in that she didn't seem to understand how all these men kept falling in love with her. I know her character's purpose is to be naive, especially at the start before London society starts to refine her, but there has to be a better way to do it than that. I also failed to see how any of her musings were a social commentary of the time as the blurb at the back of the book said. There were a few parts that did interest me--the reveal of Sir Belmont's true nature, for instance, and all that Evelina's infancy entailed--but not enough to redeem the book as a whole. I'm interested to see how discussion of this book in English class will go--assuming anyone besides me got through it, of course.