Review: The Jane Austen Escape Room Book

Illustrated by Marjolein Bastin

Available now from Andrews McMeel Publishing

Review copy

Marjolein Bastin, known for her art featuring nature, has previously illustrated all of Jane Austen's novels. Now, her art is used to create a puzzle book featuring characters from Pride and Prejudice. (The original edition is under copyright by a German company; I could find no credit for the author of the text.) I've experienced many Pride and Prejudice spin-offs, and as someone who loves puzzles, this one intrigued me.

The title refers to an escape room, and many of the puzzles are similar to an escape room's in nature, such as holding paper up to a light to see a hidden message. However, no one needs to escape a room in the story. Instead, Elizabeth Bennett must escape a ploy to ruin her reputation. Can she discover who tried to ruin her and why, and convince Mr. Darcy to still consider marriage?

The text doesn't try very hard to sound like Austen, except for some dialogue. It also doesn't use paragraph breaks between speakers, which I hated as a stylistic choice. But the text is fine for setting up the puzzles, and sometimes contains clues.

The puzzles vary in difficultly. There's one that requires solving a simple subtraction problem at the easy end. On the difficult end I would put one of the more complicated math problems or the more involved cipher on the newspaper. There's at least one puzzle that isn't difficult but is tedious, involving choosing the right set of three recipes from a group of eight. Printing them in various handwriting-style fonts, with the recipes arranged at all angles looks beautiful, but is a pain to read.

If someone does have too much trouble, the answers are always given at the beginning of the next puzzle. There is also a solutions section in the back, as well as a newspaper page with more hints.

My largest issue with this book is the layout. Some puzzles have additional material in the back. These are all perforated pages that can be pulled out of the book, although only one of them actually needs to be pulled out to be solved, so I'm not sure of the purpose of doing them this way. You have to figure out on your own to flip to the back ... which also requires flipping past the solutions while trying not to look. Worse though is that the extra hints are included between the ending and the solutions. I had no idea they were there until I was done with the book. The introduction mentions referring to an appendix, but I thought that meant the same section as the extra material. Due to placement, I don't think they'd be very helpful to many puzzlers.

The art in The Jane Austen Escape Room is beautiful, and I enjoyed looking at it. But I didn't love the puzzles. Sometimes I would've preferred more instructions, because I was often left thinking, "Surely, I'm meant to do more than just look at this clearly labeled map?" (No, that was all I needed to do.) My favorite puzzle was actually the final seating chart one. There are only 18 puzzles, so I could get far more puzzles for my money in a puzzle book without the Jane Austen framing. The framing was cute, but executed fairly indifferently. I feel like this book won't quite satisfy Austen or puzzle fans, beautiful though it is.

Review: Silver Alert

By Lee Smith

Available now from Algonquin Books

Review copy

I never go on a road trip without books. Silver Alert seemed like a perfect choice, the story of an octogenarian and his ailing wife's manicurist going on a wild joyride. Little did I know that their joyride wouldn't start until over halfway into the novel. This is not a road book at all.

Silver Alert is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, switching between the points of view of Herb and Renee/Dee Dee. Herb is an old womanizer with multiple terrible kids. His younger wife has severe dementia, and he's struggling to care for her while denying that he needs care himself. Enter Dee Dee, a seemingly naive young manicurist who clearly isn't licensed, but can actually help calm Susan down and make her happy. Dee Dee is dealing with her own struggles, living in a trailer park with a friend who is getting involved with the wrong guy, while Dee Dee herself gets involved with a rich young poet.

While Silver Alert is written in a breezy style that makes it an easy read, it does deal with heavy subject matter. There's the loss of control over one's own life before death, of course. But there's also Dee Dee's past, which deals with sex trafficking and child abuse. The problem is that Dee Dee's character never felt believable to me. She supposedly has a seventh grade education, but is written more like she only has a third or fourth grade education. It made me wonder if Lee Smith initially wrote the abuse starting earlier, then decided that was too dark. More than that, Dee Dee is immensely trusting, including the men in the story. 

Conversely, I find Herb's voice very believable. I've seen dementia up close, and feel like Lee Smith has as well. There's little touches, like Herb having very little thought-to-mouth filter that make his developing mental state clear, even while he's in denial. Him not wanting to deal with intense medical treatment at his age (for a diagnosis he tries to keep secret from his family) also makes sense. Dee Dee being entirely unwary of this man when we've heard his leering thoughts and even his family is aware that he'd make a move on her despite the age difference didn't ring half as true.

I do think that people can maintain their innocence and naivety even through terrible situations. I get the appeal of throwing an old and grouchy character together with a young and optimistic one. But Silver Alert didn't work for me. It wanted to bring up tough subjects but not have them actually affect the characters. Thankfully, it was a quick read.