This is my first book review since I joined the Jane Austen Book Club. I’ve actually already read all of Jane Austen’s works but since I enjoyed them so much, I thought it would be nice to read them again and, this time, have the chance to know what other people thought of them as well as share my own.

I have to say that Emma isn’t my favorite character. She’s the stereotypical queen bee of her small social circle – rich, beautiful, shallow and liked by everyone. And because of this, she has developed a very inflated view of her own insight which also keeps her from relating well with other people. After having made a match for her governess with a well-to-do gentleman, she decides to confer her matchmaking skills with people she knows. Unfortunately, she only succeeds in creating misunderstandings and disastrous matches despite her good intentions. In the end, Emma realizes that she has been misled by her own vain pride, seeing people and circumstances as she wants them to be instead of as they truly are. With that realization, she redeems herself by the end of the story as we see her striving to deserve the happy ending that she gets when Mr. Knightley proposes to her.

Emma isn't much of a romance novel because you’ll know from the get-go who’s going to end up with whom. I also found that it lacked the emotional weight of other Jane Austen novels. But it’s a light, funny and a pretty good read and to borrow Mr. Knightley’s words, "...faultless in spite of all her faults."