Readers don't need to be Jane Austen fans to appreciate Hubbard's debut, a time-bending tale with some Pride and Prejudice
elements. Awkward, plain-Jane teenager Callie is on a school trip abroad when she spies a pair of “totally classic” Prada shoes in a shop window and buys them on impulse, hoping to impress more popular girls on the trip. Unfortunately, moments after trying the shoes on, she trips, falls and blacks out. The next thing Callie knows, she is in 19th-century England, where she is mistaken for a duke's childhood friend arriving for an extended visit. With nowhere else to go, Callie stays at the duke's castle, and during the next four weeks, she becomes good friends with the duke's cousin, develops a love/hate relationship with the duke and shocks nearly everyone in the castle with her feminist ideology and numerous faux pas (“You could have heard a pin drop when I asked if they had ketchup,” she says). Part comedy of manners, part romantic fantasy, this fast-reading, playful novel takes the idea of feeling out of place to a hilarious extreme. Ages 12–up. (June)
