Summering: Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things by Jacqueline Firkins

It's an understatement to say that this has been the winter of Edie's discontent. Her mom has died and Edie and her best friend Shondra have had a horrible quarrel. And now Edie's been sent off to her wealthy suburbanite aunt and uncle in Mansfield, Massachusetts, to finish high school there and summer over with them until she can find a way to fund college. Edie hates being cast as the ragged orphan, and the rescue is a dismal prospect.

And her fears of being received as the poor relation are not unjustified.

At first the car ride was just annoying. Edie slouched in the back seat of the SUV, clutching her mom's sticker covered guitar case. Her Aunt Norah blithely rattled on from the passenger seat. "Poor Edith" must realize that she lucky to have left foster care for a "real home," she says.

"Her wardrobe was atrocious. Her posture was appalling. She had no understanding of proper diet or personal care.

And that hair!" Norah exclaimed. "Good lord, what will the neighbors say!"

The only thing Edie has to look forward to is seeing Sebastian, the boy-next-door with whom on one summer visit she had blissfully shared tree-climbing, Pixie sticks, and her first kiss at age ten. But while Sebastian is just as kind and welcoming as always, most of his time is taken up by a demanding and gorgeous girlfriend, Claire. And then her cousins, Maria and Julia, take Edie on as a potential Aschenputtel, woefully in need of a magical makeover.

"We get to go shopping!" Maria said. "Dad gave us his credit card."

"You're totally Cinderella," Julia gushed. "Which means we have to find you a Prince Charming."

"You, Miss Edie Price, are about to be introduced to Mansfield society," said Maria.

And before she's even learned to walk in high heels, Prom is approaching. It seems that in Mansfield society, she can't opt not to go. And when the dazzlingly handsome and charming Henry finds time away from his other admirers to pay attention to Edie, she impulsively asks him to Prom. She finds herself impossibly falling for the magnetically attractive Henry and for the romance of it all. But something about it just doesn't satisfy her expectations. There's still that connection to Sebastian, and when he and Claire part, Edie realises that the Cinderella role with Henry doesn't quite fit into her happy ever after....

In her just published Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), Jacqueline Firkins clearly molds her modern novel in the format of Jane Austen's classic social romance, Mansfield Park, even using some of the same character names--Julia, Maria, Claire, Tom, and Henry-- and although Fanny becomes Edie and Edmund becomes Sebastian, Firkins keeps basic personalities easily recognizable and even leaves behind "bread crumbs" of plot links--names, games, jewelry, and places embedded for those Austen afficionados to discover.

Love and marriage and getting on in the world have changed since the early 1800s, but the process remains quite recognizable in this engaging social coming-of-age story of a girl finding her way through the twists of happily-ever-after, leaving plenty of the twists of true love left yet entangled, perhaps awaiting a sequel.