Excerpt from The Austen Affair by Madeline Bell, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I cannot be like Dakota Johnson in the Netflix Persuasion. I cannot. I don't have the career she has—this is my big break and my last shot. If I blow this, I don't bounce back. I'm twenty-six, and God knows Hollywood loves to call relatively young women old news the moment they disappoint. Twenty-seven is creeping up on me with Charlotte Lucas's voice, telling me, I'm frightened! And I don't even have any parents left to be a burden on.

Without Chuck Brown as my fallback option, I'll be lucky if I'm funneled off into the Hallmark-holiday-movie-industrial complex before fading into utter irrelevance.

Not that Hugh Balfour, hotshot nepo-baby up-and-comer, would care about any of that. He's two years older than me at twenty-eight, but as a man, he's got a lot more years in the tank to establish himself. Not that he really needs to: his filmography is already much more impressive than mine. He's had a prominent secondary role in a Christopher Nolan biopic and a two-episode arc on the latest season of The Crown, and the rest of his IMDb page is nicely rounded out with dark, Scorsese-esque dramas that really make the audience think about themes and directorial intent.

Chuck Brown usually just makes people wonder what cocktail of recreational drugs our writers are on.

"Fraternization is not a part of my process," Hugh tells me. His expression is so pinched it looks like he's been sucking on sour candy. As if Hugh Balfour, scion of centuries of English stiff-upper-lippishness, would ever do something so undignified.

It's kind of a shame that Hugh spends every second of the day scowling. He really is extraordinarily handsome whenever he doesn't look so irritated—as you might expect from a movie star. But he isn't the typical Hollywood-megablockbuster kind of good-looking. You wouldn't see him in your Christmas-release action flick, walking away from an explosion with a toothpick in his mouth. No fake veneers, artfully sprayed-on tan, or dehydrated muscles. He's got an almost Byronic look to him, like he should be standing on a cliff somewhere, the wind blowing his dark curls back from his noble brow as he thinks deep and troubled thoughts about the fate of his lost love. He is cursedly afflicted with high, aristocratic cheekbones and flashing dark eyes, which mesmerize as much as they terrify.

But you can't focus on any of that when you're too busy being sick to death of his shitty personality.

Having firmly denied my request for a cordial relationship, Hugh starts walking again.

I follow him. I'm nothing if not dogged.

"I will not be put off forever," I say, hearing my voice hitch up a shrill half octave and not doing anything to stop it.

"No, not forever," Hugh mutters. "Just until we wrap."

"Come on," I whine. "I know you've got your fancy little process, but I have to get to know my scene partner. Can't we meet in the middle on this one?"

Hugh arches a dark, sardonic brow. "If you don't mind, it looks like it's about to rain, and we'll be set back hours. I would prefer to spend those hours dry in my trailer." We have just reached said trailer. He takes the handle of his door—which often sticks, I have noticed—and jerks it open, hard. Like he's angry at it.

"Or you could spend them in my trailer," I suggest, truly hoping that where all else fails I can annoy him into liking me. "It's just as big!"

"No thank you," Hugh snorts. "I've heard about the state of your trailer."

He steps inside and snaps the door shut in my face.

He is really such a dick.

Excerpted from The Austen Affair by Madeline Bell. Copyright © 2025 by Madeline Bell. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Griffin. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.