Smut-free love stories

After her father mysteriously disowns her, Anne Sharp finds a job as a governess to Jane Austen’s niece. A refined lady stripped of her class, Anne finds that she is neither a member of the family nor one of the servants, making her feel terribly out of place. At the Austens’ countryside estate, Anne discovers her passion for teaching and develops a tender friendship with Jane, the soon-to-be-famous author.

Gill Hornby’s Godmersham Park (Pegasus Books 2022) is based on the true story of Anne Sharp and has many elements of a Jane Austen novel: domestic drama, characters that hate each other but are actually in love, and someone catching a near-death illness after being caught in the rain. The prose is a bit more approachable than Austen’s but invokes her familiar style.

Chronic headaches plague the governess and threaten her position, leaving Anne at the mercy of her employers. To further complicate things, Anne falls in love with Jane’s brother Henry, a dashing but married man. (They express their feelings but do not commit an act of adultery.) Despite her initial bitterness at having to earn a living, Anne learns humility and puts her selfish ambitions aside. Older teen girls might enjoy the book since there are no intimate scenes and only one mild swear word is used.

TEENAGE LEAH is sent to live in a foster home after her widowed father dies in a logging accident. She leaves her seaside Carolina hometown and best friend Jesse, a boy about her age, to live with the Griffins. While the children grow fond of Leah, Mrs. Griffin is a nasty woman who makes the orphan’s life miserable.

Meagan Church’s The Last Carolina Girl (Sourcebooks 2023) is set in the 1930s. Despite Leah’s hopes of belonging to a new family, the Griffins treat her like a servant. Leah learns that coming to her new home was no accident and tries to get word to Jesse before it’s too late.

There are some dark themes at play in the book. One of the characters is sterilized against her will. Mrs. Griffin also (falsely) accuses Leah of being a “whore,” and uses one mild curse word. Leah does fall in love, but there aren’t inappropriate scenes.

The story of Cinderella gets a Southern Gothic makeover in this book, and the result is a book that young adults would enjoy. Some readers might find the novel a bit slow in the beginning, and not everyone will love the somewhat unoriginal reflections on the meaning of home.

Still, Leah tries to forgive Mrs. Griffin, and the novel doesn’t have a syrupy ending. The author also uses the reality of eugenics in mid-Depression America as a backdrop, and that’s a history worth remembering with a shudder.