Persuasion

"All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."

Twenty-seven-year-old Anne Elliot is well past the bloom of her youth. Having been persuaded by her friends and family to break off her happy engagement with the young naval officer Wentworth, whose station lies beneath her own, Anne is seemingly destined for spinsterhood.

However, when Wentworth later reappears in Anne's life, tension and regret are rife and it is unclear whether the two can move past their shared history, or whether some decisions can never be undone.

Superbly witty, yet at the same time subtle and heartbreaking, 'Persuasion' is Jane Austen's last novel and, arguably, one of her best.

Bought to the screen in 2007 with the award-winning Sally Hawkins, and then again in 2022 for Netflix's sassy adaption with Dakota Johnson, "Persuasion" is a story of second chances that stands the test of time "Persuasion" was further chosen as the first book in TikTok's Book Club which launched in July 2022.