I am so incredibly excited to say that Bloomsbury’s imprint Head of Zeus have picked up my debut adult series – three retellings of Jane Austen’s novels, starting with Persuasion!
Wentworth’s Spellworks for Charmed Cottages will publish in October 2027, followed by two other retellings in 2028 and 2029. (Goodreads link!)
When Annie Elliot’s enchanted family home starts to misbehave, she is mortified to discover that the builder her father has called in to fix the problem is none other than her estranged first love, Freddie Wentworth.
Having been persuaded against taking a romantic leap of faith in moving to Paris with her as a teenager, Annie has lived under a cloud of anxiety since about having let her down, and a constant questioning of whether her small village life working in the local cafe will ever be enough.
But now Freddie is back. They’re different, and they’re handsome. And they’re really hacked off about being left alone in Paris all those years ago.
Can Annie and Freddie find their way back to one another after a misguided decision has torn them apart? Is Annie’s father going to ruin them all in his pursuit of a more glamorous life? And will the cottage ever stop misbehaving with the masonry?
Jane Austen has been my comfort read since I was thirteen, so I’m unbelievably excited to get to retell her stories for a queer audience. Persuasion is full of introspection on personhood and personal growth, so it felt especially ripe for an adaptation filled with trans joy.
I had so much fun cooking up this book – from annotating Persuasion in great scholarly detail (I approached this retelling with the same academic focus I gave my climate fiction – I wanted to get it right and do Jane justice!!) to travelling to the locations in the story.
I visited the infamous beach in Lyme Regis where Louisa Musgrove falls and hits her head, and took an (incredibly rainy) fossil hunting workshop with my pals. We also hiked out to a nearby patch of temperate rainforest in Dartmoor which plays an important role in my story:
It was so fun to imagine Annie and Freddie stomping around these ancient moors.
My version of Anne Elliot is also a keen baker, so I went to Paris to study with the best and learn her craft:
As you can tell, it’s been a dream of a project already, and I’m only just getting started!
It’s also especially exciting that this is going to be an adult novel. I started writing Young Adult fiction when I was a teenager myself, and after twelve years, my earliest readers are now all grown up. It’s extra lovely to get the chance to follow them into the Adult age category.
Head of Zeus are the perfect home for this series – they have such passion for Annie and Freddie’s story, and I can’t wait to see what magic we cook up next. My editor Holly Humphreys says:
‘Wentworth’s Spellworks for Charmed Cottages is an extraordinarily special book. The writing is so immersive and the magic system so intrinsic to the world that at times I had to remind myself it doesn’t really exist! The story Wren has so lovingly crafted is full of real warmth, humour, and a yearning that could rival Austen herself, and I can’t wait for readers to fall for Annie and Freddie just as I have.’
If you enjoyed Thistlemarsh, Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches and T Kingfisher, I think you’ll love Wentworth’s Spellworks for Charmed Cottages.
Add it now on Goodreads!
