Probably the Jane Austen novel you're least likely to have read precisely because it isn't really the kind of the story she told. That is, it is a satire on the Gothic novel (think of all the bad things that could possibly happen in one book and then add the supernatural) and while the same elements of plot are there (girl meets guy at a ball and proceeds to fall in love and find herself in a social misstep) Austen pokes fun at a genre that was widely read in her own day, and one that we do not read much of anymore.
So this isn't going to end up being my favorite Austen novel (though it is for one of my friends, for understandable reasons) but for her first novel, it's good to see that her wit was present but not necessarily as brilliant as it was in Pride and Prejudice. My personal favorite is Persuasion, another novel where the wit isn't so strong, but her heart is on her sleeve. There is an authenticity in the characters that make me want to weep and laugh with them that I don't normally find in other novels.
In these last few hours before I start another semester of school (which I am readily looking forward to) I have pulled on an old favorite, Jane Eyre. If you are unfamiliar with the Gothic novel of Northanger Abbey (they are real books, not titles Austen made up) consider Jane Eyre as a form of the Gothic novel. It is not on the same level, but it is certainly a taste of the horridness that Catherine Moreland and Isabella Thorpe feasted upon.
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