This is a timeless classic. A girl who has it all gets put in her place even though she is trying to improve other people's lives. Instead of letting the cards fall she tries to intervene and find things out about her own life.

Emma has no intention of ever marrying and she considers herself a very good matchmaker amongst her friends. Of course, she is not nearly as good a matchmaker as she thinks she is and manages to mess up a few times and she misses seeing things between people. I was hoping for more. I liked parts of it, but my mind wandered throughout a lot of the book, too. It seemed if the focus was on particular characters (Harriet, Frank Churchill, sometimes Mr. Knightley), it kept my attention a bit more. I was interested at the start and at the end, and when the aforementioned characters were involved in the storyline, but otherwise, I got a bit bored at times and couldn't always pay attention to it.

Emma Woodhouse is the main character of Jane Austen’s novel Emma. The novel concentrates mainly on Emma and her life. Throughout the novel, Emma exempts herself from marriage and romance in order to assert her independence. Of course by the end of the novel Emma herself decides to get married just like the other characters in this novel. Her reasons for not getting married are the fact that she is wealthy enough not to require a husband to support herself, and she is so attached to her father that she does not long to leave his house. Although convinced that she herself will never marry, she takes it upon herself to persuade Harriet Smith, a younger friend, into a potential gentleman's wife. She sets her sights on Mr. Elton, the vicar, one of Highbury's most eligible bachelors. She leads Harriet away from Robert Martin, a well-to-do farmer, who is infatuated by Harriet. Harriet rejects Martin's proposal and becomes infatuated with Mr. Elton under Emma's encouragement, but Emma's plans go wrong when Elton makes it clear that she herself is the true object of his affections. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading for lengthy period of times.