YMMV / Jaine Austen Mysteries

• Harsher in Hindsight: This Pen for Hire has a moment where Jaine fantasizes about what her life could be like if she got rich off of a screenplay. In that fantasy, she is married to Mel Gibson. In 2002, this could be a cute joke. After that... it gets awkward.
• Unintentional Period Piece: In Death by Pantyhose, Jaine tries to get an Egg McMuffin from McDonald's, only to find she missed the time to get breakfast by an hour. McDonald's would start serving breakfast all day in 2015, whereas the book was released in 2007.
• Values Dissonance: The series was originally written in the early 2000s. It can... certainly show, at times.
  • In Last Writes, Jaine talks about how her mother has a habit of setting her up with inappropriate men. She describes one of them as an engineering student from Laos, who, when asked his opinion on her cat Prozac, replies "She'd be great for a stew". This could become rather uncomfortable nowadays, especially given the rise in hate towards Asian Americans following the COVID-19 Pandemic.
  • Also in Last Writes, a recurring way that Jaine describes how much of a dump Miracle Studios is comes from her lovely view of transvestite prostitutes on Santa Monica Boulevard.
• The Woobie: Poor Howard Murdoch from This Pen For Hire can not catch a break. He's a dorky insurance claims adjuster that still lives with his mother, he has a crush on an Alpha Bitch who would never have given him the time of day without Jaine's help, he gets accused of and arrested for said alpha bitch's murder, and his mother re-mortgages her house to bail him out of jail. At least things turn around when he's freed after Jaine finds the real killer.