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Nov 14, 2018
I have to confess that I started the book but did not finish it. And I don't normally leave a review for a DNF but this book. I'll begin by saying I love Pride & Prejudice. I love it so much that I'm happy to read the various continuations or variations of the story. So when I saw this book, I was really excited to find something new. At the beginning of the book, there is an encounter between Mary and Mr. Darcy at the Meryton assembly. They discuss how much they don't like to dance. When I read that my thought was 'this is not Mr. Darcy.' There is no way he would have carried on any kind of conversation with Mary. When he first appears, he is a snob and thought everyone in Meryton was beneath him. And, as he tells Elizabeth in P&P, he's 'ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers.' But I can handle making Darcy less of a snob. As I was reading, I set the book down without a book mark and the pages flipped. When I picked the book up and I glanced down at the page and read a bit. What I read made me realize that the author of this book was taking readers to a place where Jane Austen would never have taken her characters and would not expect her characters to go. That made me skim a bit more ahead and I only got angry. That is the only word I can think of to describe my feelings. This is not Darcy. This is not Elizabeth. This is not Colonel Fitzwilliam. The author virtually makes the Colonel into Wickham 2.0. If an author is writing a continuation of a much loved book, they can't make the characters totally unrecognizable to readers. At the end of Pride & Prejudice, you know Darcy and Elizabeth have a lifetime of happiness but this author decides they must be sacrificed for Mary's story. If you love Pride & Prejudice, I'd avoid this at all costs