Please excuse my lack of post this week, I have been so busy at work, and in addition to this, I helped out at an election this week, which was a 17 hour day! Hopefully my reading will get back on track now!
Earlier this month I was lucky enough to review Mr Darcy's Pledge for Leatherbound Reviews, and here's my review...
***
I’d only read one book by Monica Fairview before this, Steampunk Darcy, which I really
enjoyed, so I was very grateful to Jakki for the opportunity to try something
more traditional by this author. Mr
Darcy’s Pledge is a Pride and Prejudice variation, from Darcy’s
perspective, beginning just after the Hunsford Proposal. Darcy is returning to
Georgiana at Pemberley to lick his wounds and he has made a momentous decision
– he made a huge mistake in offering for Elizabeth Bennet, and now he needs to
put it behind him, and marry somebody else.
He wants to do this partly to help him get over his unreciprocated
infatuation for Elizabeth (which is obviously a very bad and risky idea!) and
partly because he is beginning to think of launching Georgiana into society,
and so he needs a woman to help him do this. In preference to his relatives, he
considers enlisting the help of a neighbour, Lady Renwick, who was good friends
with his mother. Lady Renwick has her niece staying with her, Miss Elinor
Marshall, who is the most beautiful woman that Darcy has ever set eyes on. This
makes Darcy wonder whether finding a bride might be easier than he’d first
thought. However, there is a lot to distract him from his quest to find a bride,
with a multitude of visitors to Pemberley, both expected and unexpected, and
perhaps even a London tradesman and his wife and niece visiting the area of
Lambton on a summer tour...
This could have been quite an angst-filled variation,
firstly because Darcy is genuinely heartbroken and suffering and secondly,
because he is planning to marry in haste and potentially repent at leisure.
Deep down, he knows this, and while he is trying to convince himself that he
has recovered from his infatuation for Miss Bennet and is ready to move on he
really isn’t ready to do so:
“His heart protested, but he was having none of it. His heart had no
say in the matter. Consulting his heart in the matter of marriage was a foolish
indulgence, nothing more. Men fell in love and out of love all the time. It was
a passion of the moment, forgotten soon enough. Marriage was about producing
heirs and managing a household. It was the choice of a lifetime.
He could not help feeling that a lifetime was a very long time.”
He could not help feeling that a lifetime was a very long time.”
The other thing that saves this from being a sad read is the
humour. There is so much humour, from wry asides here and there, to the awful
comic creations of Lord and Lady Matlock.
Ms Fairview’s Darcy falls short of eccentric but he’s leaning towards it
in a loveable and amusing way. He decides to determine what character traits he
is looking for in a wife as a starting point to finding his bride:
“Choosing a wife would
take more careful thought than he had imagined. Already the mental list was
growing longer by the minute. He should write it all down.”
I loved the way the lists he made were contradictory, as
he’d list what he thought were ‘proper’ qualities in a wife, and then he’d
cross them out and replace them with the qualities he really wanted. Darcy is uncharacteristically impulsive in
his efforts to overcome his heartbreak and his behaviour really confuses poor
Georgiana, who doesn’t know what has effected this change in her previously
staid and dependable brother.
One of the things I liked best about this book was the
development of Georgiana, who goes from a timid, shy girl, to a girl bewildered
by the change she’s seeing in her brother, to a woman who is able to stand up
for herself and is not afraid to show her claws when she’s under attack. Darcy and Georgiana’s relationship develops
too, from a father/daughter style relationship to a more equal footing.
Darcy gave her a
disbelieving look then realized she was joking. “Since when have you turned
into a jester?”
“Since I realized the
sky will not fall down on me if I make a joke,” said Georgiana. “And since I
discovered my brother is rather fond of laughter.” She threw him a significant
glance.
I was a little unsure of the familiarity between people in
the story. Both new characters and existing seemed to get on familiar terms
very quickly. In some cases this was used as a device to highlight encroaching
characters but in others it didn’t sit quite right with me, especially when
some of the people were on less familiar terms in Pride and Prejudice than they
are here, however, this was a minor issue and didn’t affect my enjoyment of the
story.
Mr Darcy’s Pledge is volume one of ‘The Darcy Novels’, so be
warned that it’s not a complete story although thankfully it doesn’t end on a
cliffhanger. We see some Elizabeth, but not as much as I’d like. There is the
definite promise of more page time for Elizabeth in Volume 2. The only real
shame is the wait I’ll have to have until I can read Volume 2, which is not yet
available!
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