Helen Halstead

I'm a sucker for the faux Austen, and I love to hate the bad ones more than I enjoy reading the okay ones. This one was okay. (Like aircraft landing on carriers, no faux Austen is ever rated higher than "okay.") The author got details of Regency life correct (no one said "okay," as happened in another faux Austen) as far as non-expert I noticed.

Its faults lie in its very form. A faux Austen cannot have the dramatic tension necessary to a successful novel because the characters we love best show more resolved their conflict in the original. The reader wants to spend more time with Elizabeth and Darcy but any new conflict -- infertility, jealousy, awkwardness, Pemberley blown up in a new Gunpowder plot or because an unhinged caretaker didn't release steam from the boilers* -- seems farfetched or melodramatic or disloyal. The reader might wish to see Kitty, Mary, Georgiana, Anne, or even Caroline suitably married or at least happy, but the author must short-shrift either them (the unmarried sources of suitable Austenesque tension) or Elizabeth and Darcy, about whom the reader cares most. Also, it's difficult to balance Charlotte's prudence about matrimony with the contemporary reader's desire for better-rounded heroines.

The least I expect from a faux Austen is textual accuracy. Mary is the third sister, not the fourth. Darcy's first name is Fitzwilliam. Kent and Derbyshire are more than a morning's travel distant. Halstead did nothing so egregious, but she took characters in directions I would not have. She depicts Charlotte as not delighting in the Darcy match, which is textually false, after which the Collinses drop from view with no mention of the olive branch, and I do not think either Charlotte or Elizabeth would so blithely drop the friendship (though it would alter). The Gardiners do not appear on scene at all and are mentioned only in passing. Anne de Bourgh not only lives, she marries and manages not to die in childbed. Lady Catherine's machinations I ignored.

Mention of "fish pie" made me smile -- a nod to _A Room with a View_? Another reference maybe wasn't textually likely -- Caroline Bingley is not the sort to go to Brussels as the English mass against Napoleon -- but I did like the parallel thus drawn between her and Becky Sharp, whom she certainly resembles. Halstead pasted on a epilogue so the reader gets to see Mr. Bennet with his many grandchildren, which is nice, but I guess the Deathly Hallows epilogue kindly** ruined the x-years-later epilogue for me (though for Wickham to die, insane with syphilis, in a madhouse is satisfying).

* _The Shining_. The Kubrick film ending is much more satisfying, in that the hotel will live to kill again, as well as less far-fetched.
** I just reread _All the Pretty Horses_. show less

The heroine meets a very amiable man while she is out walking by the pier.They chat for a while then parts,and the heroine goes back to the cottage she is renting with her crippled brother who recently returned from the war and her vain and fashionable sister.

She tries to find out the mans adress...but...

It turns out no one knows of him or have seen him.Of course she wants to find out the truth of it so she enlists her brother in helping to inquire in the whereabouts of the man.


Her brother show more and sister thinks she is going insane because she keeps persisting in seeing this mysterious man.

Soon even the heroine begins to think she might have imagined this gentleman.Conjured up a suitable suitor to avoid dealing with her reality as a spinster without too many prospects.

At times I started to suspect the heroine was one of those unreliable narrators

And even that she had actually gone mad.

The author has this way of writing that makes one uneasy at times and she offsets this beautifully by showing the mundane side of life in the regency era.It heightens the suspense when others also begin to see the heroine as a little bit odd.

A suspenseful read. I wouldnt call it a gothic precisely but it has shades of it. I would recommend reading it through to the end to find out the truth. show less

There is a very good reason why fairy tales end with "and they lived happily ever after" - ever after is boring! This was too much like pulp Regency romances I've read during fits of boredom - where the smart, vivacious heroine tries to gain acceptance with "The Ton". (If you like these, Julie Garwood's are the best in my opinion.) I had to force myself to finish, then found out what I should have done is read the epilogue - it satisfies all your curiosity about the author's interpretation show more of what happened to the Bennett sisters. show less

I'm a fan of austen inspired books and found this to be one of the better Pride and Prejudice sequels. Although she’s no Austen, Halstead remains true to the characters Austen created and writes in the in style and language of the period.