Mr Darcy's Persuasion

The book started out so great! Lively and interesting with fun character interaction. Sure, Elizabeth was a little frustrating with how she dealt with Jane but I think it was keeping in line with her character, so cool.

But then around the halfway point, it stalled out a bit. Sir Walter appears out of nowhere to push one plot line to resolution, then quickly disappears and everything just sort of dwindles to a halt. Instead, Darcy and Elizabeth spend way too many pages staring off into space, daydreaming about the other while their friends try to recapture their attention. I get what the book is showing us during that time but it was overdone and eventually gave things an immature/silly feel. And it just kept going and going.... There show more was another serious plot line going on (Darcy being blackmailed into marrying Miss Elliot) but the characters only talked about it, they didn't really do anything. It stayed at this non-moving point for so long that I got bored. So bored. I stopped reading the book for a day and a half and went to AO3 to read fanfic.

Finally, I decided to pick this up again just so it would no longer be hanging over my head. The distracted daydreaming finished and things picked up with the pacing, but I was so beyond caring, I just skimmed. At one point, a character complains about how slowly Darcy is explaining something and I felt such strong sympathy because that was my experience with the last half of the book. Why explain something in one page when you can take three? Why have things be straightforward when you can have a character interrupt an important conversation and narrate them getting drinks for everyone? It was just so drawn out.

Things did finally pick up speed again but I still didn't care and it just seemed ridiculous. I also finally understand the phrase "lampshading" thanks to this book. (Everyone shows up at Darcy's rented house all at the same time. Not just Lady Catherine but Colonel Fitzwilliam's mother, Elizabeth's father, even her the Gardiners! It's so improbable, even Darcy comments on how ridiculous it was.) Perhaps if the third quarter of the book was drastically trimmed down, I wouldn't have checked out and it would have fulfilled its promise of the first half but it wasn't so we will never know. As much as I like the idea of a mashup of Austen stories (and of Persuasion stories), I think I'll be avoiding them for a while because of how annoyed this one left me. show less