Mr. Darcy’s Bluestocking Bride (Pride and Prejudice and Bluestockings, #1)

“So what am I my Lord, an antidote, a bluestocking or on the shelf? I assume it is the last because I should have come out three years ago and am all of twenty and one.” Giselle Marks, The Marquis’s Mistake

This was a most unusual book and it really hits the reader after you get about half-way through. OMG!! The first half is our dear couple [ODC] trying to understand each other. How much can one couple argue, fight, apologize, scrape, blush, embarrass themselves, and simply crash and burn at every turn? Man, this Darcy really fought the good fight. He felt that Elizabeth Bennet was worth it and he was willing to go the distance. Brother, did he have a lot of ground to make up.

“The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” Ecclesiastes 9:11 [NIV]

There are several excellent reviews so be sure to read them. P&P is my favorite book and I just love reading variations, retellings and adaptations. In this story, I especially loved the new characters. My favorite was Baroness Darcy, sister to Darcy & Georgiana’s grandmother. Magdalena Darcy, tenth Baroness Darcy de jure, with Fitzwilliam Darcy as heir apparent. Yep, our dear boy [ODB] was in line for a barony. Baron Darcy, how well that sounds.

Readers, and especially Austen Purists, take note… our Austen Universe had to be skewed a bit [OK, a lot] in order for our story to fit into the parameters set forth by our author. After you get to the end you will see that it was necessary. The story could not progress without this adjustment, so you have to be willing to accept the changes as necessary, otherwise it will not work.

Next, the reader must be prepared for changes and surprises. I mean serious surprises… seriously. They are the kind where you want to throw your book or reading devise. Use caution and gently place the devise down before exclaiming shock, horror, aversion or disgust. If it is the wee hours of the morning, please do not shout, scream or call out as that will alert your… family, friends, cohabitation partner(s), dorm room, neighbors, or apartment building… to your late-night activities. Just saying… an ounce of prevention may save someone from calling the COPS thinking there is an intruder.

Villains: OMG!!! Pure EVIL. You know the usual suspects:
Mr. Bennet: I hate to list him as a villain… but dang! Indolence is one thing, but to blatantly disregard Lizzy’s advice, not read her mail, that contained something important [simply because he didn’t want to be bothered], and letting his estate fall down around his ears, because Collins was to inherit… again, why bother. He rarely attended social events, thus failing to check the behavior of his wife and younger daughters. Oh, he would rue the day he failed to do that. His ‘peace and quiet’ came at a high price.

Mrs. Bennet, although we didn’t see her, as this story featured in Hunsford, Rosings, Kent and London [Gardiner house]. Her presence was made known. Mary was somewhat… with her lack of interest, but more so were Kitty and Lydia. OMG!! Those two younger girls were horrid. They would give a saint gray hair. In fact, I wanted to pull out my hair after dealing with those two. I’ve not see this aspect of the debacle with Wickham used before in JAFF. OMG!

Caroline Bingley: I swear, that social climbing, side-winder [snake reference], chameleon, got on my last nerve. She could change her behavior in a flash and become whatever was needed depending on the situation. She could schmooze with the best of them. Only the major characters we know and love could see through her. Or, maybe not… Darcy, you stupid stick… could you not see what she was about? Dang!!! However, the Duchess Dorset was not fooled… way to go, Your Grace! That scene was priceless.

Charles Bingley: what a sniveling, spineless, coward. This was a side to him I have only seen a few times in JAFF, but even this was low for him. OMG!! He allowed his sister to lead and order him around like he had a ring in his nose. She completely dominated his life and made decisions for him and then he sniveled and complained that it was not his fault. Oh, and there was hell to pay when he was confronted with his grievous behavior. Serves him right, the spineless eel.

George Wickham: I do not have a sufficient maleficent vocabulary to properly describe this low-life-bottom-feeding-rat-bastard. OMG!! I loathe, hate and despise this slug, dung-beetle. Nothing is sacred to this… I refuse to even call him a man. He does not deserve such attention. OMG! He hates everything remotely connected to Darcy. I’ve never seen nefarious behavior to this extent used in any JAFF story I have ever read. OMG!! I was horrified at his cavalier attitude of entitlement… that Darcy somehow owed him something. I simply do not understand how he feels he can just take what he wants… and take he does. I hope someone shoots him in his ego and ends his debauchery and shameful ways.

Things that simply blew my mind:
Lady Catherine de Bourgh: OMG! Can I just say I felt so sorry for her? Wow! Never did I ever think I would say such a thing. OMG!! I know I keep saying that, but this is something I have NEVER seen in JAFF. Where did this plot line come from? Man… the reveal will blow your mind. I don’t even know if awesome describes this twist of fate. Perhaps it should be awkward. Nah, that doesn’t do it either.

Ann de Bourgh: OMG! I love this Ann. What a dear girl, poor thing, bless her heart. OMG! I fear for her future. It was left unsettled as to what would happen to her. Her health now takes on a serious manner and the medical situations of the era would not be in her favor.

Colonel Fitzwilliam: What was up with him? It was not clear nor was it settled where he stood. Was he keeping an eye on Bingley or was there something else going on? I couldn’t figure out his purpose and Darcy himself was beginning to question his motives. What the heck was going on? Guess I’ll have to read the next book to find out.

Things I liked: Baroness Darcy… loved her. The Duke of Dorset and his family connections to the Darcy family. And… I loved seeing Jane Bennet getting her backbone up and taking a stand. You go Jane.

Things I didn’t like: way too many errors that should have been caught. I saw them and I am no editor. The family tree was a nightmare of names and titles. I know the author did the best she could describing how everyone went by their middle name because there were too many with the same name. However, when you call Darcy either Conor or Ben, I have to draw the line. I was lost in the middle of a pack of names, initials and who held what title [Duke, Earl, Baron, Viscount, Lord this and Lady that].

Then we had the notes at the beginning of each chapter…. clues to the identity of someone important. Reviewers admonished that we needed to pay close attention to what was being said in the notes. After a while, I’d forget the advice imparted from a worried aunt to her troubled niece. However, our author finally revealed who the troubled niece was. Let’s just say… the purists of the Austen Universe were tossed on their ears. Yep… it was big.

“…the rising movement of romanticism, with its characteristic idealism, one that tended toward a black-and-white view of the world based on those ideas, preferred for different reasons that women remain untinged by “masculine” traits of learning. Famous romantic writers such as Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Hazlitt criticized the bluestockings. …and Hazlitt declared his ‘utter aversion to Bluestockingism … I do not care a fig for any woman that knows even what an author means.’ Because of the tremendous influence that romanticism gained over the cultural mind-set, the term bluestocking came to be a derogatory term applied to learned, pedantic women, particularly conservative ones. … Furthermore, learned women did not fit in with the romantic notion of a damsel in distress waiting to be rescued by a knight in shining armor any more than they fit in with the antirevolutionary fear of progress.”

― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist