Miss Bingley Requests

This was a strange but clean story. It looked like a Pride and Prejudice fan fiction. It sounded like a P&P fan fiction and it read like a JAFF [Jane Austen Fan Fiction]. However, there was just something off with this story. It was like a melody that had a few notes that somehow just didn’t sound right.

Since this story was Caroline’s POV… we were always… always in her head. Scenes had to be manipulated in order for her to overhear, see or find out about those pivotal scenes that we love so well in P&P. Perhaps that was part of it… this OOC [out of character] behavior. There was also a certain familiarity between the two families that we don’t normally see. Darcy would never tolerate Caroline acting like the mistress of his house. Nor would he appreciate her opening a closed door and walking in on his meeting. There certainly wouldn’t be such a familiarity between Georgiana and Caroline. That meant that Caroline, Louisa and Charles knew about Ramsgate and Wickham. That would NEVER happen. Darcy was too private for these people to know his business. I’m sorry. This was so wrong.

In what universe would Charles Bingley call Darcy… Fitzwilliam. And when would Darcy EVER call Bingley’s sister by her given name… Caroline. No… no… and no. And… why on earth were Bingley AND Caroline staying at Darcy House? This was crazy. I wouldn’t trust Caroline in my house for anything. This was just insane… and any invitations arriving at Darcy house included them all. Lawd!!

This Caroline was as dense as mud and didn’t understand half of what she heard and yet she thought she was so smart and understood Darcy completely. Everything Darcy or Bingley said, she filtered through her ‘Caroline’s rose-colored glasses’ filter and it came out completely different from what they intended. Her understanding was that she and Darcy would marry… period. It was a given. To her he seemed very close to proposing and she was simply waiting for him to step up to the mark. OMG! Could she be any more insane? Darcy wanted nothing to do with her and tried at every turn to discourage her. She just smiled and went on thinking that they were completely in agreement with each other. I really grew tired of being in her head and soon developed a headache.

Caroline’s friend Lady Amesbury seemed to be pushing Stephen Tryphon toward Caroline. Everywhere Caroline went… she saw Tryphon. What was Lady Amesbury up to? I suspected that Tryphon had ulterior motives of his own. This was not only telegraphed loudly but was written in the clouds in huge letters. However, he conducted himself above reproach other than becoming a bit overly friendly and stretching the constraints of propriety with her. My suspicions screamed that he was after her dowry.

The ending felt like when I was a kid and taking a test and the warning buzzer sounded for the last few minutes left in the session. I would then hurry to finish and mark anything in order to not have any blank answers. That was the way the ending felt. It was rushed… didn’t make any sense and was disappointing. I kept putting this down and would read something else. I always picked it back up as I refused to shelve this as DNF [did-not-finish]. I will admit it was close. I finally speed read the rest of the book. I had to get to the end so I could see what happened. Once there, I simply threw up my hands in disgust. WTC [what-the-crap]? I didn’t like this version of Caroline nor did I like this story.

I volunteered to read an unedited galley from the publisher via Netgalley. The views expressed are my own. Estimated pub date November 23, 2018