Me and Mr Darcy - Alexandra Potter

** - a tired rehash of one of the classics that many people have actually read. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Austen-inspired silliness; I loved Bridget Jones. But this is a Pride and Prejudice retelling that feels compelled to quote the bits it's echoing and then explain exactly how the two plots are similar. I have a brain. This assumed I did not. And the historical details were abominably wrong. Steer clear!

Emily Albright has had a streak of horrendously bad luck in the dating world. Her last several dates have been with creeps, and when her flaky friend (and employee) Stella attempts to drag her along on a resort vacation in Mexico over New Year's, she fears she'll encounter more of the same. So to get out of it, she books a last-minute Jane Austen tour through England - after all, who wouldn't rather spend her time looking for Mr. Darcy? And for Emily, that dream is about to become all-too-real. Through some odd coincidence, she finds herself face to face (and eventually dating) the real Mr. Darcy, and she also finds herself in the midst of a modern-day reenactment with the irritating and arrogant journalist Spike who has tagged along for the tour in search of a story…

Honestly, this was supposed to be a guilty pleasure, so my expectations weren't terribly high. But with so many Jane Austen-inspired works making their roaring debut in the past few years, I certainly would have hoped that the author could have done better than this. For starters, although Emily is supposed to run a bookstore and be both very intelligent and so enamored of Pride and Prejudice that she's read it practically every year, she apparently doesn't realize that it was NOT set during Victorian times… Major, MAJOR faux-pas for me and presumably every Regency-romance-devouring reader. Darcy = Regency. Just so you know.

Also, if Darcy is being presented as such a product of his times and views (to the point where he annoys our heroine with his lack of emancipated thought), you would think he would NOT be romping around after dark on moonlit rides and picnics with Emily completely unchaperoned. The entire 'dating' scenario just completely boggles my mind - Darcy is proper, Darcy wouldn't want to be hoodwinked into marriage, Darcy would certainly not flout every single stricture of propriety for a girl he's met once or twice! But I could have forgiven the complete inappropriateness of it all - except that the author tries to turn him into an actual man of the period to have her heroine realize how much better her modern-day version is. Bleargh.

In further idiocy, the author seems to assume that the rest of us are unfamiliar with Pride and Prejudice (though why you would want to buy a book all about Mr. Darcy's hotness if you didn't really know the story-line, I don't know) as she has her character suddenly expound on how she suddenly understands exactly how Elizabeth was feeling at this particular juncture because *gasp* something practically word for word the same has just happened on the tour bus. Having the extremely obvious parallels and high school student Cliff Notes -worthy reflections on the literature itself spelled out in excruciating detail is hardly my idea of fun reading. I'm not stupid - though our dear heroine certainly seems to be. It's amazing that she claims to have reread P&P every year, since she certainly doesn't seem to remember even the basics of the plot - and she certainly doesn't seem to have reflected on it even a little. So if you don't want everything spoon-fed to you in a pretty lame modern copy of Pride and Prejudice, I suggest you give this one a miss.

Son of the Morning - Linda Howard

*** 1/2 - Although billed as a romance novel, this seemed like more of a straight-up parallel-stories thriller to me. The focus is more on Grace herself, not on any growing relationship between Grace and Black Niall - largely, I reckon, because for most of the novel they're separated by several hundred years. But regardless of the hows and whys and the fact that a relationship does form, I wouldn't shelve this with my romances - and I wouldn't let that genre label scare you off from reading it if you're not into romance.

Grace St. John works for a private archaeological foundation as a translator and interpreter of old documents. Her latest project is a cache of 14th century documents about the Knights Templar and a mysterious powerful treasure that completely fascinate and baffle her - but she never would have considered that someone would be willing to commit murder to get their hands on them. When she and her family are targeted by those hungry for the power the legend promises, Grace needs all of her wits to survive and discover the truth behind the Templars' secret and the mysterious connection she feels with its fierce guardian, Black Niall.

This is another one of those books where the blurb on the back really gives away too much about stuff that doesn't happen until the last third or so. A pity, too, because the writing would otherwise make the first half of the book (puzzling out the identity and secrets) much more suspenseful and intriguing (think the page-turning quality of the Da Vinci Code, but with better writing).

The technology is a bit dated, the romantic side of things seemed a bit rushed to me (but I was expecting a romance), and the major premise requires some pretty serious suspension of disbelief - but I knew that from the beginning. After all, I personally ran across this in a time-travel thread - and it says that on the back of the book too. But the book was gripping and a lot darker than I had expected. Suspense abounded, some of it downright heart-pounding. And it's about the Templars - I LOVE the Templars. So I thought it was a good read - though one that I would put in the airplane read category, and one that I would have enjoyed more had I come into it with different expectations.

Well-Schooled in Murder - Elizabeth George

*** 1/2 - In this third of the Inspector Lynley novels, George touches on the issue of child pornography in a way that I greatly disagreed with. Not that she condones, or even goes into detail - just the way in which she has her characters react truly disappointed me. I've felt such respect for Lynley in other novels, and here he really let me down. I'm sure for others this would be less of a sticking point, but for me it diminished the enjoyment I otherwise would have gotten from the book. And it's the main reason for the low-ish rating from my perspective. Because it's my blog. I don't have to be objective.


The peace at elite private school Bredgar Chambers is shattered when the corpse of one of its students is found dumped naked in a graveyard some ways away. In an attempt to hush up the investigation and protect its reputation, teacher John Corntel turns to his own former school chum Inspector Lynley to launch a discreet investigation into the death. But the more time Lynley and Havers spend at the school, the more it becomes apparent that something evil has been going on within its ivy-covered walls. And little Matthew Whatley had stumbled into something much too big for him to handle…

This is the third book in the Inspector Lynley mystery series. These are best read in order to follow the twists and turns of the detectives personal lives (here Lynley's unhappy yearning for Helen, St. James' difficulties with his wife, and Havers' attempts to juggle her work and caring for increasingly senile parents). George does a wonderful job both bringing her characters to life as real people with families and emotions outside of their work and of creating a gripping story surrounding the murder. The murderer came as a surprise to me, though there were a number of clues (and of course, red herrings) that indicated the outcome. All told, I thought it fit together very well from a mystery standpoint, and I loved the little glimpses into the murdered boy's family and their grieving process. It also made me glad I never had to go to any sort of boarding school...

Note on the movie version: They really simplified this a lot - cutting out a lot of the subplots and a lot of the twists, but I think they still really got to the heart of the story nonetheless. Plus they sidestepped the aspect that I found so disturbing, so I liked it even better. Best of all, they had Henry Cavill (*swoon*) cast as Chas Quilter, described in the book as looking like a seraph - the scene with him and his friend Brian at the organ is beautifully shot and quite evocative. I recommend the Inspector Lynley series.


Interested in the others? Here are my reviews:


Book 5: For the Sake of Elena

The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose - Mary Hooper

***1/2 - It's pretty good young adult historical fiction, but it's just not sure where its market is. I can't resist it because I love Nell Gwynn, but someone without an interest in the time period already won't necessarily find one in this. For me it held too much fairy tale and not enough reality. That said, Hooper is still high on my list of young adult authors to watch.

When her stepmother kicks teenaged Eliza Rose out of the house, Eliza travels to London to find her father, who is helping to rebuild the city after the Great Fire. But unworldly Eliza soon finds herself locked in the city's notorious Clink Prison, struggling to survive until she is taken under the wing of first Ma Gwynn and then her daughter - pretty, witty Nell.

I really enjoyed the setting of Restoration England, and I just adore Nell Gwynn. The story came at the perfect moment for me as I saw Nell's portrait at the National Portrait Gallery in London and was living about a block away from one of the (several) reputed birthplaces of Nell. But the writing and the story are a bit bumpy. Too simple for an older teen and a bit bawdy (after all there are a lot of prostitutes hanging around) for the younger set.

But all of that wouldn't have troubled me except for the very Pudd'nhead Wilson like switched identity story. The highborn behave nobly despite their circumstances and the lowborn are vulgar and cruel regardless of their upbringing. That seemed far too fairy-tale and not nearly real enough to have its place in a historical novel. The truth was revealed much too slowly - I had already guessed pages ago.

But although the heroine struck me as a goody-twoshoes and her love interest quite insipid, I did enjoy the setting, the historical characters, and the period detail (highwaymen, the theater, the garden parties). It's certainly worth a read to spend time with Nell - but this probably isn't the place to first meet the characters.

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters - G.W. Dahlquist

***1/2 - This book is great fun as long as you take it for what it is, a penny-dreadful. It's implausible, lurid, perplexing, and without much in the way of explanation of the Mysterious Cabal. But I love the cover. And I love the Victorian-style advertisements on the inside (reminds me of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen without all the literary in-jokes). It dragged at times; it's not going to go on my list of favorites, but it's definitely worth a read if the following appeals to you:

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters is a Victorian-esque penny-dreadful all the way. Our main characters are Miss Temple, an independently wealthy young woman just jilted and looking for adventure; Cardinal Chang, the neither religious nor Chinese thug-for-hire opium addict representing the seedier side of the city; and Doctor Svenson, an acclaimed doctor-turned-diplomat with the thankless job of keeping an eye on a dissolute Germanic prince before his upcoming nuptials to a leading industrialist's daughter. These three unlikely allies stumble across each other as they investigate a mysterious cabal, bent on using an alchemical 'process' to control the minds and actions of those less fortunate - and how else would such domination be shown in a Victorian-era penny-dreadful but sex?

The entire novel is a series of breaking and enterings, abductions, fist- and knifefights, narrow escapes and various conspirators on both sides inexplicably allowing their nemeses to live rather than simply shooting or stabbing them and having done with it. And that very implausibility is a part of the novel's charm. All told, I think this probably works better in the serial format in which it was originally published. As it is, the chapters seem too long, the episodes quite similar, and the actual explanations as to what is going on during the 'process' too sketchy. And each of them ends on a doozy of a cliff-hanger, which made it difficult to find a good breaking-off point at night or on the tube...

Despite these faults, Dahlquist certainly knows how to keep the pages turning, and more importantly, I really came to care about the characters (though less so for Miss Temple as she seemed to require an awful lot of rescuing). I wanted them to miraculously escape, thwart the cabal, and live happily ever after, and I was willing to put up with a lot of James Bond plot-twists to get there. And given the cliffhanger of an ending, I'm also going to be picking up the next book in the series to see how Cardinal Chang and co. are faring...