Mr. Darcy, from Jane Austen's timeless classic Pride and Prejudice, is a world-wide heart throb. Ask any woman what man she would want, anyone from the world of fiction or reality, and Mr. Darcy is sure to be high on her list.
So you would think that meeting him would be a dream-come-true.
Emily Albright is the manager of a bookstore in New York City. When her best friend tries to convince her to spend Christmas vacation on an 18-30 party trip to Mexico, sensible Emily is horrified. Instead, she crams her suitcases full of books and flies to England for a Jane Austen literary tour.
As she makes a pilgrimage to places significant to Austen, like Winchester and Bath, Emily gets to know her tour-mates. Most of the women are decades older than her, but she forms close friendships with them. The one person she can't seem to get along with is Spike, a reporter from the Times writing a piece on why women love Mr. Darcy. Spike is rude, stubborn, opinionated . . . and cute.
Meanwhile, Emily meets the real Mr. Darcy. At first she is thrilled and smitten with him. Yet the more time that they spend together, the more she begins to realize that Mr. Darcy may not be all that she expected. After all, as romantic as it looks on paper or on the big screen, does anyone really want a man that is so intense all the time?
Author Alexandra Potter has created a charming addition to the world of Jane Austen with this novel. Her book is a modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, with much of the storyline echoing the well-known original. But it does much more than that. It looks at the legacy that Jane Austen has created, and how it has affected modern ideas of love and romance. It explores why we read and the role of literature in contemporary life.
Her writing is entertaining and competent. She did a good job of describing England through Emily's eyes without getting bogged down in too much description. The only time that she faltered, and this is a very minor flaw, is in the vocabulary. Emily points out differences in slang between the US and UK, but she often uses the UK terms for things (for example, biro for pen). As someone who has lived in both countries, that stood out to me. On the whole, though, it is a charming read. I would highly recommend it to Austen-fans and romantics everywhere.
