Georgiana Darcy’s Diary: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Continued
by Anna Elliott
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
At first I was very excited to read another P&P continuation. However, the more I read, the more dissapointed I became. The plot I interesting at the beginning, but being less than halfway through, I had no problems figuring out how it would end.
Most of the characters are fairly “in-character”, but I can’t believe the huge changes Georgiana has gone through. The same with Lady Catherine and Caroline Bingley (what were they doing at Pemberley given her history with the Darcys?!) – it would serve the book better if the author could introduce other characters in their place instead.
The language is not anywhere near the classic Austen style. There are even some phrases that are used today (esp. in American English), but they were nonexistent at that time.
Many characters act as if they travelled there from future with a time machine (drunk Wickham, col. Fitzwilliam’s anger rage – to name a few). If members of such a family would act this way in the beginning of 19th century, they would be all deemed as highly improper and scandalous, as the author often seems to forget the idea of chaperones and proper social conduct in those times. Even the shy, gentle Georgiana seems to forget what is proper and describes almost everything and everyone without the smallest dose of respect, calling her suitors “idiots” or making not-so-funny remarks about how someone is fat and sweaty.
All in all, it is one of (not many) generally well-written P&P sequels, but unfortunately, not really believable as a whole. If you read P&P recently and then follow up with this book, you can clearly see huge differences between them. “Georgiana Darcy’s Diary” could work great as a standalone Historical Romance type of novel, if one would just change all the character names and place it in, let’s say, America.
