2.5 rounded up to 3 stars
By the middle of this book, I felt like throwing my kindle across the room. I had noted other reviews that rated this highly but indicated that it really wasn't much like Pride and Prejudice. I believe I'm usually pretty open-minded and accept major alterations to canon with an alternate P&P universe. The previous P&P-based books I have read by Mr. Underwood also colored pretty far outside the lines but bore enough resemblance to the source that I was okay with it. I assumed the same would be true here, but I was sorely disappointed.
Yes, we have Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters and her ridiculous mother and bookish father, and we have Fitzwilliam Darcy, and we have the estates of Longbourn and Netherfield and Pemberley, but the plot runs so far afield from the original that I can't believe the author wasn't honest enough to change the names. There is a Mr. Bingley, but he never even meets Jane Bennet, much less marry her. (We're told he marries a girl who looks almost exactly like her, so I suppose the implication is that if he HAD met Jane, she would have been his bride.) No Caroline Bingley or the Hursts. No Lady Catherine or Anne de Bourgh. There are lots of new characters instead. Elizabeth and Darcy never attend an assembly where she overhears him insult her. In fact, they first meet each other traveling in France with their fathers when she is 14 and young Fitzwilliam is about 21. She becomes close friends with Georgiana and also with Fitzwilliam. Elizabeth develops a girlish crush on him, and Fitzwilliam recognizes that she will be a remarkable young lady when she grows up. No pride, no prejudice here, folks. Wickham's contribution to the story is about the closest to the original, although he actually IS the vicar at Kympton.
In this incarnation, Mary, Kitty and Lydia are more sympathetic characters than Jane, and Charlotte is downright hateful. Elizabeth suffers a series of miserable experiences that start to read like the perils of Pauline. She is cornered and forcibly kissed by the disgusting Sir Clement in front of witnesses. When she refuses to marry him, she is locked into her room for months in an effort to force her to change her mind. After that particular crisis has passed, during a trial, Elizabeth is called as a witness and has to admit that she kissed him, and the attorney quickly calls her a slut and fortune hunter, which destroys her reputation in London and the environs of Pemberley. She becomes a social outcast. As a result, she and Darcy are not allowed near Georgiana, since he is not her legal guardian.
Darcy's story isn't any happier. He is a second son pursuing a military career, sent to India in 1780, seriously injured by an explosion in a battle where the British are defeated, and then is among those captured. He barely survives and is imprisoned for almost three years. He returns to England with a disfiguring facial scar and a serious case of PTSD. It doesn't take long before he's in a duel and on trial for murder.
The writing itself is good, though there are a few misspellings here and there. The historical detail is quite interesting. Although I love Regency romance, I usually don't fancy those that get too heavy into details and descriptions, but the scenes in India are well done here. I do enjoy the way the relationship between Darcy and Elizabeth is developed. Their misunderstanding/lack of communication is given sufficient motivation to be more believable than much of the rest of the plot. These two characters are also well drawn, although many of the other characters seem more stereotypical than credible.
Unfortunately, this just isn't a well constructed novel. I don't find a specific turning point. It just seems to be a chronology- a series of unrelated obstacles. Once one problem is overcome, another crops up, and then another, and then another, etc. Most of the obstacles are pretty over-the-top on the melodrama scale; this is angst-filled throughout.
The fact that the title and character names intentionally misled me into believing this would be based on Pride and Prejudice is what bothers me the most. This definitely is not.