Another Weird Wednesday

Well it's been an unusual week to say the least. As most of you know, because last year was my own unadulterated version of Hell, I have been spending an awful lot of time using my Kindle Unlimited Membership and reading a whole load of Romance novels (some of which are great and some aren't) and also indulging in many, many Pride & Prejudice Variations. Now I admit that this is a really guilty pleasure and I really adore some of the novels/novellas are really quite good, The Kidnapping of Elizabeth Bennet' and The Ruin of Elizabeth Bennet both of which I enjoyed immensely.

Another good novel is Fair Stands The Wind which is one of the better novels [although the cover is an abomination and I so wish that the author would get a professional cover artist to make a better one.]

And then there are the variations which are, to put it bluntly, odd and those that fall into the strange category. Lost To The Ocean could fall into either or both. It begins with Wickham attempting to abduct Georgiana, Elizabeth witnesses this and is also taken while Colonel Fitzwilliam is gravely injured. So far so good. Both women are forced onto a ship which encounters a storm and is wrecked. Both Lizzy and Georgiana are washed up on the shores of France (they being the heroines of the story - and also being gifted with enough plot armour to survive anything.) Both women survive with minimal injuries and are taken in by a French woman sympathetic to the British while they wait for rescue.

Darcy, post haste travels to France to seek his sister and Miss Bennet. He finds them and they return home (they find out that while Mrs Younge has survived, she is seriously ill with a fever and is likely to die. They (can't remember if it's just Darcy, or all of them) decide to leave her in France and she'll have to bear the consequences of her actions. When they get home, Bingley proposes to Jane and Darcy follows suit with Elizabeth.

At this point things start to get strange, I mean really strange. First Caroline tries to insinuate herself into Darcy's bed, but is thwarted by her brother. Bingley then tells Caroline that he's had enough of her bad behaviour and that he's banishing her to Scarborough,. When he leaves her, Bingley summons Caroline's maid to help her pack. Caroline doesn't want to pack and pushes her maid, her maid hits her head {on the corner of a dressing table I think} and dies. When the men come in and find Caroline in complete denial that the young woman is dead, Caroline goes completely batshit crazy and picking up a shard of glass from the shattered vase on the floor, drives it into Darcy's chest.

Caroline is forcibly removed to another room where her sister attempts to calm her down, at this point Caroline is still ranting that she's going to marry Darcy and when Louisa attempts to remonstrate with her, Caroline takes 2 loaded pistols (loaded? Really? Who keeps loaded pistols in a box under the bed?) The sisters grapple with them and both die. Okay, I hear you say, a little on the odd side, but mostly okay - it's just possible that you might keep a brace of loaded pistols close at hand if you didn't feel safe - but to be honest, Caroline Bingley never struck me that way. Jane and Bingley marry, Darcy and Elizabeth marry. Lady Catherine isn't a dragon and everything's okay. It is at this point that the book doesn't just go off the rails, it takes a flying leap into full blown craziness.

Darcy and Elizabeth get home and Darcy persuades Elizabeth to learn to ride. While on this ride, someone shoots at her. Then Elizabeth is badly injured when a carriage overturns and she suffers a concussion and breaks her arm. Then as Darcy and Elizabeth get out of the carriage, they find that there's a servant holding them at gunpoint and this servant was either a relation or a friend of Mrs Younge who, while dying of a fever in France, wrote to this person and they got a job at Permberley with the express purpose of bringing Elizabeth/Darcy down. To add to this weirdness, Hurst, now a widower, falls in love with Mary and they decide to marry. That seemed very odd to me, and it was at this point that I started skipping pages just to finish the damn novel and at one point I wished that someone would put 10 barrels of gunpowder in the cellars at Pemberley and blow the house and characters to smithereens, just to put me out of my misery.

The novel went on and on and on and it became quite frankly, tedious. I realise that Miss Schertz wanted to tell everyone's story and give everyone a happy ending (obviously she has not heard of the ambiguous ending, or the cliffhanger ending) but surely she should know by know, 'Brevity is the soul of wit.' She could have cut 30,000 words from this novel and not lost anything.

Now I've had my mid-week rant about the quality of some Pride & Prrejudice writing, I shall leave you and try and post something up for Friday. Can't promise anything though.