Back in the Saddle after Break

I took a bit of an Easter break the last week–I’m realizing now that I should have announced it beforehand, but since it just kind of happened, and then went longer than I expected, here I am.

I’m queuing up some new shows, movies, and books I want to cover in my Monday Review space, but I would love to get some suggestions for something else I should watch/read.

On a particularly brief note, the original movie version of Fever Pitch (1997, staring Colin Firth and talking about soccer instead of baseball) is on Netflix now.

I watched it.

It had some okay observations on the nature of sports fan-dom and relationships in general, but it was not romantic in the least. If I did a full review for SMTR, it would get a one-arrow.

Book Review: Darcy’s Passions

Darcy’s Passions
Novel by Regina Jeffers
A retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice

So in case you haven’t noticed the ballooning words over in my tag cloud, I’ve been on a Jane Austen kick lately. When I wasn’t able to find the retelling of Persuasion I was looking for, I decided to investigate the author by settling for the only one of her books I could find in our local library: Darcy’s Passions by Regina Jeffers.

And I do mean settle. This is an awful book.

The Premise

I think everyone with even a passing interest in romance knows the plot for Pride & Prejudice (if not, check out the Pride & Prejudice Wikipedia page) and this is a retelling told almost entirely from Darcy’s point of view. I say “almost” because the author frequently slip-n-slides between her characters’ heads, all the while pretending she’s sticking only with Darcy. Also, Jeffers gives us almost 100 pages after the second proposal. Sound like a smorgasbord? Imagine how you’d feel after eating two entire double-fudge chocolate cakes in less than a half hour. Groan.

The Pain

Let’s breeze by the wrong word choices (things frequently “peak” her characters’ interest and one even says “perspective bride”) and go straight to the fact that after the second proposal the real Darcy and Elizabeth vanish from the pages (probably to go enjoy each other in private) and leave behind two sappy, chatty, PDA-prone doppelgangers. My mush-tolerance got maxed out some 90 pages before the end of the book, but I kept reading just to see how deep the rabbit hole went. The answer? Pretty darn far.

The Payoff

When you ignore those word choices, and Jeffers’ tendency to write like the academic she is, the parts of the novel that mirror Austen’s plot can be entertaining. I enjoyed seeing more of the friendship between Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam.

Yeah, that’s about it.

Rating:

1 out of 5 arrows