Helen HalsteadBesprekingen

The heroine meets a very amiable man while she is out walking by the pier.They chat for a while then parts,and the heroine goes back to the cottage she is renting with her crippled brother who recently returned from the war and her vain and fashionable sister.

She tries to find out the mans adress...but...

It turns out no one knows of him or have seen him.Of course she wants to find out the truth of it so she enlists her brother in helping to inquire in the whereabouts of the man.


Her brother and sister thinks she is going insane because she keeps persisting in seeing this mysterious man.

Soon even the heroine begins to think she might have imagined this gentleman.Conjured up a suitable suitor to avoid dealing with her reality as a spinster without too many prospects.

At times I started to suspect the heroine was one of those unreliable narrators

And even that she had actually gone mad.

The author has this way of writing that makes one uneasy at times and she offsets this beautifully by showing the mundane side of life in the regency era.It heightens the suspense when others also begin to see the heroine as a little bit odd.

A suspenseful read. I wouldnt call it a gothic precisely but it has shades of it. I would recommend reading it through to the end to find out the truth.

There is a very good reason why fairy tales end with "and they lived happily ever after" - ever after is boring! This was too much like pulp Regency romances I've read during fits of boredom - where the smart, vivacious heroine tries to gain acceptance with "The Ton". (If you like these, Julie Garwood's are the best in my opinion.) I had to force myself to finish, then found out what I should have done is read the epilogue - it satisfies all your curiosity about the author's interpretation of what happened to the Bennett sisters.

One of the saddest things about a book where one has learned to love the characters is the end because they are lost to you forever. Helen Halstead does a good job of writing the story of not only the Darcy's after their marriage, but the entire Bennet clan. There are no vampires or other strange occurrences - it is simply a continuance of the story by a woman who adores Jane Austen. If you loved Pride and Prejudice, you'll find this book worth reading.

I'm a fan of austen inspired books and found this to be one of the better Pride and Prejudice sequels. Although she’s no Austen, Halstead remains true to the characters Austen created and writes in the in style and language of the period.½

I'm a sucker for the faux Austen, and I love to hate the bad ones more than I enjoy reading the okay ones. This one was okay. (Like aircraft landing on carriers, no faux Austen is ever rated higher than "okay.") The author got details of Regency life correct (no one said "okay," as happened in another faux Austen) as far as non-expert I noticed.

Its faults lie in its very form. A faux Austen cannot have the dramatic tension necessary to a successful novel because the characters we love best resolved their conflict in the original. The reader wants to spend more time with Elizabeth and Darcy but any new conflict -- infertility, jealousy, awkwardness, Pemberley blown up in a new Gunpowder plot or because an unhinged caretaker didn't release steam from the boilers* -- seems farfetched or melodramatic or disloyal. The reader might wish to see Kitty, Mary, Georgiana, Anne, or even Caroline suitably married or at least happy, but the author must short-shrift either them (the unmarried sources of suitable Austenesque tension) or Elizabeth and Darcy, about whom the reader cares most. Also, it's difficult to balance Charlotte's prudence about matrimony with the contemporary reader's desire for better-rounded heroines.

The least I expect from a faux Austen is textual accuracy. Mary is the third sister, not the fourth. Darcy's first name is Fitzwilliam. Kent and Derbyshire are more than a morning's travel distant. Halstead did nothing so egregious, but she took characters in directions I would not have. She depicts Charlotte as not delighting in the Darcy match, which is textually false, after which the Collinses drop from view with no mention of the olive branch, and I do not think either Charlotte or Elizabeth would so blithely drop the friendship (though it would alter). The Gardiners do not appear on scene at all and are mentioned only in passing. Anne de Bourgh not only lives, she marries and manages not to die in childbed. Lady Catherine's machinations I ignored.

Mention of "fish pie" made me smile -- a nod to _A Room with a View_? Another reference maybe wasn't textually likely -- Caroline Bingley is not the sort to go to Brussels as the English mass against Napoleon -- but I did like the parallel thus drawn between her and Becky Sharp, whom she certainly resembles. Halstead pasted on a epilogue so the reader gets to see Mr. Bennet with his many grandchildren, which is nice, but I guess the Deathly Hallows epilogue kindly** ruined the x-years-later epilogue for me (though for Wickham to die, insane with syphilis, in a madhouse is satisfying).

* _The Shining_. The Kubrick film ending is much more satisfying, in that the hotel will live to kill again, as well as less far-fetched.
** I just reread _All the Pretty Horses_.

Review @ (http://knightlee.livejournal.com)

Picking up where Pride and Prejudice left off this humorous novel starts off with the double wedding and it’s immediate aftermath. Lizzie gets whisked off to London society and faces the Ton who find her wit and sparkle just as endearing as Mr. Darcy did, in fact some find it a little too endearing, culminating in making a very powerful ally in the person of the Marchioness of Englebury. The story of London society and the workings and machinations of the upper classes of the time was engaging and often laugh out loud funny as the author kept to the tone of Jane Austen’s sardonic wit. The characters not only stayed in character but were developed throughout the book and grew and changed in very believable ways.

Unfortunately this book did end up introducing almost too many new characters whose parts drove the plot for a greater part of the book. Also I saw some people complain that Mr. Darcy was too withdrawn, but the thing is he always was and I think proved that he had changed but not drastically. Being a social butterfly would have been too much of a turn around from Pride and Prejudice. On the other hand, he did brood a little more than I thought he would have. Some people complained that he was controlling but I think he was just acting the part of a man of the time would when it came to those situations with other men and his wife.

All in all I'm going to rate this book fairly high. I read it aloud to my husband and we both found the plot humorous and engaging, and the ending for Lydia and Wickham very fitting. The storyline with Kitty though was almost too much and that combined with a few other missteps in Mr. Darcy and Mary's character (don't want to give too much away) is why this novel lost a star.

I really enjoyed this book, it was like a reunion, getting re-acquainted with all my old friends and family that I hadn't seen in a long time. Is it as good as Jane Austen's original - of course not! But, for anyone who can't get enough of P&P, I think they'll find this is a pretty good sequel. It kept me interested, it was not dull and it was fairly believable (particularly in what happens to Lydia in the end.) I recommend it.

http://ktleyed.blogspot.com/2008/12/mr-darcy-presents-his-bride-sequel-to.html

I thought this was an excellent book - well written and in a believable Austen style. Captured the style and humour of the original beautifully. It was entertaining to see what happened to the characters. Wickham in particular. Hope she writes another!!½

Mr. Darcy Presents His Bride awful. I chose this particular sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice because of the 3.5 stars rating on Amazon.com. While it did receive a review for one star and four votes for two stars, I figure that the eleven reviews for five stars would be a better inclination of the type of book it would be.

Boy, was I wrong.

Halstead felt the need to remind the reader of what happened in the “prequel” to her sequel, something I found annoying and unnecessary. I would assume that if you are reading Jane Austen FanFiction, you would already know who the characters are and how they came to know/love one another.

The fact that Charlotte did not “approve” of Elizabeth’s marriage to Darcy coupled with her and Elizabeth’s friendship dropping to the wayside quickly left me disenfranchised with the novel and struggling to complete it. And the other plot lines failed to captivate me and I rapidly lost interest even before the Charlotte/Elizabeth debacle.

I wish I could return this book to the bookstore because I never plan on reading it again. Except that would probably be a little too tacky.

There is a whole cottage industry of sequels to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Some are good and some are not so good. This book falls in the "good" category. The flavor and voice used by Halstead is much like the original and is quite fun to read. I have one slight quibble. Austen's Mrs. Bennett seemed to me to be a bumbling, uncouth, but well-meaning woman. Halstead's Mrs. Bennett seems a little cruel and uncaring. I don't think this is what the author meant, but it is what came across.

The other characters ring quite true. Even the little spats Elizabeth and Darcy have seem to be a natural result of their personalities as described by Austen. After all, marriage doesn't mean that lives will immediately run smoothly.

All in all, this is a highly recommended book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

well done

I usually hesitate to read Austen sequels, but I had to read this for work and, although I had to admit it, I actually enjoyed it. If you can get past the fact that no one can write as well as Jane Austen, it's a fun story and not completely unbelievable.

Genre - Historical fiction
Doorways - character, setting
This book is a sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Very difficult to emulate a classic, but I think the book is written in a very similar vein. Whilst it is entertaining it also has a few surprises for the reader as they follow Elizabeth and Darcey on their journey through married life and London society