Mr. Darcy, Vampyre

Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grange

Grade: C

Profanity: None that I can remember...

Graphic content (sex, murder,etc.): A little violence... nothing bad

** WARNING: This review is spoiler-ish if you've never read Pride and Prejudice **

So I was getting ready to type up my review of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister when I realized I never posted this one... oops! So here goes. Hope I can remember everything! ; )

Since Pride and Prejudice is my favorite book, and I'm such a huge fan of the Twilight series, I was really looking forward to reading Mr. Darcy, Vampyre. I mean, if you combined Mr. Darcy and Edward Cullen, you would have the perfect man... besides my husband, of course!! (Love you, Baby (who doesn't read my blog so it's all good)) My cousin Summer (who by the way just started her very own blog, so go check it out here) told me about this book, so I went and picked it up several weeks ago and had it in my huge "To Read" pile for a while. But I finally started it, and...

... I was pretty disappointed from the get-go. : (  I know it's not really fair to try and compare this book to Pride and Prejudice, but if you're going to write something based on another book's characters, you should expect that, I think. And the words just didn't flow as smoothly as Pri... ok I'm going to start abbreviating these titles... as smoothly as PP.

Another big problem I had with MDV was the character of Elizabeth Bennet... I mean Elizabeth Darcy. (In case you didn't know, this book takes place after their wedding). Oh, which reminds me that I didn't put a summary up there. Ok, I'll give you what's printed on the back of my copy of the book, which also happens to be the Prologue:

     My dearest Jane,

            My hand is trembling as I write this letter. My nerves are

        in tatters and I am so altered that I believe you would not

        recognise me. The past two months have been a night-

       marish whirl of strange and disturbing circumstances, and

       the future...

            Jane, I am afraid.

            If anything happens to me, remember that I love you and

       that my spirit will always be with you, though we may never

       see each other again. The world is a cold and frightening place

       where nothing is as it seems.

           It was all so different a few short months ago. When I

       awoke on my wedding morning, I thought myself the happiest

       woman alive...



Ok, so back to Elizabeth... She was just such a wuss in this book!! And worse than that... she came across as foolish and ridiculously naive a lot of the time. : ( The PP Elizabeth was strong and independent. She was intelligent and had a quick wit... They were just such different people that it was off-putting for me.

I will admit that the story itself kept me pretty drawn in the whole time. But the apex didn't seem to come until nearly the end of the book... And the ending was pretty unbelievable. Even for a vampire book.

So I'm not sure if I'd recommend this novel to anyone or not... It wasn't terrible, but there was a lot about it that I didn't like. I have heard that Grange's Mr. Darcy's Diary is much better than MDV, so I still plan on reading it eventually... We'll see how it goes!

So, have any of you read this book? What did you think??