A Little Whimsical in His Civilities by J. Marie Croft
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In this lively and inventive JAFF variation of Pride and Prejudice, Darcy and Bingley have returned to Hertfordshire after Lydia and Wickham have married. However, there is another assembly and our heroes head there to win their ladies fair.
A Little Whimsical in His Civilities is told completely in first person by Darcy. Apparently, our very taciturn gentleman finds it difficult to converse, but that is possibly because his mind is going a mile a minute. Croft makes a note in the introduction that Darcy even attempts to use words of four syllables when just thinking.
The humor of our story is in the way poor Mr. Darcy takes himself to task over every single step he takes. He is very nervous and reluctant to say or do the wrong thing, which of course leads him to say and do the wrong thing. Darcy reminds himself to smile, and frightens bystanders.
Elizabeth is, of course, his objective for the evening as he so wants to impress her with his changes. He wishes to dance with her and sweep her off her feet. To help improve her impression of him, Darcy asks several women to dance, and just seems to keep missing our dear girl. Since we hear the story only from Darcy's thoughts, we don't know what Elizabeth is thinking. However, I am sure she is finding him amusing and frustrating.
Being inside Darcy's mind for the evening definitely helps us to see some of the self-conscious boy behind the Master of Pemberley, and this boy is charmingly desperate to woo and win Elizabeth. I am certain I ruin nothing by saying we have our Happily Ever After at the conclusion, and we are relieved for our dear boy.
Very funny, although sometimes you want to just smack the guy. Very sweet and silly and definitely recommended for JAFF lovers.
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Ahhhh, this sounds adorable and fun. I like the way you describe it, Barb.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this book just last week.
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