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The collection includes A Darcy Christmas by Sharon Lathan, Christmas Present by Amanda Grange, and Mr. Darcy's Christmas Carol by Carolyn Eberhart.
As I'm not really a Jane Austen fan and have not read Pride and Prejudice, but I did watch the BBC's 1995 production of Pride and Prejudice. Based on that "research" I feel that these authors did a good job of being faithful to the universe.
(If you are wondering why I had this ebook on my Nook since I'm not an Austen fan. I pickup the Friday Free ebook from Barnes and Noble and this was the feature ebook one week).
In Mr. Darcy's Christmas Carol by Carolyn Eberhart , the first story in the collection, Jane Austen meets Charles Dickens. Ironically, I decided this year to read Dickens's A Christmas Carol (read my review). I had just read the first Stave when I picked up A Darcy Christmas and I did a double take as Mr. Darcy's Christmas Carol begins the same way as Dickens's classic. And I do mean word for word. The similarities continued for the majority of the book. I will also assume that the parts that I knew should have been in Pride and Prejudice (Darcy's proposal and Elizabeth's refusal) were identical. I did feel that creatively this was a bit of a lazy way of writing the story. I expect it in fan fiction, but not in a published book. Though, I guess there is nothing legally wrong as presumably the copyright on these novels have expired.
Christmas Present by Amanda Grange was short and enjoyable, though somewhat forgettable. If you want a glimpse into what the future may hold for the Darcys then you will enjoy this story.
It was the last story in the collection, A Darcy Christmas by Sharon Lathan, that really made me feel that this was more of a collection of fan fiction stories. One of the tropes of fan fiction is the infusion of sex in a story that the original lacked. While the sex was not overly descriptive and therefore not a full blown lemon, it had enough citrus to be a slice. (If you don't read fan fiction: lemons are sex scenes). In addition, this "short story" was a collection of Christmas scenes, or in fan fiction language: one-shots.
I read fan fiction so I'm not against it, but it is not what I'm expecting in a published novel or collection. I'm also not against derivative works of fiction. I recently listened to the audio book version of Longbourn by Jo Baker and I really liked this story about the people below stairs in the Pride and Prejudice universe. It didn't feel like fan fiction.
A Darcy Christmas will satisfy Darcy and Elizabeth fans that need more than what Austen provided.
Buy A Darcy Christmas at Amazon
available formats: ebook and print (290 pages)
published: October 2010 by Sourcebooks Landmark
ISBN13: 9781402258053
genre: romance
source: B&N
read: December 2015
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