The Longbourn Will:  A Pride and Prejudice Variation by Carolyn Whyte came out September, 2015 and I read it in October 2015.  I enjoyed reading this book.  I read it on a Friday evening and while the order of the events had an amazing amount of convenient timing, I forgave most of it because it read smoothly.

There were, however, 4 issues I have with this novel.  I will attempt to have as few spoilers as possible, but there’s always a risk of spoilers when reading reviews.  Please note that while I am attempting not to spoiler the book I am reviewing, I will include spoilers from Pride and Prejudice as necessary.

1. The Title and Synopsis

The title is apt, but when compared to the synopsis, I didn’t know what to expect.  What does not accepting “no” have to do with a will?  That’s set up early on for Mr. Collins, but it has little to do with the overall situations mentioned.  The will is much more important than the summary implies.  Accepting “no’s” is not the tying thread for this series.  Elizabeth says “no” a lot, but that’s not the same as not accepting a refusal.  And honestly, Elizabeth as an established character rejects people often.

The summary states, “Mr Wickham [is] stopped from showing more interest in Elizabeth by lack of fortune.  What if Wickham had proposed to Elizabeth before she knew his character?”  To me, that implies that Wickham may actually have more character depth than he revealed in the original novel.  Instead, I found myself more confused by the difference in the summary and his actual behavior within The Longbourn Will.

2. The Dashes

I accept dashes in place of addresses.  And by addresses, I literally mean the location of places and not people being addressed.  I would have preferred it if Whyte had made up addresses or at least used an ellipse.  Missives are not needed to be copied in their entirety and with an ellipse we can pretend that we’re being spared having to read niceties.

What I don’t like is that none of the regiments are referred to by number.  I googled it and couldn’t quickly determine whether or not the Meryton and Brighton regiments were labeled within Pride and Prejudice, but the dashes give the impression that Whyte made a note to see if the numbers were mentioned in the book later, but didn’t get around to it.  Once again, I think that fake numbers would have been preferable to “Oh, how handsome regiment – is!”  It reads like a disconnecting phone call.

3. The Last Chapter

I have no idea why the last chapter was written.  The ending of the second to last chapter was open ended and satisfying.  I can’t describe it without spoilers, but basically it was like, “We are happy even though we’re driving our families crazy.”  That matches the feeling of the Austen ending with an angry Catherine and a confused Mr. Bennet.

Instead though we got an extra chapter with very random events full of Shakespeare level deus ex machina.  It is the most out of character chapter and to me, it feels like the author wanted to end on an exciting high note that bewildered instead of impressed.

4. The Last Page/Sentence

This is the primary reason why I wrote this review in the first place.  My God, but I hate the last sentence of the book.  It’s obviously a plug for a different story written by the same author.  I checked, and yes, there’s a two volume series based on that exact idea.

The ending has no purpose and if it weren’t a plug it would just be a very poorly written ending.  What kind of a person ends a book with, “The side character wonders what might have happened if his life had been nothing like it had been.”  I phrase it that way because of the fourth wall, but to me, it read like, “The character wonders what the book would have been like if it had a different plot.”

Final Thoughts

The Longbourn Will is a fun romp.  It’s an exciting variation with more screen time for characters like Colonel Fitzwilliam and Georgiana.  It hangs on the soap opera side of dramatic, but has a good resolution.  I just would not read any of the last chapter and hope that it is removed or changed if Whyte ever prints a physical edition.

I have a very mixed opinion of published Pride and Prejudice variations.  However, it’s hard to deny that Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen inspires many people and the fact that they can get their works published results in a better average fic than many other series can boast.  I read this copy using the Kindle Lending Library.