Lady Catherine's Necklace

After my first try at a Jane Austen sequel (Mr Darcy's Daughter's) was a horrendous disappointment, I was very hesitant to try another. Thank Goodness, I did! Very pleasant surprise. This book was very entertaining. Joan Aiken did a wonderful job of writing in this story about Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her daughter, Anne. I liked that the character of Lady Catherine was unchanged, still very unpleasant and overbearing.

A novel by Joan Aiken, one of my favorite writers. It's a continuation of Pride and Prejudice, and I know, I know, one oughtn't mess about with a classic, but...This one is just really good fun, and Aiken is talented far beyond the skills of other Austen emulators. The story centers around the stuffy, opinionated Lady Catherine de Bourgh, disappointed that her nephew Darcy has gone and married that Bennett woman...and what with carriage accidents, relatives visiting, inheritances, long-secreted scandals, lost heirs and plots within plots, we're in for a lively, pleasureable read. No, it's not Austen. It can't be Austen, and she doesn't claim so. It's a modern novel with Austen-esque sensibilities, and Aiken is really good at 'em. She takes minor characters and fleshes them out, fantasizing over what happened after the happily-ever-after endings of the original novels.Aiken has written a shelf-ful of Regency romances, all of which are clever, entertaining, and vastly better than anything one finds in the romance paperback section these days. And her Austen homages are uniformly excellent--my favorite is probably Jane Fairfax, the Emma story told from a very different point of view.