Search - Duty and Desire (Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman: Bk 2)

The first book in the series covers Pride and Prejudice through the Netherfield Ball and Christmas of that year. This second book covers the time between Christmas and Darcy's trip to Rosings Park. This covers a time when Darcy and Elizabeth do not see each other at all.

In the story, Darcy decided he needs to search for a suitable wife (to distract him from the thoughts of Elizabeth). The story takes him to the estate of a friend and a party of acquaintances and strangers. After a short time of infatuation with a young lady, the events take a tragic turn for the party.

The story didn't fit in with the Darcy I see in the original story. Some of the events, while not completely out of character, seem out of another time period. Aiden states she was imitating other Austen work, like Northanger Abbey. It really never seemed to work with Darcy's character.

Although I liked the first book, this one strayed too far from the original subjects for me. The only positive was that we do see how Darcy could come to the conclusion that character of a lady outweighs her position in life. The is never entirely clear in the original.

I really enjoyed the first book of the series, but was very disappointed with this book!! I honestly wouldn't recommend reading this book, it had many twists and turns that to me seemed very unrealistic and out of character.

So I heard that the reviews for this book were not good and I can clearly see why. The beginning isn't bad, it just follows Darcy as he prepares for Christmas at Pemberly with Georgianna and how changed she is when he arrives there. From the beginning, I knew Aidan was a Christian by how many Religious reference she made and how affected Darcy was by some sermons. Being a person of faith myself, I had no issues with Georgianna's... Radicalism. It seemed to suit her, in my opinion, and the relative goodness that seems to surround her in P&P. After Darcy leaves Pemberly, it all goes down hill. I don't want to ruin the book, so I'll try to go without too many spoilers.

Aidan's smart move was basically stating that Darcy needed to get married so he would forget Eliza. Makes sense to me for a "spin off". So he agrees to spend a week with some old College buddies and possible women. It's in this Gothic castle (which was a nice reference to Northanger Abbey, but really has no place in P&P.) Basically, she follows this Gothic theme and throws Darcy into a weird, Gothic, bloody weirdness that seriously has no place with the rest of the series. I had to stop reading about 3/4s of the way through. I understand the author was attempting to bring in that Gothic feel that Austen experimented with in Northanger Abbey, but they are two COMPLETELY different books and don't mesh well.

My recommendation? Don't buy it, just get it through PBS, read the first half and then once Darcy goes to the castle STOP and buy These Three Remain. The story remains the same, classic P&P tale so missing parts of the spin-off won't matter.

One last thing that really bothers me about this entire series: the nicknames. I couldn't, under any circumstances, see my Darcy AKA Colin Firth call another man "Dy" or put up with be called "Fitz". It's just weird.

~ciao

This series is much too long and the completely unnecessary inclusion of the "Norwych Castle" episode was part of the reason. Also, the copious amounts of political information makes for very dry reading. Especially for a series that is supposed to mimic Austen's Pride and Prejudice which was much more relative to local settings.