Familiar Diversions

The love between Elizabeth and Darcy is gag-worthy. Elizabeth is surprisingly mushy - I had always thought she was made of sterner stuff, but love appears to have weakened her. All she seemed to do was fret over Darcy and his possible lack of love for her. All this overflowing love and fretting made Elizabeth so brain dead that it didn't even occur to her that getting back to England from France on her own would be really difficult, even with the prince's help. I'm not sure how she expected to accomplish it.One thing that was really annoying was that it wasn't until more than two thirds of the way through the book that Elizabeth learned the truth about Darcy. Up to that point, readers could read bits and KNOW that they were meeting vampyres, but Elizabeth was clueless. Really, there's not a lot going on most of the time - just lots of chatting, parties, etc. and longing, tortured gazes from Darcy to Elizabeth. It just was not enough to grab me, and the vampire stuff was too little, too late. Really too little, too late, because if you think Stephenie Meyer's sparkling vampires are lame, you won't find Darcy all that much more impressive.This was like Pride and Prejudice with a thin veneer of messy Anne Rice (good God, every vampyre has their own special little weakness, and Darcy's was just so...stupid), as seen through rose-colored glasses that made their love all sparkly sunshine. Gag. The rose colored sparklies must have overflowed onto Elizabeth's maid, Annie, because she was you've-got-to-be-kidding-me loyal. Near the end, Elizabeth told Annie that if she and Darcy and the rest didn't come back from attempting to get Darcy cured, then she could take all the remaining money they had with them and go back to England. Massive temptation, right there, to just take all that money and run. But no, Annie is a good and loyal servant.Anyway, I really, really wish that the author had written more from Darcy's perspective. Actually, I don't think she wrote anything at all from Darcy's perspective. Maybe, after writing Darcy's diary (Grange has a book called [b:Mr. Darcy's Diary|99297|Mr. Darcy's Diary (Jane Austen Heroes, #1)|Amanda Grange|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348917755s/99297.jpg|95730]), she just didn't want to any more, but it would've helped make him sexier and it would maybe have made Elizabeth seem less pathetic by taking some of the attention away from her fretting and lovesickness. It would've been nice to confirm that Darcy liked Elizabeth for more than her beauty, which is what he mentioned every time he spoke of his love for her. Shouldn't there have been something about her mind? Her wit? Well, since Elizabeth seems to have lost all the qualities that I remembered liking about her in the original book, maybe all that's left for Darcy to love is her beauty (those who've read the original more recently: was there much of a fuss made about Elizabeth's beauty, because I'm drawing a blank on all of that).Overall, not as good as I had hoped.(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)