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Jaylia3

Reflections

Eager reader of history, mystery, classics, biographies, steampunk, lit fic, science, scifi, and etc. My reviews are mostly positive--I rarely finish or write about books I don't enjoy. My TBR is too high for that.

Caroline Bingley

Caroline Bingley - Jennifer Becton Caroline Bingley comes into her own--Caroline Bingley retains all the often misguided feistiness she deployed in Pride and Prejudice, and yet author Jennifer Becton has for the most part convincingly pulled off an enchanting miracle by turning her into a sympathetic and worthy heroine. In P&P, Caroline did everything she could to keep her brother Charles from marrying Jane Bennet, who she considered unworthy of him, and she hoped to finesse a marriage proposal out of the proud and wealthy Darcy, but her disastrous efforts to discourage his growing attachment to Elizabeth Bennet are some of the funniest parts of the book. By the time this sequel opens, Charles has married Jane and gained some backbone. Since Caroline is unwilling to apologize for her actions to Jane and her sister Elizabeth, Charles banishes her from his house and effectively from society, which for her is a fate almost worse than death. He sends Caroline to stay with their mother, and this is where we start to see the better side of her because Caroline loves her mother in spite of her rustic manners. It was Caroline’s now deceased father who was interested in raising his family’s social profile, but he didn’t inherit his wealth like a proper gentleman, he earned it in trade, an embarrassing deficit in the Bingley family pedigree that Caroline hopes to offset by marrying well. Being forced into country life doesn’t crush her ambitions. Caroline is not a quitter and she develops a plan to marry the heir to a local barony, who is fortunately the brother of a friend she’s had since childhood. But why is that friend behaving so strangely towards her, how is it that her attraction to the future Baron is so tepid, and who does her step-father’s business partner think he is when he acts in such infuriatingly forward and presumptuous ways? With her goal of an elevated place in society tantalizingly close at hand, Caroline is forced to decide what she really wants.