Excessively Diverted: The Sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice [Paperback]

Excessively Diverted is a quick and pleasant read. I enjoyed it very much.

I was relieved that Juliette Shapiro wasn’t tempted to inflict unhappiness on the newly married Darcys.

I loved the new characters and almost forgot that they weren’t original to Pride and Prejudice.

I was shocked about Darcy and Wickham but was so enchanted by this lovely follow on that I now believe the events to be entirely possible.

Newlyweds Mr and Mrs Fitzwilliam Darcy begin their married life at Pemberley quite blissfully but it is not long before the tranquillity they relish is cut short by a series of traumas. The formidable Lady Catherine de Bourgh makes little attempt to hide her distain for her nephew's wife. She is joined by Caroline Bingley, as sharp tongued and resentful as ever, in the shared amusement of criticising Elizabeth. But the new mistress of Pemberley soon has more pressing matters on her mind, the fact that she is carrying the Darcy heir being the most pleasant of them. The sudden return of her sister Lydia brings cause for concern. Alarming reports of a seduction, blackmail and the need to keep news of another's confinement secret dampen even Elizabeth's notoriously high spirits and Darcy shows his true character when faced with the most difficult decision of his life. Has he been softened by his love for Elizabeth or is his former remoteness about to be resurrected?

Juliette Shapiro comes from a literary family, her father is American writer Milton J Shapiro and she is married to her agent, Christopher Holroyd, son of ‘Angry Young Man’ Stuart Holroyd. Juliette turned down a publishing deal at the age of fifteen, a decision that many people thought she would regret. She never did. Juliette worked in the publishing industry before starting a family and now works as a freelance writer who has contributed to Verbatim, The Language Quarterly, Quality Women’s Fiction, The Nexus Media Group and The Jane Austen Magazine. She lives in a Sanditon-like town in East Sussex with her family.

Chapter 1
~
"Pride,"observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections,"is a very common failing I believe."
~
Though it may not be universally acknowledged, it is a truth that the creation of one man’s pleasure is oft the reason for another’s grief. Amongst others, this truth is well fixed.
On first coming into Hertfordshire, Mr Darcy was a single man, he possessed a large fortune and, although he may very well have overlooked the fact, these two defining features dictated that he was in want of nothing more than a wife.

When he married Elizabeth Bennet in the autumn of 1812, it was the cause of a great flow of feelings. The bride and groom were elated, the intricacies of both their natures entwined now so naturally that recollection of any past dislike of each other was avoided by the pair and discouraged in others. Oh, what a disagreeable and thoroughly inconvenient facility memory, particularly a good one, could be. Elizabeth often pondered on the sharpness and clarity with which acquaintances could summon up each detail of the past and, despite one’s blushes and discomfort, warm up stale moments of embarrassment to be offered around for refreshment.

"To think Miss Eliza, how thoroughly objectionable you once found the fellow." remarked Sir William Lucas, the father of her dear friend Charlotte, on hearing news of Elizabeth’s engagement. How she had tried to argue, struggled to affirm the faults as all her own and contrived to persuade all cynics of her true affection for Darcy. Her elevation in status from country girl to mistress of Pemberley did nothing to dampen her spirits but had the effect, she often felt, of giving others the idea that she had married first for money and second for love. That she should be so misunderstood! What mercenary, feeble minds could think that she could fall in love with fortune? Oh! Such blindness was unforgivable. They had only to look at Darcy to understand her better, for how could she not love him and had not she begun, just a little, to love him before she had found the good sense even to like him? It was unacceptable to her that others could make the mistake she once had in misunderstanding him. For in every way that his appearance was pleasing Fitzwilliam Darcy was in equal part a genuine spirit. Elizabeth could have designed him no better. He was as handsome as he was good, he stood as tall in stature as he did in sound judgment and his particular tenderness, of which she was the only recipient, astonished her, took her breath and warmed her heart. No one could think, if they only knew the value of his affection, that the price for her soul could have been paid in pounds. Even ten thousand of them a year was too small a fee for a heart that had proved so hard to win as Elizabeth’s.

But think thus sceptical minds will and Mrs Darcy - how strange and thrilling that new title - wished sometimes that the only fortune she had gained was that of her husband’s love. Oh, but how she adored Pemberley; the house so much a reflection of its master, the exact formality of its architecture and the natural freedom of its grounds in every way depicted him. The trees, the streams and the very earth were steeped in memories of the boy he had been, the air itself seemed to have soaked in the potent essence of his being so that even in his absence a sense of him could be felt. In his presence the house and the parkland came alive but appeared rested. Reassuringly safe under his governing eye. It was there, in the grounds that had formed the picturesque backdrop to his boyhood, that Fitzwilliam Darcy had introduced himself again as the man he had become. It was under the old oak that Pemberley first saw its master place a gentle kiss on his wife’s cheek; by the stream she had coaxed his laughter from somewhere deep within and gradually Elizabeth’s own ready laughter had filled the fine rooms. United they were, Elizabeth and Darcy, by love, undeniably, and by being, in equal part, complicated, intelligent creatures who, they both conceded, were well suited, if only because there was no one else who could tolerate either of them so well as they did each other!
It is, however, folly to assume that perfect ingredients make for pictures of perfection. Where the united couple was at first reserved and subtle in any outward shew of feeling, the fervour of the bride’s mother provided ample compensation. Fervour of such enormity is best avoided if it cannot be extinguished and in certain cases, where there appears that little would be gained by attempting to induce composure, evasion of the enthusiast is advised...