A Weekend with Mr Darcy (Austen Addicts)

by Victoria Connelly

[Leah]

Katherine Roberts is officially off men and the only men she’s even willing to give head-space to is the fictional ones she reads about in her much-loved Jane Austen books as well as the regency romances of Lorna Warwick, with whom she has also struck up a friendship with and is hoping to meet at a Jane Austen conference. Despite her name, Robyn Love isn’t really feeling the love for boyfriend Jace any more and when she happens across the chance to head to a Jane Austen conference she jumps at the chance to clear her head of her romantic entanglement, until Jace decides to go with her. As Katherine and Robyn head off to the Jane Austen conference, Katherine is looking forward to finally meeting Lorna Warwick after so much letter-writing whereas Robyn is just thrilled to be going full stop. But nothing goes according to plan and despite Katherine being off men and Robyn having a boyfriend, true love could be in the air for the pair of them.

Last year I read Victoria Connelly’s first book to be published in England (her first three were published in German) called Molly’s Millions and I really enjoyed the sweet story of a florist who wins the lottery before going on the run before her stingy family can get their hands on her fortune. So I was thrilled when Victoria said she was working on a new, Jane Austen trilogy and that the first book A Weekend With Mr Darcy was due to be released in 2010. I’ve never read an Austen book but because I loved Victoria’s previous book I was still looking forward to her new one and I was thrilled to receive an early copy and I began it in earnest.

A Weekend With Mr Darcy quite aptly follows a group of people who are attending a Jane Austen conference, you guessed it, for an entire weekend at Purley Hall in Hampshire. In fact, it’s more like a long weekend as it begins on Thursday before ending on the Monday. There’s Katherine, a University lecturer tired with the men in her life and then there’s Robyn, who has been together with her boyfriend since school but things have recently become stale between the pair. Then we have the mysterious Warwick who is hiding something from the entire group, and Katherine in particular, and finally there is Dan, who works in the stables of Purley Hall. There are many more characters who attend the conference but the main story is made up between Katherine, Robyn, Warwick and Dan.

I loved the fact that the majority of the book took place over the course of the Jane Austen weekend, five days in total. The backbone for the entire book was the fact that all of the character were united by one simple thing: their love for Jane Austen and despite having never read a Jane Austen novel as I’ve already mentioned, I liked that she was the main focus of the book and the reason all of these such different characters converged for that special weekend. Surprisingly enough there is a lot that happens over the course of the weekend at Purley Hall and it was fascinating that we got to know all of the characters so well over such a short period of time. Even more so that the characters themselves got to know each other so well, with a couple of love stories peppered throughout the pages.

Of the four main characters the one that caught my eye more than the others was Robyn Love. She was such a wonderful and warm character and I could see why she felt the need to stay with childhood sweetheart Jace despite not loving him anymore and getting to know Dan a bit more. I thought Katherine was a bit more of a closed book and it was only as the novel progressed did we really get to see the real Katherine, the one she refused to show whilst lecturing at Oxford and it turns out she was rather lovely. As she got to know Warwick more, the more she opened up and the more we got to see what she was like underneath her academia. I also really loved both of the men featured in the book, Dan and Warrick. Dan had me from the first page he appeared on and I thought he was so incredibly sweet. As for Warrick, I liked him more as I got to know him more. The reader knows early on he’s hiding something and what it is he’s hiding but it’s nothing too terrible so I was able to like him pretty easily. I must admit that I wasn’t a huge fan of Jace, Robyn’s boyfriend. He just seemed a bit off to me and couldn’t seem to grasp the fact that it probably wasn’t going to work between himself and Robyn and the way he kept crashing Purley Hall in a bid to see Robyn was more annoying than endearing.

A Weekend With Mr Darcy was really well written, told in the third-person and constantly flitting from Katherine to Warwick to Robyn and back again and it made us able to see what anyone was thinking at any given time. All of the Jane Austen aspects and references were fantastic and Victoria Connelly must either really love Jane Austen to enthuse so much or is just a very, very good researcher. The purist in my hopes it’s the former as it’s a better story and the love for Jane Austen really does come off the pages. In fact it’s so strong I’m sorely tempted to pick up a Jane Austen sometime soon so I can see what all the fuss is about! Victoria Connelly has managed to write another winner with A Weekend With Mr Darcy and I for one can’t wait for the next book, of three, in the series.