FIVE STARS ~ REVIEW

“Georgiana” is a standalone novel in the three-book “Pride & Prejudiced Continued” series from author Sue Barr. I am going to presume we are all familiar with Jane Austen’s masterpiece Pride & Prejudice and how Mr. Darcy saved his sister, Georgiana Darcy, from scandal when she nearly eloped with the manipulative, spendthrift George Wickham. Now married, Darcy and Elizabeth are ready to launch Georgiana out into the best society—but this young heiress’s limited (and unfortunate) experience with the opposite sex has left her anxious. However, when the Fifth Duke of Adborough, Maxwell Kerr, enters the picture and pays particular attention to her, she is at ease with this dear family friend. Might this handsome duke ever look at her as more than the girl he once knew and esteem her enough to court her?

“She’d been led astray before by fanciful thoughts. This time she would proceed with caution and wait for him to declare his intentions.”

Still when a young heiress is presented, all eyes are on her…and her thirty thousand pounds, attracting all kinds of fortune hunters. Incredulously, one such penniless peer absconds with her...

“A woman cowered on the floor beside the bed and a man clad only in his breeches, his back to the door, held her ankle in his left hand, his right had raised above his head as though to strike. The woman’s nightgown, twisted around slender thighs, had risen enough to reveal several bruises and one deep cut on her creamy skin.”

...but Max rescues her from the dangerous rogue before further harm. Gallantly, Max offers Georgiana his hand in marriage. But no sooner after the vows are said, Max learns that this was not her first near miss—and wonders if he has somehow been duped. Rather than asking her to explain what exactly Wickham did to her, he hightails it back to London, leaving her alone at his country estate. What started as a “knight in shining armor rescuing the damsel in distress and they live happily-ever-after” story becomes pages of much strife, yearning, misunderstandings, and lovelorn letters. Can he ever come to accept his lot and live with such a wife, and how will she ever know what she has done to turn him away from her? And wait until Darcy and Elizabeth find out their sister has been abandoned so soon after she has wed! It’s a melodrama that will keep you turning pages to find that hard-earned happily-ever-after.

I liked this one. Maybe not as much as my favorite of the series, “Caroline”, but it’s definitely a good read!