"Mr Darcy, Vampyre" by Amanda Grange

"Mr. Darcy, Vampyre" is one of the many paranormal stories to be retold from Jane Austen's original stories, mainly "Pride and Prejudice". In fact, the story begins where "Pride and Prejudice" leaves off. The marriage and wedding tour of Lizzy and Darcy. Now, it's been quite a bit since I've read Jane Austen's book, but I admit, she starts to draw you back into the world and time period of that original story. Unfortunately, after that, it gets a bit lost.

Now, normally I do what I can not to spoil a book at all, but in this case, I will do a lot of spoiling. Lizzy, at first, is not the hot headed strong character I remember. I do understand that with her husband not coming to her during the wedding tour was ego-crushing to say the least, I would still expect Lizzy to have confronted Darcy to a degree he could not refuse. This finally happened, but not until it was toward the end of the book. In fact, 2/3 of the book was quite slow. The characters you meet during their wedding tour were interesting, but sometimes I wanted to scream, "Tell her already!" It was extremely frustrating that he kept the secret from her for so long in the book. It was also frustrating that she would not actually demand an answer for so long.

Finally at the end of the book, she finds out after being abducted by an old vampire. For me, the whole scene was at first, interesting, but was so quickly and too easily ended. The reason? She gave him a gift. The gift of love. This was the only thing that could defeat him. Anyone who has read "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" will recognize that scene. After that the couple too quickly relaxes as they truly get to know one another. There is also another climatic scene soon after that which I also felt was ended too quickly and too easily. I feel that if the author put one of those scenes at the middle or toward the beginning of the book the action would have been written much better. Also she would have been able to extend the scene at the end. I think it would have proved more interesting.

All in all, it wasn't a horrible read despite what I have said. It is not for the die-hard Jane Austen fan. It did have it's interesting spots, but does fail in the end. I gave it 2 stars.