Alexandra Potter, Me and Mr. Darcy

Me and Mr. Darcy

Alexandra Potter

Ballantine, Jun 2007, $12.95

ISBN: 9780345502544

Twenty-nine years old New York bookstore manager Emily Albright holds Jane Austen culpable for her miserable personal life. She wants a modern day Fitzwilliam Darcy to cherish and love her, but all she meets are toads who fail to reach his level of excellence. Tired of Manhattan losers and rejecting Mexico with Stella, she joins a New Year's tour celebrating her heroine Jane Austen.

Although the Darcy admirers touring with Emily are all old enough to be her grandmother, she is having fun paying homage to her hero until a reporter going by the moniker Spike Hargreaves insults her for her inane fascination with a literary character. When she meets a real breathing Fitzwilliam Darcy, Emily finds he fails to reach her level of excellence now measured against Spike.

This fun chick lit look at Jane Austen through the adulation readers provide to Darcy makes for a delightful time for sub-genre fans although it is obvious who gets the "heroine". Ms. Austen fans will appreciate this lighthearted homage to Pride and Prejudice even if it is "real" men like Spike who end up with modern day women instead of the romantic ideal Darcy because love supersedes romanticism.

Harriet Klausner