Hello everyone!
But then it took a bit for me to actually get to the reading of it part, and so I forgot how it got there.
Oops.
ANYWAY.
If you know me, then you'll know I'm also a sucker for anything and mostly everything related to either WWI or WWII as I firmly believe we should remember (though not to the detriment of making progress and taking huge leaps forward). So naturally, seeing that one of my favourite stories was tweaked to fit into a WWI timeline, that caught my interest.
Jane Austen is a favourite of mine and has been for a while, but I will say that seeing Elizabeth and Darcy in a different setting is also quite amusing.
So let's go ahead and have a look at Darcy's Hope: Beauty from Ashes, which is a WWI Pride and Prejudice variation story!
Fair warning to readers ahead: this is part of a duology, and while it DOES have a sort of happy ending, it also ends on a cliffhanger which means that unless you want to tear your hair out, you better get a hold on the second book post-haste.
Also if you're a fan of Turkish soap operas, as I am, then Ginger Monette, the author of these books, is just the person for you as she has a blog that covers just about ALL the soaps which have come out recently, and it's handy to have a guide like that around on the world wide web somewhere.
But I digress!
Our story begins at the Netherfield Ball, which is a familiar setting, but the circumstances are wildly different as we have the Great War unfolding in the background, and both Darcy and Bingley are attached to it, one through being a Captain, and another through his family connections as his father was a famous doctor and he's continuing the good work.
Lizzie and Jane are also drawn into the thick of it, with the disappearance of their sister Lydia, the death of their father, their mother's commitment to an asylum afterwards as she burns their home to the ground, and basically having no other option BUT to work.
We skip forward after this introduction to the point when both the sisters are nurses in the field and actually in France because, surprise surprise, Darcy figured out he made a mistake separating Jane and Bingley and is working to fix said mistake, so he and Bingley got them the jobs, but Lizzie is actually being recommended for another position as nurse to an elderly Frenchman whose house has become a field hospital.
This is a great opportunity for her to continue her medical education, as she wants to become a doctor, and equally this is as far away from Darcy as she can get, hopefully, because while she's been moved here and there between hospitals and positions, Darcy is fighting on the Somme in 1916, and in case you slept through your history lessons on WWI and the Somme in general, let me tell you that it was one of the bloodiest trench conflicts of the time, with the number of men lost rising to a staggering amount.
It's no wonder that we then get to see Darcy work through his PTSD through the rest of the book, and I think it's wonderfully portrayed how he's trying to sort it in his head and how it eventually all comes crashing down.
But before this can happen, he gets tapped for an espionage task by his cousin who sends him to the field hospital where Lizzie's working, so the two get to see one another again and both of them are still hurt from past actions: Darcy from her flinging his proposal into his face (he'd promised her father he'd look after her) and Lizzie from all the prejudice she's accumulated towards him, but little by little she's shown that people can actually change, and Darcy slowly unbends from his proud position, so it's nice to read how they start circling one another and become closer again.
That said, however, it's Lizzie who's implicated in this espionage plot, something Darcy refuses to believe, not that he's making much headway with his investigation while also trying to run the field hospital, but eventually, as the Frenchman passes from old age and the hospital is bombed, he finally puts two and two together while also going back for Elizabeth to ensure she's safe.
At this point in the book they're both ready to move on from past slights, though Darcy still can't tell her everything - see, it turns out that there was a whole plot about helping prisoners escape right along the canal that runs by the field hospital, and pretty much everyone around said hospital was in on it, including a Scotsman who works in the hospital too, though it's still not entirely explained who sent Lizzie the French medal of honour and how deep the connection goes, but one thing IS certain: her sister Lydia isn't dead and has actually been pretending to be someone else to get information out of Lizzie through letters, having married a German and is a national traitor.
Darcy can't tell Lizzie how he knows this, but he does tell her, and with the wedding of Jane and Bingley safely under the roof, they decide she's going to go to Pemberley to wait for his sister Georgiana to return from her nurse training, and to wait for Darcy while hopefully the war will draw to a close soon.
But forces outside still conspire against them, because Lizzie doesn't pay attention when having her passport made, that her name is spelled incorrectly and actually implicates one of the other nurses from the field hospital; Caroline Bingley sends her a warning in a letter about knowing she's embroiled in espionage (blackmail, basically) and Darcy knows that Wickham is in on this plot, that it somehow concerns him personally, and there's still a threat up in the air, but nothing is really resolved at the end of this book.
We'll just have to pick up part two I suppose!
Cleverly written with characters from Jane Austen's story as well as cameos from other Regency era romances written into it, Beauty from Ashes does a fantastic job at capturing the austerity and tragedy of WWI, and I was very impressed with how well Ms Monette went deep into a soldier's psyche to show how PTSD affected those who fought in the trenches, how many tried to close themselves off emotionally, and how it almost never worked.
I also enjoyed the more practical matters of how a field hospital would have run and worked, so the WWI aspects really didn't bother me. In fact, they made the book unique.
What did bother me, however, was just how naive Lizzie was. You would think that, stationed in a field hospital, she'd be more careful, but she sort of traipses around the countryside without fail or any issue, and then on top of that seems to be shocked and disturbed when she nearly ends up in a train compartment with a bunch of soldiers who are not quite the gentlemen she's used to dealing with.
Honey, you've been a nurse for years at this point. That's the only unrealistic thing in the entire book - how somehow she retains such an idealistic view which should have been trampled into dust the moment she set foot in France. Like come on, Lizzie, OF COURSE they're going to make bawdy jokes and jostle you all over and want to get their hands on you. Seriously.
Other than Lizzie's too obvious naivete, I do agree with other reviews I found online that state at least ONE of the plotlines could have been resolved in this book, as it feels like too much will be crammed into the second. But I'll read the other and come back to you on that one, I suppose.
For now, I leave you to it, and do recommend this book as one to read. It's illuminating - if aggravating at times - but definitely enjoyable!
xx
*image not mine
**shoutout to the artist because of the field of poppies
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