Despite my disappointment with the Regina Jeffer's previous novel, I actually found Vampire Darcy's Desire (also by her) to be an amusing read. In it, Elizabeth and Darcy are immediately enthralled with each other. However, Darcy is a half-vampire half-human, due to a curse passed on down the family line to the firstborn sons and Darcy vows to end the line. Until he meets Elizabeth. They marry and she is determined that they end the curse. Wickham is an evil vampire, and Lydia Bennett gets caught up as a vampire. Georgiana and Darcy's cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam also play major roles. The only major downfall to this novel is that Mr. Collins does not appear and Charlotte, Jane, the rest of the Bennett family, and the Gardiners do not make many appearances. It is mainly about the hunt for Wickham and their forbidden love.
A Curse as Dark as Gold, by Elizabeth C. Bunce is the story of Charlotte Miller, who runs a woolen mill with her sister Rosie, friend Harte, and husband Randall. But debts loom over them. Jack Spinner comes along with help, in exchange for what Charlotte values most. She must fight to save the mill and family, and solve the family curse, with great courage, because great courage breaks ill luck. This is possibly one of my favorites. I love how Bunce takes the story of Rumplestilskin and "the miller's daughter" and weaves them together with a curse and family pasts.
Wide Sargasso Sea is by Jean Rhys and is the story of the madwomen in the attic in Jane Eyre, Antoinette Cosway. Antoinette lives in the Caribbean with her mad mother, the maid she looks up to Christophine, stepfather and brother. Slavery has been abolished and Antoinette's father was a slaveholder, causing her family to be hated in the town. One day a fire destroys the house, takes her mother away, and kills her brother. Antoinette is married to Rochester, from England, who finds out the story of her mother and begins to hate his wife. Fire, hate, pride, madness, dreams, and drunkenness are themes. It's called Sargasso Sea because of the seaweed growth in the ocean. An interesting read.
I have begun reading Siddhartha, which I find to be very interesting.
“It is life that shakes and rock us; it is literature which stabilizes and confirms.”
-Heathcote William Garrod, The Profession of Poetry and Other Lectures (1929)
