I was intrigued by this book because I'm a huge Jane Austen fan. Jane Austen as gothic horror? Ooh, do tell! And while I understand the perspective of the reviewers who gave this book only one star, I choose to give it four. Did it sometimes really reach in order to fit into a neat box the parallelism between Darcy and other characters like, say, Christian Grey? Yes. But there is some level of truth at the heart of this book, in that there are many of us who want our own Darcy and, in our attempts to find him, we are willing to be with a person who may not show all that much interest in us at first, who may be a bad boy on the surface, if for nothing else but to redeem him and hope that redemption leads to his declaration of undying love. Foolish? Perhaps. Have we been conditioned into overlooking the possibly darker elements of Darcy because we have been sold on the fantasy of the HEA? Quite likely so. Does this change how I feel about Darcy? Absolutely not! :)

I found this book to be an interesting read, not the most enlightening of literary criticisms, more entertaining than to be taken as seriously as some reviewers did. ( )