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Elizabeth in the New World starts out reading like over-the-top Pride and Prejudice fanfiction – until the parade of clichéd characters and racist stereotypes began, and my initial amusement turned to incredulity, then anger, then repulsion, then disgust. By the end of the book, I was beyond done with the entire thing.
We open with an imprisoned Wickham vowing his revenge on Darcy and the entire Bennett clan. His plan to seduce Lydia having succeeded, once freed he decides to remove Darcy from the scene entirely by challenging him to a duel. Darcy reluctantly accepts and is wounded on the field of honor. When Elizabeth hears he lies near death, she goes to him, sitting by his bed day and night; they kiss passionately once and she declares her love for him in front of others, which causes a scandal that damages her reputation on the marriage market, even though they are engaged. After Darcy dies – although not really; he’s been drugged to insensibility thanks to laudanum-laced tea by Lady Catherine – Lizzy (unaware he’s not dead) tries to figure out how to go on with her life.
The solution comes when she thinks to travel abroad with her new friends, brother and sister Edward and Barbara Home. As Elizabeth makes the ocean voyage to Grenada and sets about beginning anew, an unburied Darcy tries to get word to her, and then when letters from others fail, track her down himself. Neither of them are aware that a revolution is blooming, one that will pit the French against the English and leave Elizabeth caught between her friendship with her maid – and the Homes’ slave – Poppy, and her loyalty to the Homes’… and a possible romance with Edward.
Elizabeth in the New World could have got a decent grade if it had ended somewhere around its first ninety pages. Do you like the sound of a super duper negatively portrayed Wickham (negative to the point that, by the end of the novel, I kept wondering why no one seemed to care that Lydia was married to this brute)? It’s here! How about lots of pining Darcy and Lizzy? Over the top evil Lady Catherine? That’s here too! Elizabeth makes friends with an unconventional Frenchwoman and it’s very shocking. I should have realised where the book was going when Barbara makes a disapproving comment about how Quakers “sew discontent among the freemen and slaves”, but I held on. Oh, what a fool I was.
Then we get to Grenada and it all goes to shit in a mess of a racist plot. Yep, Elizabeth Bennett goes full on White Savior in Poppy’s name, and the narrative becomes populated with black characters who behave with wide-eyed golly-gee wonder in response to Elizabeth’s kindness, when they are not threatening to rape our heroine that is. The author does at least seem to have the characters speak in what appears to be an authentic Grenadian Creole dialect, but everything else about them is painfully stereotypical.
There’s also a subplot where Elizabeth teaches Poppy how to read and write – and if that doesn’t make you feel as though you’ve been plunged into a retrograde post-Civil-War morality play, nothing will – which results in Poppy making a risky sacrifice not for her own benefit but Elizabeth’s. Of course the Homes’ disapprove of Poppy’s literacy, if that bit about Quakers didn’t clue you in, and of course Edward is a rapey git. In the end, Poppy does break away to make a life of her own in New Orleans, but the majority of her existence revolves around propping up Elizabeth as a walking plot device.
Darcy, meanwhile, goes on a journey with a bunch of members of the rebellion, all of whom refuse to come to life. Everything that happens to him after surviving being buried alive is dull except for him meeting the gregarious Foster, the best character in the novel; and everything that happens to Elizabeth bounces between brutally horrible and awkward.
The sad thing is that Mooha’s work – without the stereotypical characters and the strange plotting choices – might have some potential. Alas, Elizabeth in the New World is bogged down and ultimately suffers as a result of its clichés.
Note: This book contains several scenes of sexual assault.
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Grade: F
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 02/11/19
Publication Date: 10/2019
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier
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In case anyone was wondering, this is *not* a self-published book. It is actually from an indie publisher called Bouroughs Publishing Group. And according to their submission guidelines, they do not publish anything that promotes rape or racial intolerance. You can see their submission guidelines here for yourself, although it doesn’t sound like they enforced their own rules with “Elizabeth in the New World:” http://boroughspublishinggroup.com/submit. Also, they have a solid 5-star rating on Amazon. I’m not saying any of this in the defense or praise of this book, but I thought my research into the matter proved interesting.
“The sad thing is that Mooha’s work – without the stereotypical characters and the strange plotting choices – might have some potential.” I agree, Ms. Fernandes. And I don’t think it needed to be a “Pride and Prejudice” fan fiction piece to tell this *kind* of story well. In fact, it may have benefitted the author if she wrote an original romance that took heavy inspiration from the “Pride and Prejudice” characters, but just gave them different names. That, and cleaning up the problematic content that you mentioned.
That’s very odd, because in the edition I read:
TRIGGER WARNING FOR RAPE CONTENT:
….Lizzie is digitally penetrated against her will on a ship by a French soldier, has her clothing ripped off in a prison riot and is groped and nearly sexually assaulted, and Edward is depicted on-page as raping Poppy.
I’m amazed that got past them.
From reading that the publisher doesn’t promote rape, I thought that in the story, women would be threatened with rape, but wouldn’t actually be assaulted.
YEP. Not the case here at all.
I have to say that is the most specific trigger warning I have ever read. Holy moly!
I forgot to mention on top of that that Lizzie has to fight off the man digitally penetrating her to keep herself from further harm. Triggering book = VERY triggering.
Is it bad that I started laughing at the phrase “an unburied Darcy”? It just made me think of that book “Mr. Darcy, Vampyre” and I imagined him rising from the grave as Mr. Dharcy.
I wasn’t laughing after that, though. I’m beyond tired of rape being the go-to threat for heroines.
Unburied Darcy – a new flavor of Darcy! It’s bold!