The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet
The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet takes place four years after the events of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It is told from the point of view of Charlotte Collins, and opens with the death of Mr Collins. Charlotte then writes to Lizzie Darcy to ask her to visit her in Kent. However, Lizzie’s son is ill and suggests that her unmarried sister, Mary, visit Charlotte instead. During Mary’s stay, Charlotte begins to realise that she feels more for Mary than friendship, and the rest of the novel wholly focuses on the development of their relationship.
This book is set in a modern Bridgerton-style Regency period, with the characters behaving with 21st-century sensibilities. McLeod attempts to evoke a feel of the period through the characters drinking a lot of tea, eating lavish meals and going to the occasional ball.
Although this novel is marketed as a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, and is populated by references to familiar characters from Jane Austen’s world, McLeod has significantly altered her protagonists, so much so that they are unrecognisable to fans of the original novel. Mary has become a witty, clever, broad-minded and attractive young woman with ‘fine eyes’; and Charlotte is timid, uncertain and constantly questions herself.
The plot and characters in this novel would work as a queer Regency romance in its own right. However, because of the fundamental changes to the characters of Charlotte and Mary, it feels like The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet is being shoe-horned into the world of Pride and Prejudice to be able to promote the novel in relation to 2025 being the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth.
