Full Description

Impulse & Initiative

What readers are saying:

"A very happy read!"
"A lustful and very romantic story."
"Introduces us to another side of Darcy that Jane Austen didn't show."
"A really lovely spin on the original story."
"A wonderful ride through Jane Austen's world."
"Refreshing!"
"Funny, smart, and makes a great story unto itself."
"Fantastic book."

In Jane Austen's classic Pride & Prejudice, Mr. Darcy gives up on winning the woman he loves after she refuses him.

What if ...
Instead of disappearing from Elizabeth Bennet's life after she refused his offer of marriage, Mr. Darcy had stayed and tried to change her mind?

What if ...
Lizzy, as she gets to know Darcy, finds him undeniably attractive and her impulses win out over her sense of propriety?

What if ...
Madly in love and mutually on fire, their passion anticipates their wedding? In Impulse & Initiative, instead of avoiding Elizabeth after his ill-fated marriage proposal, Mr. Darcy follows her back to her home in Hertfordshire, planning to prove to her he is a changed man and worthy of her love. And little by little, Elizabeth begins to find the man she despised becoming irresistible...

Exploring the roads not taken in Pride and Prejudice, Abigail Reynolds picks up from a pivotal point in Pride and Prejudice - Mr. Darcy's botched marriage proposal - and imagines lively plot twists and ecstatically happy endings.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Excerpt

Excerpt

Excerpt from Chapter 1

It was nearing noon on a hot June day when Colonel Fitzwilliam stepped out of the stuffy coach into the raucous noise of London. Since it was only a short distance to Darcy’s house, he decided to take the opportunity to stretch his legs after the long ride rather than hire a carriage. Paying a boy to cart his luggage for him, he set off at a quick pace.

He sincerely hoped that his cousin would prove to be in town.
He could not be certain, since Darcy had been such a poor—in fact non-existent—correspondent since their trip to Rosings. Georgiana’s last letter had not indicated any planned travels, so presumably she would be there. He would prefer to see Darcy, though, so that he could at least attempt to resolve whatever it was he had said or done that had offended his cousin.

Darcy had clearly been angry and upset when they left Rosings, but had been unwilling to discuss his concerns. At the time, knowing that Lady Catherine had called Darcy in for a private conference just before their departure, Colonel Fitzwilliam had assumed that his mood was related to that event, and that she must have finally overstepped the boundaries regarding Darcy’s supposed engagement to her daughter. But now, after nearly two months of uncharacteristic silence from Darcy, and despite several letters sent to him, he could only conclude that Darcy’s anger must have been directed towards him. Try as he might, he could not recollect anything more offensive in his behaviour than the usual teasing he engaged in with his cousin. Well, he would just have to jolly Darcy out of his sulk and find out what was on his mind.

He rapped sharply on the front door and was admitted by a servant who knew him well enough not to comment on his unexpected arrival. He was informed that Darcy was out, but Miss Georgiana was at home and would receive him in her sitting room. Disregarding the offer to show him in, Colonel Fitzwilliam strode down the hall and walked in. “Cousin Richard!” Georgiana said delightedly. “What a lovely surprise! I thought you were still in Newcastle!” He kissed her cheek in greeting. “Sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart. His Lordship decided that Major General Bradford needs to discuss certain matters with me immediately, so there I was, sent off post-haste to London with nary a chance even to tell you I was coming. Can you put up your poor wandering cousin for a few nights while I suffer the slings and arrows of the Major General?”

Georgiana smiled. “Oh, Richard, of course. Why else would we keep your room available?”
He bowed slightly. “Let me excuse myself then to make myself presentable for the company of a lady, which, after roasting for two days in the most uncomfortable coach in England, I assure you that I am not.”

“Of course. I will be here when you are ready. And, Richard,” she added, her voice becoming serious, “I am glad you are here. I need to talk to you about William.”
“So something is up in that quarter. I suspected as much. I shall be interested to hear all about it.”

In his room he was grateful to shrug out of his sweaty uniform while one of the menservants vainly tried to unwrinkle the garments he had packed hurriedly in Newcastle. “Well, they will just have to do for today,” Colonel Fitzwilliam told him. “Perhaps you could spruce up the rest for tomorrow.” A knock came at the door as he was buttoning his waistcoat. Philips, Darcy’s long-time butler, was on the other side. Colonel Fitzwilliam waved him in.

“Welcome to London, Colonel.” Philips looked unwontedly nervous. “I know you have just arrived, but I wondered if I might be so bold as to beg a moment of your time.”
“Of course,” he said amiably. “What can I do for you?”
“Well, sir, I hope you will not think this excessively forward of me, but when I heard you were here, I thought perhaps ... I should take the opportunity to speak with you about a concern that I have, that is to say that the staff in general have, but we have been at a loss as to whom to approach about it.”

“Well, I’ll be happy to hear you out, but surely if this is a staff concern, would Darcy not be the one to address?”
“Yes, sir, of course, but you see, the concern is, well, about
Mr. Darcy, sir. He just hasn’t been himself of late.”
The colonel held his chin up as the valet began tying his cravat. He was quite surprised that the loyal and reticent Philips would approach him about Darcy at all, much less with a concern.
“Not himself? What do you mean?”

“He seems very, well, withdrawn, I would say, for lack of a better word. He spends most of his time alone in his study, and we, the staff that is, have noticed that he often seems to be, well, in some distress. He goes out most evenings, although he doesn’t seem to look forward to it, but then when his friends come calling, he isn’t at home to them, not even Mr. Bingley. Mr. Darcy has never been what I would call a man of many words, sir, but now we don’t hear much of anything out of him beyond requests and thank yous, even his valet. And, well, there are other things, but I’m sure you see the problem.”

“What other things, Philips?” Now he was truly concerned.
“Well, sir, he’s been short with Miss Georgiana a few times. And he has taken to staying up half the night, sometimes reading, but sometimes pacing or just staring off into space. And, begging your pardon, sir but as you know Mr. Darcy has never been one for excessive imbibing, as it were, but there have been several occasions when he has gone through more than a bottle on his own, though Cook says it is a challenge to tempt him to eat much of anything. I don’t mean to complain, sir, he has been no trouble to us, but, well, we are worried. I don’t know what he would say if he knew I was talking to you about him like this, sir.”

“You were quite right to bring this to me, Philips, and you may be certain that I will keep this conversation to myself.”
“Thank you, sir. If there is anything I can do to help, anything at all, please say the word.” He bowed and left the room.
The colonel turned to the valet. “What do you have to say about all this? Do you agree with Philips?”
The young man snorted. “He’s not telling you the half of it, sir, and that’s all I’ll say about that. I value my position here.”

A few minutes later Georgiana was warming to the same theme. “He has not been the same since the two of you came back from Kent. He is abstracted, and sometimes I find that he is paying no attention to what I say. But the worst is when I come upon him when he is not expecting to see me, and he looks so bleak. I have tried talking to him, asking him if something is wrong, but he says that everything is fine, and it is so obviously not fine that I have no idea what to say. All I can think is that it must be something to do with me. It’s been rather frightening. I haven’t known who to turn to.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam shook his head. “Do you have any idea what this may be about?”

She hesitated. “I know of nothing that can have caused such a change. I cannot think of anything that I would expect to bother him this much, anything new, that is, only the old things. There is no trouble with his friends, in fact he has been being rather unusually sociable, though he hardly seems to enjoy it. And I assume that there is not any financial trouble, because you would know about that, would you not? The kitchen talk is that there is a woman involved, but I cannot see what would upset him so much about that either.” She paused, then added in a softer voice, “I have wondered if it has anything to do with last summer.”
“I am quite sure it has nothing to do with that,” he said reassuringly.
“Not to worry, sweetheart; I will worm it out of him somehow. We shall get to the bottom of this.”

Reviews

Reviews

I Just Finished Reviews Renee Giroux
Impulse & Initiative is the answer to the question: What if Mr. Darcy doesn’t take no for an answer, and continues wooing Elizabeth, despite her refusal to marry him?

The book starts out approximately two months after Mr. Darcy’s proposal of marriage to Elizabeth Bennet is refused. After a conversation with Colonel Fitzwilliam, Darcy sets out for Longbourne, in the company of Mr. Bingley, in the hopes of showing Elizabeth that he is a changed man. After becoming acquainted, and inevitably friends, with the shy Miss Darcy, Elizabeth suddenly finds herself often in the midst of Mr. Darcy’s company. The more Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy are together, the more the passion swells between them, and they often find themselves in compromising (tender, sweet, and sometimes steamy!) situations.

I was initially apprehensive about my feelings towards this book. On the one hand, I love that this book allowed the inner passions of this couple to come out, and I must admit that I do love me some good romance! On the other hand, I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed for the couple as the book progressed, because I did not feel that it was in the nature of the original characters to perform some of the acts they did.

I enjoyed reading about Mr. Darcy’s devotion to Elizabeth, and found these parts sweet, as I was glad to read about the softer, "Love sick," side of Mr. Darcy. And although I do not think that Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth would ever behave in such manners as are apparent in this book, I do realize that it is a variation of the original, and does in fact have its own esteeming qualities; passion, romance, love, and intensity, being my favorite.

All in all, I think it is a very good read. If you love Pride and Prejudice, but always longed for Mr. Darcy to up and sweep Elizabeth off her feet (I did!), then this is your book!

A Reader’s Respite Michele Jacobson
Now I’ll admit that I haven’t read a true romance-genre novel since I was a teenager and the forbiddeness of it led me to purchase about 50 of them from a local used bookstore and read them in the family treehouse. (Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series notwithstanding, but I classify that as historical fiction to retain my dignity.) I’ll just say this: Abigail Reynolds sure knows how to steam up a page! Think Jane Austen writes a bodice-ripper.

The result? Surprisingly fun and a tad eye-popping racy. I say surprisingly because one of the endearing traits of Ms. Austen’s stories is the return to a time when morals and values defined your place in society. I was prepared to dislike any storyline that messed with that basic principle. In reality, and perhaps indicative of the times we live in today, I couldn’t put the book down. The style and wit of Ms. Austen are compellingly replicated and the dichotomy of the early 19th-century eloquence with 21st-century romance is spellbinding. Kudos to Ms. Reynolds!

You’ll notice that I refrained from giving this novel one of my standard ratings. This is because I have several different recommendations, each based on your particular reading history:

1. Those who have never read Pride and Prejudice and don’t intend to: Highly recommended!
2. Those who have never read Pride and Prejudice but fully intend to someday: Hold off on reading this one. I don’t want you to be disappointed in the original.
3. Those who have read Pride and Prejudice and were enthralled: Recommended if you can let go of the original characters as Ms. Austen wrote them and let yourself have fun with it.
4. Those who have read Pride and Prejudice and weren’t particularly impressed: Very much recommended....the spice in this one might be just what it takes to make the characters interesting for you.

Hollywood Today Gabrielle Pantera
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 11/15/2008 - “I was re-reading Pride & Prejudice,” says Impulse & Initiative author Abigail Reynolds. “I always find something new when I read it, even after dozens of times, and this time what struck me was the tragedy of the scene in the Lambton Inn, where Darcy leaves the distraught Elizabeth with the intent of rescuing her sister, but Elizabeth thinks he has left because Lydia’s shame has tainted her, and that he wants nothing more to do with her.”

Impulse & Initiative takes Pride & Prejudice on a different path and tells the story from the point of view of Darcy. What if Darcy, the proud rich gentleman in Pride & Prejudice who Elizabeth Bennet says would be the last man on Earth she would ever marry, didn’t retreat at being rebuffed? What if he’d pursued Elizabeth determinedly?

“I decided to remedy his error, and ended up writing From Lambton to Longbourn,” says Reynolds. “I had such fun doing it that afterwards I decided to try again, this time telling Darcy to try to change Elizabeth’s mind after her refusal. That became Impulse & Initiative.”

“A friend who teaches university-level history was one of the first readers, and opened my eyes to a number of false assumptions I had about the Regency period, especially about sexual mores,” says Reynolds. “For example, I never realized that engagement was legally binding then, and people were considered as good as married once they were engaged. That’s why a woman was considered ruined if she had a broken engagement.”

“One night I was musing about the limitations put on Jane Austen as an unmarried female writer in regency times,” says Reynolds. “She couldn’t put anything even the tiny bit explicit in her books or she would have been disgraced. She wasn’t allowed to say that Darcy and Elizabeth kissed, or that their lips touched, much less write a sex scene.”

“I started wondering how I would write a kissing scene if I couldn’t use words like kiss, lips, mouth, or touch, and realized with great shock that I’d have to say something indirect like, ‘He expressed himself as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do.’ That’s a quote from the second proposal scene in Pride & Prejudice, but until that moment, I always thought it meant that Darcy was telling her how he felt. It was eye-opening to realize it meant he kissed her.”

Fans of Pride & Prejudice will enjoy reading this book. It shows a different side of Darcy, a bold side unafraid of going after what he wants.

Abigail Reynolds was born and raised in upstate New York, near Saratoga Springs and currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

The Book Smugglers
Genre: Historical Romance

Stand Alone/ Series: This is a variation of Pride of Prejudice by Jane Austen - I recommend you read that one first.

Summary: In Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, Mr. Darcy gives up on winning the woman he loves after she refuses his proposal of marriage. What if, instead of disappearing from her life, he took the initiative and tried to change her mind? In Impulse & Initiative, Mr. Darcy pursues Elizabeth Bennet to her home in Hertfordshire, planning to prove to her he is a changed man and worthy of her love.

Why Did I Read The Book: I was offered a copy by the publisher, SourceBooks and I had to say yes - I do so love Pride and Prejudice.

Review:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is one of the best known books of all time (a BBC survey has placed it in second in the list of UK’s Best Loved Books) and loved by many romance readers including yours truly. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy certainly figure high up there with Romeo and Juliet and Heathcliff and Cathy in the classic love stories listings. There are plenty of movie and TV adaptations (like the 1995 BBC series – Colin Firth anyone?) and more recently, from what I can gather, a plethora of books with story variations.

Impulse and Initiative is one such book. In the original novel, after many sequences in which it appeared that Darcy and Elizabeth were in opposite sides, the seemly arrogant Mr Darcy proposes marriage to a bewildered Elizabeth Bennet who could not have expected the high-born, proud man to love her. Darcy completely mucks up the proposal by telling her that he loves her "against his own will" and despite her family. Elizabeth who has reasons to believe, incorrectly, that Mr Darcy is not honorable, refuses him and tells him that he is "the last man in the world whom she could ever be prevailed on to marry". Darcy is mortified that she would say such things and the next day delivers a letter to her clarifying the points that would dispute his honor and disappears from the novel for some time until they come together again in later chapters.

Impulse and Initiative plays with a “What If” that starts right after that first proposal – what if Darcy, instead of retreating decided to go on the attack by trying to woo Miss Bennet’s affections properly? By showing her that he was indeed honorable, that his intentions were true and out of deep love and that he could find in himself the strength to review his actions, the ungentlemanly way he proposed, the arrogance of his treatment of others and become in the eyes of the reader (and of Elizabeth) the more open character that appears at the end of Pride and Prejudice.

Leaving all thought of emotional restraint aside, Darcy embarks on a rather persistent pursue of Elizabeth who is conflicted to begin with – does she like or dislike Darcy? Can she really enjoy the time she spends with him even if he is proud and overbearing and threatens the independences she loves? And what about those *gasp * kisses and what they do to her? Are they proper? Should she even like kissing a man that is not her husband? These and other questions are raised and answered as their relationship progresses based this time, not in pride and prejudice but as the title implies, on impulse, initiative - and seduction. Be it of the mind for truly, they share a similar wit, and one of the greatest points of this novel is the banter between Darcy and Elizabeth or the moments where they hurl literary quotes at each other or their common tendency to judge based on wrong assumptions. Or of the body, where a less than controlled Darcy can hardly keep his hands off her – which leads them to a pre-marital encounter that raises the question: is this truly how the original Darcy and Elizabeth would behave since both characters were so bound by their sense of propriety? In fact, one may argue that the Darcy and Elizabeth in Impulse and Initiative end up acting like the Villain (Wickham) and the Floozy (Lydia) of Pride of Prejudice.

If you are a Jane Austen purist or a literary traditionalist you should probably stay away from the book (or from any variation, as a matter of fact) as the Darcy and Elizabeth portrayed here are hardly like the original creation of Jane Austen.

But on the other hand, if you like me, think you would like a sweet, double sugar-coated (Darcy is so sweet here it made my teeth ache as he would profess his undying love at every chance he got which was VERY often – this, the only real problem with the book for me) conflict-free “what if” involving two beloved characters from literature - and follow an alternate story from wooing to bedding, from pre-marriage to wedding and birthing of their first child – who even though not quite like Austen’s creation are still interesting enough to warrant a few good hours of your time on a Saturday afternoon, then by all means do pick this up. You could do much worse than this - much, much worse.

Notable Quotes/ Parts: I like the moment where Elizabeth realises that Darcy is always taking care of people and is never taken care of.

“A smile curved her lips as she considered the hubris it would require to take on the responsibility of taking care of Fitzwilliam Darcy. Continuing to stroke his hair, she let her eyes trace the lines of his face, wondering at her sanity in allowing herself to love this complex and often difficult man -as if she had allowed herself to love him; the truth was closer to what she had said of him at Hunsford, that she loved him against her will, against her reason , and even against her character. It was certainly poetic justice. “



And oh dear lord how I laughed at the scene where Darcy and Bingley were talking about – ahem - pre-marital encounters and how Bingley was thoroughly jealous of Darcy as up to that point all he was allowed to get from Jane was a chaste peek at the cheek. And how Jane was completely horrified when she learns from Elizabeth that –ahem- the marital bed? Not as bad as their mother told them.* wink wink nudge nudge *

Additional Thoughts: On the subject of Pride and Prejudice variations, I recently watched ITV’s Lost in Austen and it was a complete riot – so much fun. I wrote about it here.

But I ask – how do you feel about variations of literary works? Do you think the originals are “untouchable”?

Verdict: Sweet (sometimes too sweet), funny with witty banter and good writing. If you think you can get past a Darcy that professes his love at every other paragraph, this is the book for you. It certainly helps if you picture Darcy’s smoldering dark looks in a Colin Firth package.

The Romance Studio Brenda Talley
Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam visited his nephew while in town for government business. He was surprised to find William Darcy in such an emotionally dark humor. He was approached by Georgiana, Darcy’s sister, as well as the butler, the valet and the household staff in general. All were extremely concerned about his state of mind. When Fitzwilliam found out that Darcy was giving up on the love of his life because she had refused him, Fitzwilliam pushed him to start again courting the young woman.

Elizabeth Bennet had more than one reason to refuse the attentions of William Darcy. He was overbearing and determined. He was extremely well-to-do and he was out of his mind in love. That came across to Lizzy as arrogance. In addition to that, a childhood friend of Darcy’s, Wickham was interested in Elizabeth himself. He added to her distress by making untrue comments about Darcy. That would not be his last interruption into the Bennet family.

This book follows the storyline of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The slant on this plot was what would have happened if Mr. Darcy had remained and tried to change Miss Bennet’s mind about their marriage. Ms. Abigail Reynolds, obviously a fan of Jane Austin, has taken this book and expanded it into an interesting re-look at that relationship. The main characters, in addition to the myriad of supporting cast, have distinct personalities and make the book so interesting. It was an in-depth look at the lives of a couple from opposite sides of the financial spectrum.

The pursuit Darcy offered to Elizabeth was developed so well that it made the age-old storyline new and fresh. The doubts Elizabeth had were insignificant to all but her, and the longer they were around each other, well, you get the idea. This is a really good book which I am glad to have had the chance to read. This author has a way with her writing that gripped my attention and did not let go. I highly recommend it to all.

AustenBlog Allison T
What if….Ah, the charm of the what-if story! What if Captain Ahab had said, “Screw it, I’m tired of chasing this hemm’d great fish—I’m going back to graduate school to get a degree in social work so that I can ameliorate the lives of Queequeg and his people”? What if Hamlet and Ophelia had scored some Prozac, hired a family counselor, sorted the Danish royal family, and gotten married to live happily ever after? What if Jane Eyre, upon hearing of the mad wife in the attic, had said, “Oh, hell, Edward, let’s chuck Victorian morality and Evangelical Christianity and go live in sin in southern France!”? What if Darcy refused to take Elizabeth’s “No” at Rosings, followed her back to Longbourne within a month or two of her initial refusal, and, by dint of snogging her (as our friends across The Pond so undeliciously put it) at every opportunity—snogging in the shrubbery, snogging in the wilderness, snogging in the churchyard—causes Elizabeth to sleep with him before marriage while staying at Pemberley with her aunt and uncle Gardiner, and otherwise changes the story that Austen gave us? For such is the plot of Abigail Reynold’s Impulse & Initiative; A Pride & Prejudice Variation—“What if Mr. Darcy didn’t take ‘No’ for an answer?”

“We are never told of what would have happened,” Aslan the Great Lion of Narnia assures us (and he should know, because he’s a Higher Power.) Mostly, we think this is true. What-if stories can be good if they are funny, but we don’t believe we’ve read a serious what-if story that moved us as much as the original. Impulse & Initiative is called a “variation,” and it is indeed that: not a sequel, nor a prequel, nor a retelling of the story from a different point of view, but a rewriting of the basic story.

Let’s start with some positives: Abigail Reynolds is coming into her own as a writer. Her sentences flow easily, there is some humor, only one anachronism, other than the complete rewriting of the characters’ motives and actions—(there are no “vanity tables” in the Regency era)—and Reynolds’ Lizzie is actually fresh, sparkling and charming, unlike the dull and/or angelic Lizzies of many other sequels. There are two serious flaws in this book, however: one that purists will rally around, but one that affects Reynolds’ writing of the romance novel in general. We will address these issues presently.

Back to Impulse & Initiative: Worried about “consequences’’—the poor fellow apparently never heard of a French letter—after recklessly seducing Elizabeth in the library at Pemberley, Darcy pushes for marriage to occur within three days after this event: other than the Gardiners, none of Elizabeth’s family attends. It is only after they are married that Lydia elopes….but then, really, what is now the point of this particular plot element at this point in this much-changed story? Let us pause here for a Moment of Useful Reflection.

Our Courteous and Genial Editrix has frequently posed the question: What is it about Mr. Darcy that is so generally compelling?

Here’s the answer: because he’s every girl’s High School Romance. Young ladies (even older ones) do not lie in bed at night fantasizing about snogging their older sister’s husband’s much older brother, the guy who’s been criticizing their hair-do and their reading list since they were a toddler. They don’t sigh over a sort of brother-ish dweeb who doesn’t admire their artistic and cultural talents, nor over a dull stick of a fellow who falls for the first pretty girl to arrive in the neighborhood. They don’t want to realize the sad truth that their transparent admiration of a cute guy who finds them naïve and silly will win the day. And if they are young ladies, they can’t imagine being a dried up old prune of a twenty-seven-year-old who sees her former beau courting not one but two other girls. (Older ladies might find this fantasy a little more appealing, which is why Persuasion is the second most romantic book in the canon, IMHO.)

No, in their imaginations they are like, way totally pretty and vivacious and when the cute new guy enters the high school gym at the big prom and then disses them, their Ultimate Fantasy is to drive him mad with longing and despair until he lays Heart, Hand and Fortune at their feet. Yes, Virginia, it is true that Mr. Darcy thus scores a perfect 100 on the Romant-O-Meter™ with Captain Wentworth well ahead of the rest of the field with a respectable score of 94. (Mr. Rochester also does fairly well, with a score of 87 (he’s something of a bully, but fortunately Jane can stand up for herself), leaving Heathcliff—really! his idea of romance is to lie down on your cold cold grave!—far behind at 25.)

Impulse & Initiative is thus a MarySue fantasy of Really Good Sex with the Ultimate Romance Hero. Some readers will be happy with this and will look no further. But two things make the story flat for me. The first is that it lacks, as Pamela Regis told us at the Chicago AGM and in her book A Natural History of the Romance Novel, the crucial moment of “ritual death,” in which the heroine feels herself to be forever separated from the hero—that all is lost. In Austen’s P&P this moment occurs after Lydia’s elopement, when Elizabeth finally realizes both that Mr. Darcy is her soul mate and that he is now, through these unfortunate circumstances, lost to her forever. There is no such moment of crisis in Impulse & Initiative. Reader, she marries him; it was clear from the beginning, even before the elopement or other crises. Even the childbirth that Darcy fears (but does nothing to prevent) does not represent a major emotional milestone in this book. There is no intensity of love, loss and longing in this tale equal to the crises and catharsis of the original story.

The second criticism is, as you will have guessed, this reader’s inability to understand why the story was written in the first place. Austen tells us that, while Elizabeth’s opinion of Mr. Darcy changed after reading his letter, it was only later, during the tour to the north, that she began to feel that he was the man for her. It is hard for me to understand Lizzie’s change of mind just because Mr. Darcy makes out with her for a few weeks prior to her trip to Pemberley.

Abigail Reynolds is finding her voice as a writer; Impulse & Initiative is faster-paced and more confidently written than the one earlier work of hers that I have read. Here is an author who, if she would stop obsessing over Mr. Darcy and find her own characters and plots, could be a contender in the competitive field of romance writing.

But two last quibbles, if you can stand to read more: first, in Austen’s double-barreled titles, P&P and S&S, the reader is invited to ponder over which principal character represents which attribute—or perhaps whether each character has elements of both attributes, and, if so, in what degree. It is difficult to see the parallel in Impulse & Initiative: yeah, Darcy impulsively seduces Elizabeth, but then what? He takes the initiative to marry her? It doesn’t make much sense.

Second quibble: a real eeuw-yuck. After a night of passionate love-making, Darcy comes down to breakfast with a spring in his step and Mr. Bingley comments on his good mood. Says Darcy, “Bingley, I am married to the most astonishing woman in the world, and if her sister is anything like her, you will be a very happy man indeed.”—nudge nudge wink wink. Bleagh. In my book—and I sure hope I’m not wrong!—a Gentleman Kisses But Does Not Tell. Thus I am reminded that, when visiting a gallery in London, the real Jane Austen spotted a portrait that she laughingly said was very like Mrs. Bingley—but that she did not see Mrs. Darcy: her husband, she wrote to Cassandra, apparently had too much sensibility to put a portrait of his wife on public display. Perhaps Austen’s character is a bit uptight and reserved by comparison with Reynolds’ Darcy, as the former wouldn’t dream of discussing with his future brother-in-law what a good lay their respective wives are. It might be this Austen’s hero’s pride in his charming wife that makes him prejudiced against exposing her to public view, but his reserve, candor and probity is a major part of what makes him my real Mr. Darcy.

In the Library Reviews Safiya Tremayne
Anyone who has read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or watched one of the many movie adaptions has wondered "What if?". It’s part and parcel of reading Jane Austen. Author Abigail Reynolds offers her version of "What if?" in Impulse and Initiative.

Picking up a few short months after Darcy’s proposal at Huntsford and Elizabeth’s refusal, readers are given a chance to see a different side of Darcy. He is morose and unhappy to the point that his cousin, Colonel FitzWilliam, noticed it just by their correspondence. After hearing Darcy’s tale of the proposal and Elizabeth’s comments to him, FitzWilliam encourages Darcy to go to Elizabeth and let her see the real man, not the façade he presents to society. He also persuades Darcy to tell Bingley the truth about why he separated him from Jane.

Taking his cousin’s words to heart, Darcy visits Bingley, reveals the truth and expects the worst. Of course, he has no excuse or reason to journey to Longbourne and is prepared to give up on ever winning Elizabeth’s affections. He is therefore quite surprised when Bingley drops in and asks Darcy to accompany him to Netherfield so that Bingley may renew his addresses to Jane Bennet. Darcy now has an opportunity to show how he has changed and his true nature to Elizabeth. But will she be inclined to look favorably upon him?

In writing fan fiction -and by any definition Impulse and Initiative is fan fiction- an author must stay true to another author’s characters while creating a story is unique and believable. Abigail Reynolds superbly captures Darcy and Elizabeth natures and shows the reader how their previous prejudices and opinions change as they get to know each other. It was quite rewarding to see Darcy and Elizabeth fall in love. To see the depth of their love for their other and how they balance their desires for privacy and independence with their family’s exuberances and openness.

Impulse and Initiative is highly entertaining and amusing. It is a perfect addition to any Austen library!

Library Journal
STARRED REVIEW. We all know that Darcy abandoned hope of winning Elizabeth Bennett after she rejected his ham-handed proposal, but what if he hadn’t taken no for an answer? What if, instead, he’d swallowed his famous pride and pursued her? This compulsively readable novel, an entry in Reynolds’s "A Pride & Prejudice Variation" series, treats readers to an oh-so-spicy alternative story line. While there may be a little too much heat for proper Austenites, it’s sure to appeal to fans of lusty historical romance.

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Trade Paper Specfications

• Length: 7.75 in
• Width: 5.75 in
• Height: 0.00 in
• Weight: 16.00 oz
• Page Count: 416 pages