Book Report: Suspense and Sensibility

This August, I'll turn 35. Most days I don't feel like I'm in my mid-thirties. Some days my aches and pains make me feel like I'm much, much older, but, most often, I feel younger than that. Maybe that's why the idea of continuing to grow older doesn't quite trouble me - at least not yet, anyway. But for Sir Francis Dashwood, the thought of reaching the end of his days is pure agony. A life of excesses has made him old before his time and, when his death is drawing near, he is filled with only bitterness for that end.

Some thirty years later, young Harry Dashwood is coming into his majority, which means the estate of Norland, which has been bequethed to him, is now his. In the attic, he finds a portrait of Sir Francis, along with a curious mirror. As Harry meets, woos and falls in love with Elizabeth Darcy's younger sister Kitty, the road seems paved for happiness for Harry and Kitty as well as the Darcys. But that suspiciously enchanting mirror still holds powers that no one truly knows the extent of and has it's hand to play yet. Broken hearts, broken lives and ultimate sacrifice just may be required in order to set things right.

Suspense and Sensibility is the second book in Carrie Bebris' Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mysteries series. Bebris has taken Jane Austen's much loved characters of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, united in marriage at the close of her novel Pride and Prejudice, and continued their story. In the series, she brings in familiar faces, as well as new characters, as well. Suspense introduces the Darcys to another of Austen's much-loved families - the Dashwoods, whose story is told in Sense and Sensibility.

Now married with three children of their own, Elinor and Edward Ferrars meet Elizabeth and Darcy and form an attachment and affinity for one another. (Harry is Elinor's nephew, which is how they connect and become aquainted with the Darcys.) I'm curious to read subsequent books in the Mr. & Mrs. Darcy series to see if the Dashwoods make another appearance, or if other characters from Austen's works take center stage, as well.