Book Review and Giveaway: Undressing Mr. Darcy

By Gail Allison

Vanessa is a thoroughly modern woman. She runs a successful PR agency, and uses every social media outlet to its fullest to get her clients the coverage she feels they deserve. When her elderly aunt, a mainstay of the Jane Austen society in their hometown, asks her to do some PR for a real-life “Mr. Darcy”, Vanessa can hardly deny her. Julian Chancellor is the author of My Year as Mr. Darcy, and is now touring and doing publicity for his book in an attempt to bump the sales and make enough money to repair his crumbling estate. Vanessa is nice enough to Julian, but is nowhere near fainting and fanning her brow as so many of her aunt’s Jane-ite counterparts are...until she sees his "Undressing Mr Darcy" educational strip-show. After seeing it, she realizes just how much she wants to be a part of his world. Vanessa begins to slowly reinvent herself, learning more and more about Jane Austen’s world, and in doing this learns more about herself than she ever thought possible.

I really enjoyed Undressing Mr. Darcy, and it was a solid follow-up to Ms Doornebos’ first book: Definitely Not Mr. Darcy. Once again Ms Doornebos has impressed me with her knowledge of everything Regency, and made it a lot more interesting than I’d have first imagined. Learning about Jane Austen’s life through the characters’ experiences was almost like a story within the story. And she was able to share some incredibly interesting facts about men's clothing and customs through the "Undressing Mr Darcy" strip show that Julian performed. Did you know there was more than one way to tie a cravat, and that the knot said a lot about the man who wore it? Yeah. Me neither.

My only real concern with this novel was Vanessa’s willingness to drop that career that, at the beginning of the novel, was the central focus of her life, in order to follow Julian and the diehard Jane Austen fans to events across the ocean. Through the first half of the book, she hardly put her phone down, and didn’t go a moment without posting to a twitter account, but then she gave up those things so quickly it made my head spin. I didn’t really know what to make of that. She didn’t seem like a flighty, spur of the moment kind of girl when she was introduced, so it felt like a bit of an odd turn in the plot. Not to say that it didn’t work with the story; it absolutely did. It just didn’t feel quite right.

All in all, Undressing Mr Darcy was a enjoyable, engaging read. The characters were believable, the dialogue was crisp, and the story moved along at a nice pace. It was an easy read, but the amount of detail provided about the Regency era was obviously well-researched and well presented. It never felt like I was reading from a textbook, but I finished this novel with the feeling that I had actually learned something. Ms Doornebos knows her Regency-era stuff, and the plot that she constructed around it was a lot of fun. This is a fantastic novel for a cozy afternoon by the fire with a cup of tea.

Thanks to Penguin for the book in exchange for an honest review. They have THREE copies for some lucky US readers.

How to win:
Please tell us which celebrity you'd like to "unwrap" for yourself this holiday season.

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US only. Giveaway ends December 15th at midnight EST.

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