Mary Bennet Discovers a New Purpose

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Source: Review Copy from Author

TYPE OF NOVEL: Pride and Prejudice Sequel about a Secondary Character

THE PREMISE: After the passing of Mr. Bennet, Mary Bennet has the opportunity to live with a distant relation who offers to arrange lessons to help improve her education. And not long after she arrives, Mary has the misfortune to discover a dead body washed upon the shore, and finds herself embroiled in solving a murder mystery amongst other mysteries…

MY THOUGHTS:

Mary Bennet solving mysteries? To paraphrase Schitt’s Creek, “love that journey for her!” And I love how Ms. Cowley set it all up with unexpected relations, a long-term sojourn to Worthing, an intriguing castle, and loads of suspicious activities stringing together from Meryton to Brighton. Mary catches wind of smuggling enterprises, discovers some treasonous links to France, and very early on starts to suspect her hosts of telling many falsehoods. Our dear Mary has more intrigues than she knows what to do with!

What I am enjoying most about this series (expected to be 3 books in total) is witnessing this author’s portrayal and evolution of Mary Bennet. In this first installment readers will see Mary very much as she is known to us in P&P – stiff, severe, arrogant, and lacking in social awareness. She makes some cringe-y mistakes that make it hard to like her. But eventually, Mary starts to see her wrongs and amends her actions and behaviors. I appreciate that even though Mary has been overlooked and lonely for much of her life, she is determined to think for herself, be true to herself, and make her own way.

One area where Mary is not in any way flawed or needing improvement is her observational skills – she is a female Sherlock Holmes! She takes note of everything very quickly with very explicit detail, is surprisingly quick on her feet, is in possession of a bounty of courage, and as we might expect, is very devoted to discovering the truth and preserving justice. The one detective/sleuth skill Mary needs to work on is her communicating/interrogating skills when trying to covertly glean information from a person of interest. I enjoyed seeing Mary so capable and savvy in her spying endeavors – she was brilliant! And I really loved how, whenever she was in a situation where she felt out of her depths, she channeled one of her sisters and tried to act as they would – whether it was Jane’s kindness, Lizzy’s witty retorts, Kitty’s flirtatiousness, or Lydia’s boldness.

While the mysteries surrounding the murder and suspicious activities around Worthing were interesting and exciting, I think they sometimes fell secondary in importance and interest to Mary’s growth and evolution. In addition, there were some parts of the story where the pacing felt a bit too slow, and others where it felt too abrupt. And there were a couple of characters I would have liked to learn more about or see more developed – perhaps this will happen in the next book?

The Secret Life of Mary Bennet series promises to be and exhilarating and compelling series full of adventure, politics, and action! This first installment is an excellent choice for readers who are already #TeamMary, who have a fondness for unlikely heroines and transformative evolutions, and who long to become entangled in mysteries with murders, intriguing castles, and dangerous risks. I am looking forward to Book Two – True Confessions of a London Spy (expected release: March 2022).

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