The Falmouth Connection by Joana Starnes + Giveaway

I am pleased to welcome Joana Starnes back to Leatherbound Reviews! Joana has recently published her latest novel, The Falmouth Connection. For your reading pleasure, Ms. Starnes talks about villains and provides you with quite an engaging excerpt. Enjoy!

Mr. Darcy Vs. The Perfect Villain

Or

A Spot of ‘Cloak-and-Dagger’

Thanks, Jakki, for inviting me to Leatherbound Reviews again, it’s such a pleasure and an honour to be here!

I believe this is my last guest-post on ‘The Falmouth Connection’ blog tour, and I thought I’d finish on a rather different note than I began.

If you have visited ‘The Falmouth Connection’ Facebook page, you might have found several different excerpts from the book. If not, there are links on my website and, if you are intrigued, please come and have a look. Some excerpts are humorous, as interactions between Mr. Darcy and his cousin often are. Some are verging on the silly and, needless to say, they feature Lydia and/or Mrs. Bennet. Others are deeply romantic, like a certain kiss in a deserted garden in the middle of the night. But so far none have introduced the villains – and maybe it’s time to remedy that.

I had a rather different villain in mind for ‘The Falmouth Connection’ – but then I remembered a comment from a reader who was wondering why would we ever try to invent new villains, when Jane Austen has provided us with the perfect one?

  

Ah, yes. Mr. Wickham – the very man we all love to hate!

I must admit that Elizabeth Cohen, another one of my very kind readers, rather hit the spot when she asked if I should start writing stories where Mr. Wickham has some redeeming quality or another, now that I have met Adrian Lukis at the Jane Austen Festival earlier this year and found him to be such a wonderful person and so incredibly tolerant with two young ladies and a matron who frankly should find themselves at the receiving end of a restraining order ;)

    

Maybe I should consider this one day – or maybe not. For now, I’m rather glad that ‘The Falmouth Connection’ was already written before September and no such dilemmas got in the way.

The story needed a villain – and who can do a better job than Mr. Wickham? Not merely because he is a perfect villain in his own right, but also because we all know that no one can push Mr. Darcy’s buttons quite as effectively as Wickham. Childhood frustrations, which we can only speculate on (and we often do, in our variations), then the very real misdeeds he was guilty of in later years, culminating in the ultimate betrayal of making designs on young and innocent Georgiana. The fact that Elizabeth champions Wickham in the midst of Darcy’s first proposal adds fierce jealousy to the already explosive mix!

But fear not, there are no such explosions in ‘The Falmouth Connection’. Mr. Darcy does not get to make the Hunsford proposal and many changes to the plot occur as a result.

One thing will never change though – and that is the deep aversion that the former childhood playmates now feel for each other. And when they happen to meet with weapons in hand, none would back down – and hang the consequences!

 * * * *

Excerpt from ‘The Falmouth Connection’ Chapter 19

Wickham’s eyes remained trained on his chief opponent, who stood before him poised to lunge and just as carefully assessing his own chances. He grinned and could not deny himself the vast pleasure to taunt his hated adversary.

“Lo and behold,” he sneered. “What have we here? I do believe ‘tis the knight in shining armour armed with a fire-iron! Always in the wrong place at the wrong time, Darcy, and ill-prepared as well. How do you think your pitiful poker would fare against my blade?” he sneered again and apparently succeeded in giving the other pause, for he saw Darcy swiftly casting around for a better weapon.

Taking advantage of his foe’s momentary distraction, Wickham lunged and struck but Darcy, devil take him, had impeccable reflexes! The fire-iron parried the vicious blow – and might have also dented his blade in the process, Wickham noted with an oath. Well, be that as it may! Darcy could duel with a poker if it pleased him, but he would have the devil of a job skewering anyone with the blunt, crude weapon, Wickham smirked. Yet his smug self-satisfaction faded once his opponent turned and twisted, skilfully avoided yet another blow and lunged to grab a blade from the positively medieval display that Mrs. Pencarrow had chosen to adorn her great hall with – to Wickham’s detriment and disappointment.

  

 

 The damned thing was not even secured on the wall and readily came off the panoply into Darcy’s hand as the maligned poker clattered to the floor.

It seemed it was now Darcy’s turn to goad him.

“You were saying, Wickham?” he shot back with a curl of his lip that his childhood playmate would have dearly loved to reshape with a cutlass.

With a loud grunt, Wickham lunged again, giving his best strike, but blade met blade in yet another parry, and he could only hope that his enemy’s weapon was a mere ornament devoid of substance or blunted by disuse and age.

To his ill-fortune, it was nothing of the sort.

 * *

‘This must be the stuff of nightmares,’ Elizabeth thought, overcome with terror, as the scene before her erupted into violent commotion, the sickening clash of metal against metal echoing in the vast empty hall.

Hands pressed against her mouth in agonising fear, she watched them lunge, thrust, feint and lunge again, the poor light from the few guttering candles making the scene more terrifying still. Not for herself, not for her own safety but his, Good Lord, for his!

How could she have been so blind, so dreadfully blind and dense? Why did she need to see him facing mortal peril to understand at last how much he meant to her? Was she so devoid of reason and imagination that she had to witness this primeval scene before she understood that her whole world would plunge into grief-filled darkness if anything befell him?

 * * * *

For a chance to find out more, please leave a comment to take part in the international giveaway of one e-copy of ‘The Falmouth Connection’.

There are more excerpts available on my website and on the book’s Facebook page, along with images of beautiful Cornwall and of the places that have inspired this story. Please visit and I hope you’ll like what you’ll see.

Thanks again, Jakki, for having me as your guest at Leatherbound Reviews, for your warm welcome and your wonderful support – as always, it’s greatly appreciated!

Thank you, Joana, for a lovely excerpt! I do so love a good sparring scene. And seeing Elizabeth's reaction to it makes it even more enjoyable. 

From the publisher:

Just as Mr. Darcy finally decides to propose to the enticing Miss Elizabeth Bennet, she is summoned to Falmouth, to meet a relation she never knew she had. 

Thus, the ill-starred Hunsford proposal is avoided – but before he could even begin to understand his luck, adverse circumstances hasten to conspire against him, and Fitzwilliam Darcy is compelled to follow the woman he loves to the far reaches of Cornwall, into a world of deceit and peril where few – if any – are what they seem to be…

***GIVEAWAY TIME***

Joana Starnes is kindly offering ONE (1) e-copy of The Falmouth Connection to one lucky commenter. To enter, please leave a comment for Joana with your Twitter handle or email address. 

Giveaway open internationally!!

Giveaway ends December 1, 2014!

Best of luck!! 

 Connect with Joana Starnes


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Winner: The Second Chance by Joana Starnes!!

CYN209!!!

Congratulations, Cyn209 on winning The Second Chance by Joana Starnes!! What a wonderful book to have won! 

Special thanks to the lovely Joana Starnes for kindly offering an ebook for a giveaway and to all of the wonderful commenters! Thank you so much, each of you, for your participation and support! You Rock! 

And thanks again, Ceri, for your delightful review! 

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer and staying cool!

Connect with Joana Starnes


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Review: The Second Chance by Joana Starnes + Giveaway!

Earlier this year I read and really enjoyed The Subsequent Proposal by Joana Starnes which featured characters of both Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion. When Jakki kindly offered me the opportunity to read The Second Chance by Joana, I read the blurb, and seeing that it featured characters from both Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice I assumed that it would be similar to The Subsequent Proposal but actually it was quite different.

The Second Chance diverges from Pride and Prejudice pretty early on. The story begins at Netherfield, where Elizabeth has gone to nurse her sister, and Darcy has realised how the second Miss Bennet bewitches him and is fighting hard against it. Elizabeth receives a note informing her of her father being found unconscious. Mr Darcy is very comforting to her when she receives this awful news, and offers the practical assistance of sending for his doctor from town. Elizabeth begins to see that perhaps she has had an overly-harsh perception of Mr Darcy initially, and he is a better, more feeling man than she previously gave him credit for. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth is in the early stages of her dislike of Darcy at this point, and much of this is done away by his solicitous behaviour towards her. So much so, that when a Mr Wickham arrives on the scene and tells her a tale of woe regarding Mr Darcy’s behaviour Elizabeth is not particularly disposed to give it much credence.

Although Mr Bennet recovers, he is diagnosed with a heart problem. He could survive for some time or drop down dead, leaving his widow and daughters destitute. By this point Mr Collins has arrived and has made his position clear. Mr Darcy is rather more in love with Elizabeth at this point than in canon and he makes a crazy decision. Rather than chance that Elizabeth may choose to sacrifice herself to ensure her sisters’ future security Darcy decides to give her an alternative option. He feels that he is unable to marry her, as her family is unacceptable, but he could secure her financial future. He has a smaller estate that he decides to sign over to her family, pretending that it has been left to Mr Bennet by an old university friend, who wished to remain anonymous. This sounds extremely generous, and it is, but it’s also gambling with the Bennets’ respectability – if anybody found out that the Bennets had been given an estate by an unrelated man there would probably be an assumption that one of the Miss Bennets was his mistress, and it could have ruined their whole family. It’s a pretty selfish action considering that he would be gambling with their respectability and reducing his family’s fortune in one fell swoop and the only reason he’s doing it is to try to prevent Elizabeth marrying before he’s had chance to get over her. If any of the Bennets or their relations find out it’s likely that they would be extremely offended, and Darcy’s motives could easily be misinterpreted.

As it happens, by the time Mr Bennet passes away Mrs Bennet and her daughters wouldn’t have been destitute as two of them have already married and are in a position to support their mother and sisters. But, being in possession of the Farringdon Estate in Devon, they move there, where they meet some characters who we would know from Sense and Sensibility - Sir John and Lady Middleton, Colonel Brandon and the garrulous Mrs Jennings, who immediately becomes fast friends with Mrs Bennet. There is also a visitor to the area that we would find familiar; Colonel Brandon has another colonel staying with him – a Colonel Fitzwilliam, who is very taken with the Misses Bennet, and believes he sees some partiality for them in his friend Brandon. Soon afterwards there are further newcomers to the area in the form of a widow, Mrs Dashwood, and her three daughters. Elizabeth and Kitty Bennet soon become good friends with Elinor and Marianne. This is where the storylines of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility start to merge, although differently to how Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion came together in the Subsequent Proposal. I thought the stories were intertwined really well – there were events from Sense and Sensibility that happened in much the same way as in that book, and other events unfolded differently due to the Bennets being there.  If you are not familiar with the intricacies of Sense and Sensibility then I wouldn’t worry too much, this story is primarily focused on Darcy and Elizabeth and the Pride and Prejudice characters.

Since Elizabeth never reaches the level of dislike that she has to overcome in canon the main thing keeping her and Darcy apart is him fighting a relationship due to societal gap between them. In Pride and Prejudice, although Elizabeth knows that there is a gap when she refuses Darcy, she doesn’t fully appreciate just how much higher Darcy stands in society than her father until she sees Pemberley. At the time of her scathing refusal she acknowledges the compliment of such a man’s affections, but in the moment she doesn’t have time to consider it, as she is so angry at his slights toward her family. Here Elizabeth is much more keenly aware of the gap between them and I felt sorry for her – the humbling realisation that it would be a poor marriage for Darcy couldn’t have been a comforting thought, and this theme is explored in some depth.

‘She had never imagined that the disparity between Pemberley and Netherfield, or between Pemberley and every place that she knew, for that matter, would be so marked.’

We are privy to Elizabeth’s thoughts and feelings throughout much of the book, but we are also treated to Darcy’s as well. What would a Pride and Prejudice variation be without some suffering for our dear hero?! Well there is quite a bit for him here and frankly he deserves every bit of it! It’s due to his own pride that he doesn’t pursue a relationship between himself and Elizabeth from the Netherfield days when he first begins to love her, and all the other delays, misunderstandings and conflict arise as a result of this, so although he goes through the mill it’s all self inflicted, as his comforting cousin and dear friend informs him:

‘I never expected a blunder of such magnitude! You do everything in a grander scale than the rest of us, do you not?’

I very much liked the portrayal of the characters in this story – I felt that Elizabeth and Darcy were pretty close to canon, Mrs Bennet was portrayed affectionately, Bingley as a sweet man with a lively sense of humour, and I also enjoyed Jane’s character here, especially when she showed some unexpected protective tendencies. We are also treated to an absence of some characters who I am quite happy to do without!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Although it’s quite a long book and took me a while to read it never felt long. The storylines of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility merged and intertwined naturally and the style of the prose was delightful - charming and witty and there are some bits which are downright funny. There are also phrases of Austen’s weaved in throughout the book, often attributed to different characters, as unobtrusive nods back to Pride and Prejudice that I enjoyed spotting. It’s such a romantic read too. I would wholeheartedly recommend reading this!

*Review written by Leatherbound Reviews contributor Ceri Tanti
*Review copy provided by the author

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***GIVEAWAY TIME***

Joana Starnes is kindly offering ONE (1) ebook copy of The Second Chance for giveaway!!
To enter: Comment on this review
You MUST leave email or Twitter handle so I know how to contact the winner!
For extra entries, you can tweet this review once daily. Just comment with your tweet URL for the entry.
Giveaway ends June 26, 2014!
Best of luck!!

Winners Announced!!

The winner of We Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor is…

MONICA PERRY!!

Congratulations, Monica! I hope you enjoy Gloria's story!

The winner of The Subsequent Proposal by Joana Starnes is…

Suzan Lauder!!

Congratulations, Suzan!! I hope you find Joana's story as entertaining as Ceri. 

I have to say that after reading Ceri's review, I did read The Subsequent Proposal and found it enjoyable. :)

Thank you to everyone who commented and entered the giveaway! 

Looking for another giveaway? Leatherbound Reviews is hosting a blog tour for Love at First Slight by J. Marie Croft. Click HERE for the schedule! 

Stop by as several of the blog posts have giveaways! Open internationally! 

Review: The Subsequent Proposal by Joana Starnes + Giveaway!!

Book Blurb:

A tale of pride, prejudice, and persuasion

A number of broken-hearted characters from Jane Austen’s best novels are thrown together by the vagaries of fate, and all manner of unwise decisions are taken at this vulnerable time. But then their past creeps up upon them – and what is there to do but face it, and hope that their convoluted paths will finally lead them to their proper place? 

“Elizabeth… Elizabeth… Elizabeth…” he murmured against her lips, her skin, her hair, and then her lips again. “I cannot forsake you! I cannot! I cannot lose you! I cannot bear to think of a life without you – ‘tis not worth living, ‘tis but a slow death! I cannot lose you! I beg you, do not send me away again! I love you! Elizabeth, I love you!” 

Friends, rivals, foes, wrong choices and a duel – Fitzwilliam Darcy’s life is never dull! ‘The Subsequent Proposal’ – a story that is primarily about him – follows Mr. Darcy in his struggles to decipher the troubling enigma of Elizabeth Bennet’s feelings – and to correct the worst misjudgement of his life… 

Review:

I’ve read lots of Pride and Prejudice variations, but none which crossed over with another Austen book as much as this one. What if, after the disastrous Hunsford proposal, Mr Darcy went off heartbroken, in the belief that Elizabeth Bennet would never reconsider her feelings towards him?  What if he felt he could never love another, but had found a friend in a lady who soothed his feelings and proved herself a genuine good friend to Georgiana? A friend who is unappreciated by her own family?  Darcy needs to marry at some point, and meeting and getting to know Miss Anne Elliot (from Persuasion) provides some balm to his wounds. He is persuaded by Colonel Fitzwilliam to think of matrimony and the story begins with Darcy actually proposing marriage to Anne (Nooooooo!).

Darcy is honest with her that he loves another, and Anne hints at her own disappointment in love. I felt quite sorry for Anne at this point, but let’s be honest, a loveless but respectful marriage with a good man would be better than having to live with HER relatives.  Sir Walter insists on a long engagement that will not be announced for some time, to give Miss Elizabeth Elliot chance to make a match rather than see the indignity of having two younger sisters marry before her (although there is no delay mentioned in Persuasion Captain Wentworth is less of a catch financially than Darcy, so I felt this was plausible). After sealing their tepid deal, Anne goes to stay with Lady Russell, and Darcy back to town.  Here he meets with Bingley who tells him that both of the elder Miss Bennets have been to Pemberley while travelling with the Gardiners, in the company of one of Mrs Gardiner’s school friends, Mrs Croft, her husband and her brother, Captain Wentworth, who seems disposed to court one of the Misses Bennet.  Darcy feels that his interference in Bingley’s affairs may have cost his friend his happiness so he sets off to Hertfordshire to give him what assistance he can, meaning that he crosses the path of Elizabeth Bennet once more, and starts to hope that her feelings towards him may have changed, even though it’s too late...

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  The story is told in the third person, but we are privy to Darcy’s thoughts and passionate feelings, which makes his decisions easier to understand. The early parts of it where Darcy is dealing with his misery were almost painful to read, but were really compelling. Once Darcy has hopes that Elizabeth has changed her mind towards him he is almost as miserable, because he’s not in a position to propose.  He is also very jealous of Captain Wentworth, who makes no secret of his plans to propose to Elizabeth, and the two men have a mutual distrust and dislike which was almost comedic, there are many looks of loathing directed at each other!

Poor Anne is almost completely forgotten by Darcy as he interacts with the bewitching Miss Bennet and gets caught up in events relating to the Bennet family. I felt even more sorry for Anne at this point, but knowing that she is supposed to end up married to Captain Wentworth, the man she loves really helped me forgive Darcy’s behaviour in overlooking his responsibilities somewhat.

“His first, his only thought had been of her. Her happiness, her comfort.  Not Georgiana’s, and certainly not Anne’s.”

Although there are the characters from two Austen books here it’s very much a Pride and Prejudice variation.  We see very little of Anne, and other characters from Persuasion such as Sir Walter are only in the story briefly.  Characters from Pride and Prejudice such as Jane and Mr Bingley play a larger part in the story, and I felt that they were really captured well.  I particularly liked the affectionate way the embarrassing and voluble Mrs Bennet was portrayed:

“Mrs Bennet had taken up her post at one of the tall windows that overlooked the garden – and if the curtains did not twitch, it was only due to her mastery of the art.”

I felt this story had everything; there was emotion, there was passion, there was a lot of humour and a big tangle to unravel to ensure that both of our couples got a happy ending.  I read it in one sitting and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This is the first book I’ve read this year and what a way to begin! I’d recommend this book without hesitation, I really did love it.

*Review written by Leatherbound Reviews contributor Ceri Taint

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***GIVEAWAY TIME***

Joana Starnes is kindly offering ONE (1) ebook copy of The Subsequent Proposal for giveaway!!
To enter: Comment on this review
You MUST leave email or Twitter handle so I know how to contact the winner!
For extra entries, you can tweet this review once daily. Just comment with your tweet URL for the entry.
Giveaway ends February 3, 2014!
Best of luck!!