Emma & Knightly: Perfect Happines in Highbury by Rachel Billington
I picked this up at our local library on a whim. I was dealing with fussy children and a library that had the A/C out, so I was desperately grabbing anything that caught my eye, and I figured if it was horrible, I didn’t have to finish it.
Well, the book wasn’t horrible, and I did finish it. I’m a HUGE fan of Jane Austen, and find fan-fiction books based on her characters (or even the movie renditions of her books, like Austenland) to be fascinating in their own right. Not as good as Austen (who could be?) but still fun (if not fluff) reading for a die-hard Austen fan.
The book opens a year after Emma and Knightley (she still calls him Knightley) have wed, and Emma is still living at Hartfield, as was discussed in the original Emma. Rachel Billington did a fair job at keeping Jane Austen’s voice throughout the book. I did take exception at a few of her conclusions, she didn’t allow the reader to come to their own, but rather wrote her preconceptions into the book in a way that left some of the surprise out.
Where sometimes I think Jane had an anti-hero (Frank Churchill in Emma) to come to a good ending, Rachel turned the happy ending of Frank and Jane on its head. I won’t ruin all the story lines, but Harriet comes into her own, Emma realizes her faults, Knightly is still my favorite Austen hero (I’m sorry, but he’s the only Austen hero that makes me swoon!), and Mrs. Weston and her husband are still blissfully happy.
Out of five stars, none being horrible and five being excellent, I would rate this a 3. I felt like Billington tried a bit too hard at times, there wasn’t the depth and intricacy of the original Emma, but it was a fair continuation of the classic.
