A Familiar Face

A Pride and Prejudice Variation

By: AnnaMarie Wallace

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

In this variation, seventeen-year-old Elizabeth is on holiday at the seaside with the Gardiners. She intervenes when she sees a young lady being forced into a carriage by a man and an older woman. The young lady’s handsome older brother, Mr. Darcy, expresses his gratitude to her for saving his sister, and they part. Elizabeth expects never to see him again. Imagine her surprise, then, when some two years later, he appears in Meryton as the friend of Netherfield’s new tenant, Mr. Bingley. And imagine her fury when Mr. Darcy, the man she has dreamed about for the past three years, scarcely affords her a glance before insulting her looks! Then the man who had tried to force Georgiana Darcy into a carriage comes to Meryton with the militia. Will he recognise her as the young lady who cost him thirty thousand pounds?
This is a full-length novel of over 90,000 words.

Interesting but very long and slow paced

It holds a lot of detail about the day to day of what Elizabeth is going through which I find really interesting. But it causes the ending to feel rushed when in the final chapter Elizabeth is explaining months worth of things in just a few minutes. If you want something fast paced this is not for you.

Great read

This story starts at Ramsgate. Elizabeth overheard Georgiana’s protests to climbing into the carriage with Wickham. She rescued her. Meets mr Darcy. Then he comes to Meryton three years later…. Great Jaff.

One of the very best i've ever read

Intriguing plot. No problem with the virtual voice, except two quirks. Bowed is pronounced to Rhyme with bold . The dash mark is read every time as dash. But the voice was great.

Narration by AI

The AI does not understand intonation. Neither does it understand punctuation doesn't need to be read. It was like Biden reading his stage directions.

Great Story, Not Great Narration

I liked this novel very much. I think it deserves a human narrator who understands that a dash (hyphen) is not a word to be spoken as part of the text. Also, a narrator who gets that there are two different pronunciations for ‘bowing,’ depending on context.

Nice story, enjoyable

This story felt like Austin, fairly true to the original but with some interesting twists. As always, I get irritated the mispronunciations of the computer generated narration, but for the most part it is a sweet story that is rich in early 19th details.

Deserving of real voice actors

The story flows beautifully with situations resulting in reactions and dialogues that are believable. Elizabeth is very much the sensible version of herself, and the entire tale is refreshingly without forced misunderstandings and absurdities. This work deserves more than a Virtual Voice.

New twist

Darcy and Elizabeth not as true to canon. Felt annoyed at both multiple times. Darcy not ardent enough and Lizzy was too weak of character at times.

Too much blame

Too much time taking blame, and placing blame for Lydia’s bad choices. Not enough forgiveness shown. I hated hearing Elizabeth being so unkind. Ending was too rushed.

Robot voice

Narration was so monotone it was perfect to put me to sleep. The story was good but it took me 6 nights to hear it all