Lady Fetton's Longbourn Legacy

A Sweet Pride and Prejudice Variation

By: Victoria Lynn

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

In this clean reimagining of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Thomas Bennet has a much older sister, Marianne, who enters into an arranged marriage when she is fifteen and Thomas is five. The siblings have little contact and no real interest in each other. Marianne is widowed and remarries and in the process becomes Lady Fetton, a Duchess and a very wealthy woman.

Years pass and after Marianne is widowed a second time she returns to Longbourn and becomes involved in the lives of the Bennets only weeks before the Bingleys and Darcy arrive at Netherfield. Mr. Darcy and Miss Bingley, unaware of her rank, cut her at the Meryton assembly and, of course, Mr. Darcy insults Elizabeth.

After Wickham arrives and the Bingley’s give their ball, Lady Fetton decides it is time to change the course of the lives of the Bennets and in the process changes the lives of the Bingleys and Mr. Darcy.

Excellent storyline. This was P&P with substance.

This is not for your typical pride and prejudice fan. This is a story that developed the characters it got into what made the family and the characters who they were. The only thing that could’ve been better is if Stevie Zimmerman did the narration. This was one of my absolute favorite. Will listen to this again!

This is my 3rd reading - love Mrs Fetton

I love how the family
improves after meeting Lady Fetton. The story is fun and pleasing.

Interesting story

This story begins a bit earlier than we are used to. A huge part of the book is about Lady Fetton. Very interesting personality. I enjoyed it very much. Only down side is the virtual voice who can’t say Darce. It says Dacre instead. Annoying. But other than that a great read. Great Jaff.

Excellent variation!

As this was read by a virtual voice, I only gave it a listen because it was free in the plus catalog. The story line is absolutely fantastic with lovely life lessons learned in a realistic fashion. The writing definitely could be improved in some places (little bit of unnecessary repetition). It was my first listen for a virtual voice. Some words were mispronounced and the numbers were atrocious! “L one comma oh oh.” But the biggest drawback of the AI voice was that you lose everything in the dialogue! No distinguishable characters, no character attributes, no change of pitch, power, or pace. Everything is read in the narrator voice. It’s such a pity because this would’ve been a great, entertaining listen with the right narrator. JAFF is DEFINITELY NOT the genre for AI narration! Cough up the money and pay a real voice talent to breathe life into your story. You do not do yourselves justice, authors, when you use AI. I’m unlikely to re-listen and DEFINITELY won’t ever pay for an AI-read audiobook.

A Duchess Takes Charge

In this P&P vagary Mr Bennet’s older sister is a dowager duchess. The beginning of the book tells the backstory of the duchess and her younger brother, Thomas Bennet.

When the duchess decides to become involved with her birth family she finds a group of misbehaving people and children. She even finds fault in the oh-so-perfect Jane and nearly perfect Elizabeth. After some hesitation she decides that, even though she could abandon them to their own folly, she believes they can improve.

The Bingley/Darcy party, on the other hand, is a whole different proposition. Those people have demonstrated to everyone that they are wholly without manners and are nigh near irredeemable!

It is a long, hard slog but the managing duchess is just the person who may be able to help the Bennets and the unmannerly Darcy and Bingley to mend their ways.

This is an excellent story. The duchess is a wonderful addition to our favorite cast of characters and I truly enjoyed this story. I’m not a huge fan of virtual voice but I love being able to listen to so many books for free so for that reason alone it’s palatable. I highly recommend.

Super Entertaining

Finally someone calls out Elizabeth for her tendency to be rude,arrogant and a know it all. Aunt Marianne Fetton, Thomas Bennett’s sister, comes to Longborn and she takes everyone in hand. Most people don’t know that she is a wealthy duchess. The Bingleys certainly don’t know and Caroline and Darcy cut Marianne Fetton at the Meryton Assembly. Actually Aunt Marianne gives ALL the Bennetts a valuable lesson in polite behavior, including Jane and Elizabeth. She also harshly sets Wickham, Darcy and the Bingley siblings straight . I absolutely loved it and was cheering her on. This was one of the most satisfying P&P variations I have listened to. The narration was even better than expected. I thank the author for this most enjoyable book

Good story, poor voiceover

Overall, I enjoyed the story, though it is as much a morality tale of people recognizing and fixing their personal flaws as it was a reimagining of Pride and Prejudice. I found it a little far-fetched to believe that everyone could make such significant personality changes, but it was a nice story of redemption. I dealt with the digital voice narration but did not enjoy it. There were many mispronunciations, and of course it was seriously lacking in personality and inflection. For that reason I would say it would be much better to read this story than listen to it… especially at 12 hours long.

Interesting storyline!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it’ll be another one I’ll want to listen to again!

This is my first virtual voice audiobook. It was an adjustment but I think there is an advantage to such narration. Sometimes the reader trying to change their voice for each character can be distracting.

I had always refused to consider virtual voice narration even if the book sounded like one I’d like. I’m glad I gave it a chance!

Boring

This is one of the most boring stories I have ever listened to. I have over a 1,000 books in my library, so that’s saying something.

It should've been listed as a vagary, not a variation

Even increasing the playback speed to 1.7 couldn't bring this vagary to an end quickly enough. The repetitive, long-winded, didactic diatribes of Duchess Aunt Maryanne made this story intolerable. Her omniscient self-righteousness made her character completely insufferable, and unfortunately the entire book was centered around her.

Whenever I see "vagary" listed in the description I know to avoid those books because I really don't like the principle characters behaving in ways the originals never would, and this story had Jane yelling at Lizzy, Lizzy yelling at her father, and Mary yelling at everyone, including her parents, and all of these confrontations just dripped with sanctimony by the speaker. I'm just thankful it's finally over.