Master Elizabeth Bennet: A Pride and Prejudice Variation

by Melanie Schertz

When tragedy strikes her family, leaving no males to handle business affairs, Elizabeth Bennet decides to become "man of the family". Cutting her hair and dressing in her uncle's clothing, Elizabeth becomes Elijah Bennet. She must keep her secret, though when she meets Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy, the nephew of Elijah Bennet's best customer, her heart is torn. Should she be honest about being a lady, or protect her family secret?

192 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 24, 2016

About the author

I am a retired crime lab/crime scene technician, having worked for a local police department for 15 years. Since then, I have become disabled. Forgot to get the extended warranty on the body. In my spare time, I make jewelry, am a photographer, and a full time mom and grandma.
My daughter by birth is Catie, and she is the dearest part of my life. Through her, I have 2 daughters by heart, Heather and Kristina. Through Heather and her awesome man, Stan, I have 4 amazing grandchildren, Purgi, Penne, Myles, and Persephene.
Besides my human family, I have a canine son, who is my service dog, Darcy. I also have 4 feline daughters (Salem, Lizzy, Dagonet, and Freya ). I now have 5 grandpuppies, 2 grandkitties.
Two days after I received my first ever royalty check, I adopted Darcy and Lizzy. Fitting names, I thought. And they resemble the characters. Lizzy is mischievous, yet loving, climbing up high as if she were in a tree. Darcy is extremely protective and loving. He has his shy side, which is clear when around some people, until he comes to know he can trust them.

Reviews

[Sheila Majczan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Melanie is known for the unique plots in her stories as well as the need for an editor or, at the minimum, a good spell check program. I have read 10 of her stories now and read this one as a Work In Progress. The premise here is cross dressing as the story description tells us. Mr. Bennet has died, Collins inherited Longbourn and Mr. Gardiner also is deceased. On top of all that there is no male to manage the latter one's successful tea emporium. Enter Master Elijah Bennet.

One of the regular customers of that business is Lady Matlock; she refers her nephew to that shop for his tea supplies. Read with amusement as Darcy finds himself attracted to a "man". Quite a few misunderstandings occur. Remember: homosexuality is an offense not tolerated by the law in that day and age. (The punishment for those convicted was the death penalty until 1861 in the United Kingdom: Wikipedia.)

Lady Catherine, Wickham and Caroline play their part in plans or plots to bring down the house. But with Lady Matlock supporting the family's business just who is going to carry the most weight when heads butt over Darcy's leanings? Elizabeth is front and center in doing all she can to keep two families afloat.

This is a short read of just over 200 pages in paperback. I did find this to be an interesting read, especially as I read of Darcy's true misgivings at his own tastes and desires in that era.

[JMarcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An epidemic wipes out the Bennets, Gardiner and Philips, leaving only Jane, Elizabeth, Kitty, Aunt Gardiner and three of her young children. Having to leave Longbourn, recently destroyed by lightning fire, the sisters move to London, where Elizabeth attempts to run their late uncle's new tea shoppe. She quickly finds it nearly impossible to do business as a young woman, so to save what's left of her family, makes the decision to disguise her self as her "twin" brother.

Enter Lady Matlock. Once again, the author provides us with a strong and perceptive representation of Darcy's aunt. Having heard of the shoppe from her, Darcy decides to see for himself, and what he finds only fuels his curiosity. He hires Jane as Georgianna's governess/companion, and as he learns more of the family becomes more intrigued, especially as information flows in from outside sources to support suspicions started by slips by all three sisters. An attempted robbery of the shoppe leads to confirmation that Elijah is really Elizabeth, and he convinces Elizabeth to enter a courtship.

Now that the secret is out to the Darcys and Fitzwilliams, the sisters and Gardiner relocate their shoppe to Lambton, to allow Elizabeth to re-emerge as a young woman. A Christmas storm brings a conniving Caroline and her siblings to Pemberley, but her vindictiveness ends up with her expulsion to the village inn, but not an end to her attempts to get rid of Elizabeth and her family.

Finally, the families must contend with Lady Catherine, and many shocking family secrets are revealed. But family, and true love prevail.

[Julianne Bellardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

This was a "hot chocolate on a rainy Sunday Morning" kind of story. Easy, sweet and ended far to quickly for my taste.
I must confess of being a bit biased when it comes to gender bender plots, as I always find them so very amusing.

That being said, I ended up feeling like a did on others of Melanie's books: the plot could've been better explored. Thinks just seem to develop too fast at times, and then others the pace slows to a crawl (near the end, for that matter). I know the idea was for a small story, but it had so much potential, so many things could've happened!
I also found a bit unnerving when Darcy acted completely OOC and kissed Elijah Bennet on the Tea shop. It just felt a bit too much out of blue, even though I like most stories that soften a bit the Master Of Pemberley Brooding tendencies.

All in all, it was a really nice, sweet and fast-passed book. There where some typos that gave me pause one in a while, but it did no harm.

[Talia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this one. Melanie wrote on FB that this was one of her early books. I found it very endearing. One of my faves.

Reread: Crazy and fun. What is not to love? E as a man. I'm there.

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

An interesting premise ruined by poor writing and trying to do too much.

In terms of plot, without spoilers—there was just too much going on. What should have been major plot points were glossed over and not fully fleshed out. Many were crammed in at the end and weren’t necessary to the main story line.

Characters deviated too far from their original personalities and traits. They said and did things that would have been completely beyond the pale in the Regency era.

There were inconsistencies of detail; for example, the same child was said to be eight years old and six years old within a few pages (and no, it wasn’t because there was a flashback or other timeline change). And the writing was riddled with errors in vocabulary, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and so on.

I kept reading only because I wanted to see just how bonkers things would get. I don’t recommend this book and won’t seek out anything else from this author.

[Mustang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth in disguise

3 1/2 rounded to 4 stars
A nice quick read with not too much angst. This starts as a sad tale with less than half of the Bennet family alive. They really got hit hard from fires to illnesses that swept through the lands. With her beloved uncle also passing away and her aunt sick someone had to take things in hand to keep their entire family afloat. Thinking about what things were like and how the business side of things were very male dominated you could see how Elizabeth would disguise herself as her “brother”. Got to love Lady Matlock in this story as she sees more than one realized and orchestrated events to her preference. Just be warned that even though Darcy and the Matlock family are on their side doesn’t mean the Bennet and Gardiner families are out of danger. Sit back and see what happens.

[lily johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A different stort

I loved this book. It was developed beautifully with the characters all being true to form. Wickham got very little play in this book and his end was as expected the rest of the cast was also as expected

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting story, but to many typos and errors

The idea of the story was interesting, but there were many typos and other errors which was very distracting. The characters and story development was completely implausible.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining

Very amusing and entertaining. Several anachronisms, but it doesn't really matter. 'The good ended happily and the bad ended unhappily'. And all the good people had lots of children.

[Mere]

With the start of ‘Master Elizabeth Bennet’, Mr & Mrs Bennet, Mary and Lydia have already past away. So Jane, Elizabeth and Kitty are living with Aunt Gardiner and her kids.

Elizabeth pretends to be a man, to run her uncle’s business.

Let the chaos ensue.