Fear can be the most crippling force that we humans know. It ruins our relationships with friends, jobs, lives, and ourselves. Fear damages everything it touches.
Which is why our main character Kay Ashton stays in a shitty world of her own choosing. In Dreaming of Mr. Darcy, Kay hates her life, tries to escape into a world that she creates(her illustrations of Austen men), and throws in a good selfless dead just to be on the safe side in case some deity happens to be watching. (For the record, I don’t think this hurts whether or not one does nice things to appease a deity or karma or whatever. )
But she is stuck in her blah life because she is shit-faced afraid. And thankfully, she doesn’t stay that way.
While this book was not my favorite DJABC choice(sadly, I chose it for me… insert #facepalm joke here), I admire Kay who could have taken her wildly cliche inheritance money and stayed put where she was. A dull job, a dull flat, a dull, dull life. Of course, if she didn’t choose to move away, we would have had a) a very short book b) a very dull book (who wants to read 300 pages of I hate my job nonsense? We have co-workers for that one unless you’re a freelancer then you have no one to blame).
Despite all of this book’s cliches, overcoming fear and doing something completely terrifying help make this novel a bit less stereotypical.
Fear doesn’t win, and this makes me happy. Kay acts on the wisdom of her benefactress. Kay does something bigger with her money than simply buy a place and hide from the world to draw and read. She opens herself up again to face her fears–rejection, failure– and is hurt, but she tries.
What do you think? Does Kay’s overcoming fear make the novel any better or not?