This book was quite long but I really enjoyed this retelling of the Bennet sisters stories. It’s a lovely book which I adored.

The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow is about Mary Bennet from Pride and Prejudice.  It starts before the events of Pride and Prejudice, goes through them, and then continues afterwards.

I really enjoyed Mary's story, seeing her as a more sympathetic character, and understanding her more.  It's not written in the style of Pride and Prejudice, but written in a style that suits Mary.

The Other Bennet Sister was published on 9th January 2020, and is available from Amazon, Waterstones and Bookshop.org.

I'm afraid I couldn't find any links for where you can follow Janice Hadlow.

I was given this book in exchange for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to Pan Macmillan.

Thank you to the publisher for my eARC copy of this book. Unfortunately I didn’t love this book and therefore didn’t finish, I just didn’t connect with this one. Not for me, sorry.

I love Jane Austen and I love Pride and Prejudice. I always felt that Mary was criminally overlooked in the original book and I just HAD to read The Other Bennet Sister the moment I saw it. I enjoyed the book and it did justice to the original text, but I couldn't help but feel that something was missing.

This is “it’s not you, it’s me” situation.

In theory, I should have enjoyed it as Mary is the middle Bennett who fades into the background, is a “blink and you miss her” character. She’s there but you could very easily edit her out and you wouldn’t miss her (I watched a modern YouTube adaption where Mary & Kitty were removed and them not being there didn’t affect the plot!). It would breath new life in a story we all know so well and, maybe, make a character who everyone sees as serious be fleshed out and kinder.

And yet, something didn’t work for me. It feel flat somewhere and I can’t put my finger on where. But something made me stop warming to the story. I don’t know if it’s the writing, the direction the story took or something else but it just didn’t work for me.

Maybe this is a sign that I should stop trying to read historical fiction as, unless there’s a biting humour, I seem to come away from this genre disappointed and underwhelmed.

The book narrates the story of Mary Bennet, the middle Bennet sister, the one who's different from her sister in terms of looks and personality. The story starts at her younger years and extends past the events of Pride and Prejudice, in where Mary finds herself finding her footing after her father died and she was the only unmarried sister. I did not expect to love the book as much as I did. It's a wonderful re-imagining of Jane Austen's character, giving Mary Bennet an in depth look and rich character development, making her truly the heroine of her own story. I cannot wait to see what Janice Hadlow writes next!

Mary Bennet, the middle sister of the Bennet five, is considered more plain than handsome. She wears spectacles which her mother considers to be to her detriment. And so, it’s said, she has little besides her intellect and books to recommend her.

Nonetheless, we learn there is far more about her than Austen’s Pride and Prejudice offered. Indeed, in this, she is given more than two lines.

This book is more than a romance and with Mary Bennet, and her scholarly interests, it doesn’t have the same wit as in Pride and Prejudice. There is also the marked absence of wry remarks and humorous observations. I’d prefer Mr Bennet to have been alive instead of his wife!

This is very much Mary’s story, from childhood to adulthood. It was written quite like an Austen book but I must say there was something missing.

I loved this retelling of Pride and Prejudice It made me see Mary Bennet in a whole new light. A must read for any Jane Austen fan

I am not the biggest fan of Mary Bennet, although I do feel sorry for her position, caught between two close sets of sisters. I’ve always imagined that she would have felt quite alone and that the reason she worked so hard on her accomplishments was to have a defined role – Jane was the beautiful one, Elizabeth the clever one, which left Mary to try and distinguish herself another way.

'…who having, in consequence of being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always impatient for display.'
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

And from The Other Bennet Sister:

'Learning would rescue her, not just from boredom and frustration, but from the likelihood of making any further sad mistakes.'

It’s interesting to speculate on Mary’s perspective, and this is where books like this come in. This is a book in four parts and it’s quite a mighty tome – the best part of 700 pages. Part one looks at childhood and the events of Pride & Prejudice from Mary’s perspective and this was probably my favourite part of the book. Here, Mary is aware of the deficiency of her looks compared with those of her sisters, and it isolates her from them:

'She had always been a cautious, watchful girl; now, she thought of little else but the poor impression she must make upon those around her.'

I felt that the portrayal of Mary in the P&P part was obviously quite sympathetic to her, as it’s written from Mary’s point of view. I felt it showed Mrs Bennet as being more unkind to Mary than I got a sense of from P&P. Mr Bennet is just as insensitive and neglectful though!

'The truth was, she thought bitterly, that there was no one in her immediate society who considered her worthy of attention; and it this was so when she was still young, why should it improve as she grew older?'

Once we move past P&P, Mr Bennet has died, the Collinses take possession of Longbourn and Mary struggles to find her place in the world. I felt extremely sorry for her at this point, because at Jane’s home, Miss Bingley is still in residence and basically bullies Mary, and at Pemberley Mary feels like she’s intruding in the family party. She stays for a while at Longbourn and finally ends up with the Gardiners where FINALLY she feels accepted and loved for being herself.

It was as if a great abyss had opened up before Mary, and in it, she saw nothing before her but loneliness. In the space of a moment she understood how fervently she longed for affection.

There were some parts of this story that for me didn’t tie up with Pride & Prejudice. Some details like Sir William Lucas being a baronet rather than a tradesman who was knighted. Mr Collins is different too – firstly, he was shown still acting as a clergyman once he had inherited Longbourn but I think it more likely that he would have revelled in the status upgrade of being a landed gentleman. He is also better-educated than P&P Collins, who had an ‘indifferent education’. I felt quite sad for Mr Collins here, who has started to come to the realisation that his wife doesn’t care for him.

I didn’t follow some of the facts relating to Lady Catherine either. Here, it is said that Lady Catherine recognises Darcy as titular head of the family but I don’t know why that would be. He is head of the Darcy family, but she is either a de Bourgh or a Fitzwilliam. Also, a character called Mr Ryder is described as her closest relation but I wasn’t clear on how he was related to her, unless he is the son of another Fitzwilliam sister and in that case he wouldn’t be any closer than Darcy, Colonel Fitzwilliam or one of their siblings. Unless he was an illegitimate child of hers, which doesn’t seem likely!

Going back to the story, I thought Mary’s tale seemed quite a typical story of a person who is completely lacking in self-esteem. If you are a person who has similar issues I think this could cut quite close to the bone for you, and in that, I thought it was well done.

“Mr Wordsworth says elsewhere that nothing of value is to be gained from books. For him, our affections are the only real guide worth following.”
She felt tears begin to well up in her eyes.
“And I’m not sure I have any. Or none strong enough for me to follow with confidence. Perhaps they are too weak – too frozen – to help me find my way.”

Mary benefits hugely by living with the Gardiner family who genuinely love her. They see her for herself and love and value her. She finally finds like she has a place and begins to blossom. And once she has a greater value for herself she begins to find other people who value her too.

'You dress as you do because you do not believe you deserve anything better and you wish to communicate that low opinion of yourself to everyone who sees you.'

I found the character of Mary frustrating, though – while she learns to put a higher value on herself and becomes less despondent, in other aspects of her life she doesn’t seem to learn at all. She makes some mistakes through not trusting her own judgement – realising immediately that it’s a mistake but does nothing to rectify it, and then when she has a similar feeling in the future she learns nothing from the previous incident and just follows the same pattern. I was pleased to see her seize the moment in order to take the advice that she is trying to live by of being the architect of her own happiness.

In summary, there was a lot to like about this story, such as Mary’s take on the events of P&P and her coming to value herself, but I found I that it was drawn out a bit much for me. I prefer a shorter read. I’d rate it as a 4 star read.

* My thanks to Netgalley UK and the publishers of The Other Benent Sister, Pan Macmillan for the review copy.

I really enjoyed this book. I did't quite get into it until in went forward in time to after Jane and Lizzie had got married. Really interesting to read about a focused perspective about Mary! A very enjoyable read!!

Poor Mary Bennet!

I have always had a soft spot for Mary Bennet. Bookish, plain and pious she has always struck me as someone I'd have a tense but loving friendship with. To see she would finally be given her own story was a delight to me!

I have to admit I didn't have any strong feelings when reading this book, it was just something I read to enjoy and I think that sometimes that is the best thing a book can be - though Mary might think differently!

A very interesting twist on a classic
I very much enjoyed this novel. I'm always a sticker for an unusual narrative and this one hit the spot. The author wires Mary's character with a lot of empathy, and I couldn't help but be drawn in to her point of view. I enjoyed the first section, a retelling of P&P, and was nervous when the story swing to that of Mary alone. However, this section was just as satisfying and I felt it came to a suitable conclusion. I will recommend this title.

I love a good Pride and Prejudice spinoff, or a modernized Austen in general, so of course I wanted to read The Other Bennet Sister! This spinoff tells the story of forgotten middle sister Mary Bennet.

The beginning of the novel answers the same questions raised in Mary B, and in reading P&P itself:

Why doesn’t Mr Bennet have more time for the daughter who tries so hard to be sensible? Why don’t Mr. Collins and Mary get married, when they would so clearly live happily ever after?

The familiar, beloved characters from the original stay strong and consistent. Mrs. Bennet suffers endlessly from her nerves and from daughters not taking her advice. Caroline Bingley is still a mean girl, and an expert at bitchy zingers just subtle enough to miss nearby men.  I really enjoyed Charlotte giving Mary advice about marriage for plain women without a lot of money.  We also get to see a bit more of the Gardiners.

Unfortunately, this story is just so slow-moving. The beginning is slow because it's a scene-by-scene, almost word-for-word recounting of Pride and Prejudice. The later chapters are just slow. I really wanted to see Mary pursued by eligible young men, but I found myself skimming pages of Mary and her suitors t discussing plans to lend a book or a magazine, actually meeting to lend the book, making plans to meet again to discuss the reading, entreating the other to share their thoughts, expounding on Art and Feeling, etc. etc. Even the most dramatic scenes drag on. (And we're over a month into quarantine here in Boston, I've got loads of reading time.) About 12% of the book is about deciding whether to take a hike and then taking the hike, and I know this because I kept looking at the percentage read on my Kindle. That's never a good sign.

The story follows some of the beats of P&P, although slowly, including a trip to the lakes with the Gardiners. (Mary notes that Jane and Elizabeth both escaped to their aunt, so why shouldn't she do the same?)  Lady Catherine's visit to Elizabeth, demanding to know if Darcy has really proposed, is echoed in Caroline Bingley demanding to know if Mary has received a proposal. There are also cute references to Austen passages here and there.

At times, this was unpleasantly slow-moving, but I really enjoyed Mary coming into her own, within the constraints of an unmarried woman without a private income.

This is a book which asks us to reconsider Mary Bennet, the most neglected of Austen’s Bennet sisters, exploring her character in much more detail than she gets in Pride and Prejudice. She’s awkward, has no natural charm, and is often criticised by her mother and ignored by her sisters. Yet her determination to figure out the world and what it expects from her makes her a very compelling protagonist and I couldn’t put this book down until the last seventy or so pages. At that point I still enjoyed it but it didn’t flow as lightly as the earlier chapters did.

Pride and Prejudice is one of my favourite novels so I was intrigued and a little apprehensive to read a book which would add to the story for better or worse. However, this felt like a really valuable addition to the original adding more without taking anything away from the classic.

The story focuses on the quietest and least popular Bennet sister Mary from childhood to adulthood. I found it intriguing how the author depicted Mary's childhood and adolescence as an emotionally neglected child. Mrs Bennet is portrayed as being much more interested in her other daughters as they are all a lot prettier than Mary. This feels true to the original. Meanwhile Mr Bennet is only interested in Lizzie to Mary's disappointment. I really felt for her as she tried repeatedly to find ways to engage with Mr Bennet and be interesting to him, spending so much time in the library to try to be closer to him and felt her heartbreak when it didn't work. The only thing that felt a bit uncomfortable was that Mr Bennet who I really liked in Pride and Prejudice is almost shown to be cruel in this book which was a little disappointing.

Eventually the story moves forward past the contents of the original novel and this is where it really begins to stand strong in it's own right. Mary spends time in different households trying to find a place for herself in the world. I enjoyed seeing characters like Lizzie and Mr Darcy in their married life, and Jane with Mr Bingley. One of the most enjoyable sections of the story is spent with Mr and Mrs Collins. The author paints him in a much more sympathetic light than the original which I enjoyed.

Eventually Mary goes to stay with the lovely Mr and Mrs Gardner in London where she meets Mr Hayward. This is where Mary begins to find the love and respect that she has always craved and it was a pleasure to read about it and to see how grow into a more confident person.

I highly recommend this book for any fans of the original book as this adds a lot of depth and understanding to Mary's character. I give this 4 out of 5.

I read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen for the first time when I was 12 years old, as teen literature did not really exist at the time.I loved the book so much I then read everything she wrote, including her unfinished novel. However, it was many years before I would watch a tv or movie adaptation of my most favourite text, my vision of Fitzwilliam Darcy was my own. Over the years I have read other novels written about Austen’s characters and always enjoy them, but only to a limited degree, I cannot say that about The Other Bennet Sister. This novel is altogether on a separate level and far exceeded my expectations, from start to finish.
Janice Hadlow has so cleverly captured the satirical nature of Austen’s writing style, that I once again found myself truly engrossed in the lives of the 5 Bennet sisters, albeit from a totally unique view. Mary is the sister that we don’t notice, that we were happy to ignore and, like Mrs Bennet, we did so, whilst basking in the beautiful face of Jane and the amusing wit of Elizabeth. This novel shares with us the heartbreak of a young girl who discovers, from a very early age, that she is of no consequence to anyone and that all she can hope for is that either a man will deign to take or she will live out her days as a spinster aunt and companion to her ageing mother. In light of this Mary retreats from the world around her and decides to immerse herself in study and the pursuit of knowledge, despite this being frowned upon by her mother and barely tolerated by her father. As the novel unfolds we follow Mary through her life as the last Bennet sister to have yet found a husband. Along the way we meet some favourite characters such as the pompous Mr Collins and the insufferable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, all of whom have been written so effectively and add just the right amount of humour and pathos. In addition the author’s own characters fit so well you are hard pressed to believe you’ve not already met them in the sitting rooms at Longbourn, Netherfield or Pemberley.
A five star read not to be missed.

For a novel about a family of sisters it sometimes seems as if Pride and Prejudice isn’t much about actual sisterhood. Jane and Lizzy are close, although I always feel as if Elizabeth wishes Jane were a little more assertive, but Lydia would ride roughshod over any of the other girls for the attentions of a handsome officer and Kitty seems to do whatever her other sisters ask of her. And then there’s Mary: prim, plain and never afraid to tell others when they are in the wrong. Janice Hadlow’s book shows us much more of Mary’s story, before, during and after the events of Pride and Prejudice and, in the process, shows how female support, or the lack of it, can affect women.

The rather unpleasant Mary we know from Austen is seen to be the result of a childhood full of being brushed aside. The older and younger girls form natural pairings and are all attractive – Mary is told she is too plain and is rarely included in the others’ activities. Music is her only pleasure but, when her failing eyesight means she need to get glasses, this is used as another example of her lack of consideration for her mother’s nerves. Even in the Regency period, it seems, gentlemen don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses…Interestingly, although all the characters we meet (Bennets, Bingleys, Darcys, Collins and more) are recognisable we feel slightly differently about most of them. The older girls are too caught up in their own lives to notice Mary’s unhappiness, Charlotte Lucas is unashamedly mercenary and Mr Collins, of all people, becomes someone I felt a lot of sympathy for. In the second half of the book, post P&P and after the death of Mr Bennet we see Mary begin to take control of her own future. She cannot live with Jane – Miss Bingley is also there and as unpleasant as ever – or Elizabeth – the closeness of their relationship with each other and with Georgiana means that Mary is still an outsider so she goes to stay with the Gardiners in London. Here she is able to assess her life, work through her girlish mistakes and decide who she is going to be. In true Austen fashion there is also a romance but, more importantly for the modern reader, the emphasis is even more firmly on the main character growing to love herself.

For fans of Pride and Prejudice, this is a nice expansion of the story by looking at the little known Mary Bennett. The first part of the book is simply retelling the early story of Pride and Prejudice from Mary's perspective and does not auger well for the rest of the book. However turn over the page to part 2 and skipping ahead 2 years, we finally get the story of Mary and how she comes to realise who she is and what is really possible and important in life. Written in the style of Jane Austen, it competes g the story of the Bennett sisters nicely

It can be a little scary if you love Pride and Prejudice to read a book that bases itself on the very same characters, however, you can be sure you are in safe hands with this author. I felt every time I left the book I was thinking about it, almost like it was running on without my reading it. Every time I went back to read it was like slipping into a cosy room by the fire and settling down - I loved it. I will admit though it is a long book and I read another book in between at times to stop myself rushing ahead and not savouring this book.

The first part of the book sets the scene and introduces to Mary's character in depth - her likes and dislikes, how she sees herself fitting into the Bennet family and a little story of her own. The book then runs parallel to Pride and Prejudice with the recognisable events of the arrival of Mr Bingley and then his friend Mr Darcy. We go to the ball but this time we see it through the eyes of Mary and hear those famous words spoken by her sister when she overhears Mr Darcy discussing her to be "tolerable".

Then the book fast forwards two years and we find Mary taking advantage of her sisters good fortunes by staying with them as her father has passed away and Mr Collins is now the owner of Longbourn. What ensues is soley Mary's story and a very good one it is too. With misunderstandings in the very vein of Jane Austen's writing and the words from Mrs Bennet could have come from the pen of Austen herself so true they ring.

I loved the ending - I could read it again and again. It was so wonderful and beautifully written. I'm thankful to the author for bringing alive the characters of Pride and Prejudice and for her own interpretation which I thought was eloquently done. If you are a staunch P&P or Austen pedant you may not find it exactly to your taste, but it suited me very well and will read it again, not something I do very often.

Coming very late to the beauty of Pride and Prejudice I am enjoying exploring all these other books set in this world and like Longbourn I found this book to be as good as the original. Mary's growth seemed natural and her story full of the right sorts of emotion. I also liked the brining in of odd key lines from the original