Book: The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub
Reviewed by Rallie X
Rating: 4.5/5
Narrator: 5 Stars
Look what can I say, this book is just a fun time! I'm will always be on Team Justice for Lydia - the silly girl did nothing wrong - and Melinda Taub's Lydia opens up a whole world of witchcraft, magic, a whole-ass dragon, literal demons, and the ancient powers of Britain. The vibes? Immaculate. Epistolary storytelling lends itself so well to this historical period, and spending the first 2/3 of the book unsure exactly who Lydia is writing to adds to the charm.
Wickham? A literal demon. Kitty? Yes, a literal cat (it's really cute okay, she's Lydia's familiar that used to be a barn cat but Lydia pretended so hard the cat was her older sister that everybody else just started believing it). The trip to Brighton has reason beyond "la, what a lark", and all the mischief that Jane Austen's Lydia seemingly gets up to? Well, maybe what really happened is a little bit different (and a lot more dire).
Taub takes Lydia's flightiness and makes it not a character flaw but a mask over somebody with deep empathy and wit. I loved that Denny and the boys from the Regiment play a real role in the story, Georgiana Darcy is a mathematics genius and good friend to Lydia, and the additional character of Maria Lambe (who I guess is borrowed from Sandeton ?) forces Lydia to become more than just a silly witch. Like let me be clear, this book is not a P&P retelling, it's a story that happens at the same time as and around P&P - nominally separate, but crossing over at some key points , and providing fun, reimagined reasons for why some things shook out the way that they did.