If you took Pride and Prejudice and married it to Beauty and the Beast, you would end up with The Lost Letter: A Victorian Romance by Mimi Mathews.
The Lost Letter is 204 pages of addicting romance between Sylvia Stafford and her lost love, Colonel Sebastian Conrad. From their first meeting after three apart, you start to get an idea of what the title may actually mean, and by the middle of the book, you finally realize where it fits in.
When I sat down to read, I knew I could easily finish it in a few hours (barring the typical interruptions that happen when you are a wife, mother, and the IT Goddess of your family’s household), but I didn’t realize how invested I’d become in finishing it as quickly as my eyes could read the pages.
All the main characters are likable from the beginning. I can almost see them perfectly in my mind in their surroundings in Hertfordshire and how they interacted with each other. The author does a nice job of letting you picture them as their time together goes on instead of just describing them at each meeting in a few sentences.
What I found most interesting about this novel is how the elements of my two favorite stories, Beauty and the Beast and Pride and Prejudice, were woven in so nicely.
You have the elements of Elizabeth Bennet and Belle in Sylvia as well as Darcy and the Beast in Conrad.
The mother in Pride and Prejudice combined with Mrs. Potts is how you get Julia, Conrad’s younger but well-meaning sister. She meddles like Mrs. Bennet but is caring and stubborn like Mrs. Potts.
My only complaint is the story felt too short. I’m not going to say there are plot holes because the story is whole, but it would have been nice to have a bit more depth to the background to add to the character’s likeability and emotional connection to their individual situations. I would like to have learned more about Conrad’s family and specifically his father and older brother. I’d also have liked to see a flashback to Sylvia’s days with her father.
Overall, I couldn’t be happier to have fallen for The Lost Letter. It’s a clean romantic story with an interesting cast of characters, and I’m looking forward to picking it up again to see how many other Beauty and the Beast or Pride and Prejudice references I can pick up.
The Lost Letter: A Victorian Romance is available wherever books are sold.
Disclaimer: GeekMom was given a review sample.
