Charlotte Lucas is mostly relegated to the background of Pride and Prejudice. When she accepts the buffoonish Mr Collins' marriage proposal, both Elizabeth and the reader are disappointed, knowing that she will never get her 'happy ever after'. Charlotte explores what her life is like after Pride and Prejudice draws to a close. 

Charlotte provides a feminist lens to the story, examining the women in Pride and Prejudice and the decisions they make in a society where women still lack basic rights. Moffett explores how the plain-Jane Charlotte, prompted by an overheard and meanspirited comment from Mrs Bennet, is resolved to marry a man she has no affection for in order to gain security and deeper meaning to her life. After reading Pride and Prejudice, you may be left feeling that Charlotte will live to regret her decision. Instead, Moffett depicts Charlotte as a contented mother of three, with a marriage healthier than many and a largely satisfied life as a vicar's wife and mistress of the house. Her largely peaceful life is shattered when her son dies suddenly in the night, prompting the development of a friendship with Anne de Bourgh and an extended stay with Elizabeth Darcy at Pemberley. 

The standout for me was how Moffett expertly draws you into Charlotte's life with sumptuous descriptions of nature and her day-to-day tasks and rituals. It is beautifully written, and compliments the novel's themes centering on female emancipation, grief, power and agency. Altogether, this is a deeply emotive novel and serves as a satisfying conclusion to Charlotte's story for all Pride and Prejudice lovers.

I sadly DNF'd this book but wanted to leave feedback. I struggled with the story because it goes so far against my ideas of Pride and Prejudice. It feels like the author was trying to re-write what happens in the book.

The narrative is very dark and bleak, which is not an issue in itself but the characters lacked the depth and complexity to carry it off. Sadly, this book was not for me.

Read very much like a continuation of Jane Austen's books - as if Austen herself had penned this to tell us about the lives and tribulations of this crew of characters after we closed the book of Pride and Prejudice. The tone felt right, with that sort of rambling prose that rarely, if ever, stops for dialogue, but which lulls you right along and you keep turning the pages. It did read a bit dull and sometimes forced, and the aura of tragedy kept looming over the whole thing (I did wonder if I would be able to stomach this tragedy, to be honest...) But if Austen is your jam, then you'll like this further dive into the world of P&P through Charlotte's eyes.

I was desperate to read this novel, because for me, the most tragic part of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, is that an intelligent and witty woman like Charlotte Lucas shackles herself for life to Mr Collins. Mr Collins is a cousin of the Bennett sisters, sadly dragged into their lives due to their father’s estate being entailed to the eldest male member of the family on his death. Mr and Mrs Bennett have not planned well for their daughters - hence Mrs Bennett’s desperation to get them all married to rich men and safe. She is so angry with Lizzy when she turns down Mr Collins, and not just because Lizzy’s without a safe future. If Lizzy had accepted him, then Mrs Bennett and the younger sisters would have been able to stay living in their family home. The last thing she wants is to be beholden to Charlotte Lucas. 

The scene where Charlotte tells her best friend that she has accepted a proposal of marriage is so sad because we realise the difference between the two girls. Lizzy is an idealist, who still believes she can find a comfortable marriage where love is part of the deal. Charlotte emerges as the realist. She has no fortune of her own and her family are not likely to have good connections. She knows Mr Collins has a rich patron in Lady Catherine de Bourgh, a future inheritance from the Bennett’s, and a large vicarage with plenty of room for them both - the inference being she may well be able to avoid him altogether. In discussing this at length in university I heard the argument that Lizzy values herself more than Charlotte does. I don’t agree. I think Charlotte is very realistic about her worth and is quite self-contained. She can remain happy and be married to Mr Collins, because his ridiculousness doesn’t define her. 

If you are familiar with the world of Pride and Prejudice, this is like reuniting with familiar friends. It is reassuringly familiar, but we rejoin them seven years on from the original book with Charlotte still married but now with three children. The author develops Charlotte from the peripheral character she was, to a fully rounded human being. Here those who didn’t understand her choice might start to understand her more. What emerges in the book is a woman who has judged her position well and has secured a comfortable future for her and her children. What I found very unexpected is that over time, Charlotte and Mr Collins have developed a relationship of sorts. They seem to share an understanding and some affection even. Mr Collins is still ridiculous, but they share a grieving process and it seems to bring them together. Charlotte is quite vocal about her lot in life and the accident of her birth that left her at the mercy of her father and then her husband. She feels passed like a parcel. I enjoyed reading about the futures of the other sisters and minor characters like Anna de Bourgh. I enjoyed this immensely and will be buying it for my fellow lit students who also felt this empathy for Charlotte’s position. A welcome addition to the world of Pride and Prejudice,

A brilliant take on the characters of Pride and Prejudice.
So well written in the same style as Jane Austin that at times you really could believe that she has written it.
It was lovely to see how Charlotte,s life progressed along side her friend who it appeared on face value to have it all.
Just loved it and can’t recommend it enough

I'm a huge fan of Pride and Prejudice and was delighted to meet again some of the characters of the book.
Charlotte is a fascinating characters, well developed and realistic. I loved her as much as I loved the other well developed characters.
The book is well written and well researched, the style of writing reminded me of Jane Austen, and the historical background was vivid and well researched.
It was an excellent read that I strongly recommend.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

I am giving Charlotte by Helen Moffett five stars because I absolutely loved it. It was really well written, evocative of the era and provided me with more from a story that it is absolute favourite. I have read quite a few different stories based on Pride and Prejudice, and this is definitely one of the best . It was familiar in places and yet provided depth to a lesser character and built on the original. Charlotte is incredibly likeable (as she would have to be to be such close friends with Elizabeth Bennett) and this book shows her strength, resilience and determination. I am a fan!
I would highly recommend this charming novel, which would also stand alone if you haven't read any Pride and Prejudice. 
Thank you to the author, her publishers and #NetGalley for the opportunity to lose myself in this lovely story. .

When Charlotte marries Clergyman Mr. Collins, her friends and society are stunned. Yet Charlotte knows he will provide her with a future and this story shows how she achieves this with love, friendship and grief thrown into the mix.
Helen Moffett cleverly uses the language of Jane Austen to take us back to the time of Pride and Prejudice, and give us Charlotte's version of events. The clever narration and use of Charlotte's memories as stories show us how she made the decisions taken for both herself and her daughters. This is an enjoyable tale.

I have not read pride and prejudice but of course know the story and have watched the TV adaptation. I was intrigued to read this sequel and find out what happened to Charlotte Lucas.

The book did not disappoint. It tells Charlotte’s story and also gives us insight into the future of many of the Bennett family. The story at times takes us back to the original tale’s timeline and this is useful in fitting the two together. 

The story also allows for other issues to be dealt with in a light touch manner, such as Anne’s penchant for wearing men’s clothing. 

It is a story of the trials of women of the time, of choices that have to be made between security and love. It shows how unfair it was to be female, and how different women dealt with the hands they were dealt.

This book is another take on the minor characters in Pride and Prejudice,and tells the story of Charlotte Lucas,who married Mr Collins after he was turned down by Elizabeth Bennet.The author manages to copy the style of Jane Austen's prose very well,and even includes some of her well known sayings. The story is continued beyond the  end of Pride and Prejudice and describes Charlotte's life following her marriage.She lives near Rosings,where her husband is still employed as a clergyman by Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
Following the death of her son,an event described very movingly,she travels to Pemberley with her remaining two children to spend time with Elizabeth,now married to Mr Darcy.While she is there ,she develops a friendship with Mr Rosenstein,who is there to tune the instruments in the house,but who entertains the children and the two women by playing music for them and teaching the children to swim.This friendship develops into a love affair where for a brief moment Charlotte follows her heart rather than being dutiful.
I liked the way that the characters were developed,particularly Mr Collins, who is portrayed as  a much more sympathetic character than in the original book.The author also touches on the constraints placed on women at the time,particularly if they were unmarried .I wasn't as convinced by the development of Anne de Bourgh's character ,but I liked the way the story ended.
Recommended for anyone who enjoyed' Longbourne' or 'The Other Bennet Sister'.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review which reflects my own opinions.

Another book in my series of 'books based on Jane Austen and her novels' and we are back in the world of Pride and Prejudice. I've read and reread P&P many times and, as I've grown older, I've realised that although Lizzie Bennet and Mr Darcy are the characters whose lives grip you on a first reading there is a lot to be said for the other inhabitants of Meryton, Pemberley and Rosings. I sometimes wonder if Austen knew we would. as readers, be drawn to inventing our own lives for all those lesser characters? This particular book suggests what may have happened mainly to the families at Rosings - the de Bourghs and Mr and Mrs Collins - and is told from Charlotte Collins (nee Lucas) point of view.

Austen never really went beyond the wedding day of her characters - it would have been hard for a genteel audience of the day to read about the problems of a marital relationship - so it is fascinating to hear about issues faced by both Charlotte and Lizzie. In Lizzie's case a life of riches and plenty can't prevent frequent miscarriages and for Charlotte, although she has two happy, healthy daughters, the loss of a young son - born with a life-limiting disability - is a heavy burden. What the two friends have in common is not only the lack of an heir but also the inability to speak honestly to their husbands about their sorrow and fears.

Loved this book so much Charlotte was a great in depth story and if you loved Pride and Predjudice this is a must read

I love reading books about side characters. Charlotte has always seemed like a character with a promising story and this book finally gives her a place to shine. I was entirely enchanted and fascinated. Excellent work.

I chose this book having read another Pride and Prejudice continuation story fairly recently. (Note: prior to that I was totally against other authors taking up the mantle of popular deceased authors!)

However, this book was - for me - a disappointment on the whole.  I found that the Ann de Bourgh story reminded me strongly of "Gentleman Jack", and was doubtful that a young lady of her station would be able to beetle around without a chaperone.  Nor could I reconcile the behaviour of this version of Charlotte Collins with what we already know of her character.

So, whilst other reviewers obviously loved the book, this is a 2-star for me - it was OK but did not fill me with enthusiasm I'm afraid.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC. All opinions my own.

I'm one of the many Jane Austen fans who particularly love Pride and Prejudice. So it is with excitement and nervousness I read Charlotte, I desperately want the world of Pride and Prejudice to live on but also I don't want to ruin my love for it. Don't worry this book will not disappoint.

We meet familiar characters and homes that we know well. We meet Charlotte Collin's after she has been married for many years. She has a family, is settled into the life of a cleryman's wife, eats frequently at Rosings Park. Yes we meet Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her daughter Anne, who I admit appears quite changed. 

Both Jane Bingley and Elizabeth Darcy are in the book, including the  rather outspoken Mrs Bennett. It was a pleasure to read, I felt like I was on safe ground back in Georgian, England. A joy to see many of the characters we know but through the eyes of Charlotte, thus seeing them in a new light. Charlotte continues to be a close friend to Elizabeth, though they now live many miles apart and in very different circumstances. 

Go on, pick up the book and find yourself lost in the world of Jane Austen again thanks Helen Moffett's imagination. 

The books does stand alone, you do not need to have read Pride and Prejudice. But why would you have not? For me there was just a single point in the story line when I thought no I don't believe that Charlotte Lucas would of done such a thing. That has prevented me from giving the book 4 stars.
3.5 out of 5 stars

This continuation story of Charlotte’s character in a full book was surprising, it was unexpected in terms of the story direction and wholly enjoyable overall. Charlotte is a character who has always had my attention every time I’ve read or watched Pride & Prejudice. I think we’ve all struggled to understand her decision over Mr Collins, at least initially. This book explored her as a person but also their relationship as a couple. However this book is all Charlotte as a women in all her facets.

The book joined Charlotte seven years into her marriage to Mr Collins with three children, but tragedy was around the corner. This book navigated Charlotte’s journey through life’s hurdles, difficulties and grief. How Charlotte got through her emotions, anger and desire sometimes made by eyebrows raise but it felt tangible and good storytelling.

The cast of characters in the background of this book were rich and familiar. Lizzy, Anne de Bourgh and Catherine de Bourgh brought some excellent reading and some surprising elements. I enjoyed the friendship and confidence between Anne and Charlotte and Charlotte had also won the respect of Anne’s mother.

“But what really has my admiration is that my mother considers this an excellent plan of action. This leads me to all but suspect witchcraft on your part, Mrs Collins. Did our gypsy friends weave a spell, perhaps?”

Some of Charlotte’s experiences were heart-aching and on the flip side, her passionate nature was surprising. I liked where the story ended up in terms of her passions and I will say no more.

I had both an ebook ARC and an advance audio copy. I listened mostly and read some by ebook. The narration was perfect for the book and really conveyed Charlotte as a character.

Thank you to Bonnier Books for the early review copies.

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will know that I love Jane Austen and books which are either modern re-tellings of her stories or which feature her characters. The eponymous Charlotte of this book is, of course, Charlotte Lucas from Pride & Prejudice, or Mrs Collins as she becomes. We follow what happens to Charlotte following her marriage to Elizabeth Bennet's cousin Mr Collins and on an extended visit to Pemberley with her daughters.

Helen Moffett has really captured the essence of the early 1800s time period so well and it did feel to me as though I was reading a book that could easily have been written by Jane Austen herself. The author ties in her storylines beautifully with the well known story of Pride & Prejudice. Those who are familiar with the book will happily recognise some scenes told through the eyes of other characters. I enjoyed how the author takes the story past the end of Pride & Prejudice and imagines what has happened not just for Charlotte and Elizabeth but for many of the other well loved characters too.

Mr Collins never really comes across as a very pleasant character in either the book or any of the subsequent film or tv adaptations but we see him here as a much less shallow person. Indeed, we see his emotional side and we see a man who is loved by his wife and family. And Charlotte, as we come to see, has a great capacity to love.

I thoroughly enjoyed Charlotte which was beautifully written and so compelling. I think that Jane Austen would have been approved of the woman her character becomes in this book.

Everybody thinks Charlotte Lucas has no prospects . She is twenty-seven, unmarried l, plain and seemingly without ambition. When she stuns the neighbourhood by accepting the proposal of the buffoonish clergyman, Mr. Collins, her best friend Lizzy is angry at her for undervaluing herself. Yet the decision is the only way Charlotte knows how to provide for her future, and marriage will propel her into a new world, of duty, marriage, children and grief and ultimately, illicit love and and kind of freedom. Jane Austen cared deeply about the constraints of women in Regency England. This powerful reimagining picks up where Austen left off, showing us a women determined to carve a place for herself in the world. Charlotte offers a fresh, feminist addition to the post-Austen canon, beautifully imagined, and brimming with passion and intelligence. 

This novel is a wonderful addition to the world of Pride and Prejudice. We meet Charlotte Lucas (now Collins) when she is dealt a devastating blow at the death of her young son, Tom, and a lot of this novel deals with her grief. She also has to accept the wider implications that come with her son’s death; the inheritance of Longbourn, which will pass through her heirs, and what will become of her daughters now. Charlotte questions the constraints put upon women in this time. They must marry and have male heirs to secure their family and themselves. Just as Pride and Prejudice examines the unfairness of the entail which excludes the Bennet daughters from their father’s estates, so does this book. 

Charlotte Lucas was much more pragmatic than other characters in Austen’s original, she married Mr. Collins because she knew it would secure her future, and take the burden off her father and brothers, and we see a little of her point of view in what happened, as chapters flashback to the events in Pride and Prejudice. In present day she is a sensible woman, who has taken control as mistress of Hunsford, and we are treated to some lovely little ways in which she runs her house and gardens.

We also meet characters Austen created in Lady Catherine de Bourgh, her daughter Anne, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, who is dealing with her own grief. The character the most removed from how we meet her in Austen’s novel, is the sickly Anne de Bourgh, who is shown to be much stronger and wittier than in Pride and Prejudice. She is shown as the opposite to Charlotte, her mother has already secured her inheritance of the Rosings estate, and yet her illness prevents heirs. So again the question remains what will happen to the estate after Anne’s death. I really enjoyed Anne’s character; she was a lot more independent and clever than Austen shows her to be. Some of my favourite sections were the conversations between Anne and Charlotte. 

At Pembroke, Charlotte meets Herr Rosenstein, a musician employed by the Darcys who becomes more to her as time progresses. I enjoyed his character and their relationship as it developed into a love and mutual longing, I just found the final outcome a little jarring and unnecessary, and a little too much out of character of this pragmatic and sensible woman.

The writing and language in this novel fits very well with the world created in Pride and Prejudice, and fans of the original will surely enjoy Charlotte. 

Thank you to the author, Bonnier Zaffre and NetGalley for this ARC to read and review.

The Charlotte of this novel is the fictional Charlotte Lucas from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. In that novel she is best friend of Lizzie Bennet although older and in her late twenties. She is unmarried and lives in her parent’s household in Meryton where money is apparently tight. She has no dowry and little hope of marriage. Little hope until the Reverend Mr Collins, a member of the Bennet family and the heir to their estate under entail, comes to seek a wife. Directed away from the oldest Bennet daughter Jane and firmly refused by Lizzie (the second) he rapidly proposes to Charlotte Lucas. They are married shortly after. The next spring Lizzie will visit them both in their parsonage at Rosings. In the original Austen we are told a certain amount about Charlotte, but in her inimitable style even more is hinted at. Moffett has bravely (unwisely?) taken up the challenge to present her in this novel as the key character. 
The story as she presents it is largely eight years on from the main tale in Pride and Prejudice. Charlotte’s third and youngest child – a disabled son - has died suddenly and she is suffering from an explosion of grief. It will apparently cause a complete review of her attitude towards her husband; her previous lack of sympathy with his quirks of characters are now apparently to be seen in a more positive light. She will start to love him more deeply. Bizarrely too she is finding Lady de Burgh more sympathetic too at Rosings. She has started to develop a friendship with Anne de Burgh whose behaviour is far away from that expected from a lady, let alone one so seemingly meek. In the summer Charlotte will be invited to stay with Lizzie (still childless) at Pemberley. She will come into contact with a travelled Austrian musician and piano tuner and will be completely smitten. But she will return to her old life at the parsonage, with Anne de Burgh now a sponsor of her family.
But as this “current” story is developed there will also be flashbacks to the story of Charlotte herself and Mr Collins, Lizzie, her family and others as depicted in Pride and Prejudice. Some are blatant and clunky plagiarising of that text; others are slightly wider new interpretations of the characters.  Moffett will also to resolve her book carrying characters forward decades to depict an elderly Charlotte and her growing family.
Whether you will like this book will, I suspect, depend on whether you are an admirer of Austen herself. Whether, too, you are aware of the background to her novels and the social, literary and historical complexities they display – in addition to the extraordinary presentation of the complexities and financial difficulties for so many young women of the period. To put oneself on the same book shelf as Austen herself displays a level of confidence by Moffett that is unfortunately not justified. Given the parameters of a story and characters to operate within she seems to have tweaked the characters to unlikely lengths. The people themselves seem facile and unlikely in their actions. But behind that seems to be a lack of awareness of simple historical and social matters of the period and she fails to grasp the complexities of history, social mores and characters that Austen herself quietly referred to. This in spite of a slew of books that consider them from the extensive Austen “industry”
Overall this novel comes a very poor second to Pride and Prejudice. The unlikely characterisation and weak new plot line instead of improving this merely draws attention to the inadequacies. Even if one were unaware of Pride and Prejudice itself and approached it as a “new” story, it must be said t bears all the hallmarks of “romantic” trash trying to masquerade as historic fiction. Sorry, not a very attractive read.

It was quite an accomplished P&P retelling following the events of it. Charlotte was a really fun character to follow. I think the author developed her quite well. 

I'd recommend if you're a fan of P&P.

Thanks a lot to the publisher and NG for this copy.