I liked this historical mystery inspired by Jane Austen. The new characters that Claudia Gray created were both wonderful. At times I thought there were too many POV characters though, and I think I would have preferred to just focus on Juliet and Jonathan.

The explosion of cozy mysteries isn’t complete without a well thought out reinvention of classic Jane Austen characters. Add this to your TBR list immediately.

A fun murder mystery! If you are an Austen fan, this one is for you. Filled with mystery, it is a murder after all, but loved getting to get back into this world of the Darcy's.

An extremely fun read for Janeites!

I didn’t get to finish this ARC before it expired, and I am devastated. It was fantastic! Just another reason to find a copy so I can finish my review.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for this ArC in exchange for an honest review.

Claudia Gray does it again! This melding of all of Jane Austen's published novels, and an imagining of the married lives of the primary couples, is a terrifically fun book.

Based on when the books were published, Gray worked out how long each couple had been married, and had given some of the couples adolescent children, and in some cases, some marital and/or financial difficulties.

Emma Knightley has invited the Brandons, the Wentworths, the Darcys, the Bertrams and the Tilneys’ eldest daughter Juliet for a month-long house party. The Darcys have brought their eldest son Jonathan.

Emma is up to her former matchmaking ways, hoping Juliet and Jonathan are attracted to one another. Unfortunately, Jonathan is socially awkward, and puts Juliet's back up almost immediately.

Then...Mr. Wickham crashes the party, and no one, and I mean, no one, is happy to see him. Wickham has been conning, I mean, convincing people to invest in various dodgy schemes, and Fredrick Wentworth, and Mr. Knightley's brother have both lost substantial sums of money to Wickham. Also, Elizabeth can't stand him because of his neglect of his now deceased daughter, and Lizzie’s beloved niece. Wickham also proves to be a blackmailer. This guy is totally rotten and smugly pleased with himself and his effect on the others.

When Wickham unsurprisingly turns up dead, there is a whole house of gentlefolk who become suspects. Juliet and Jonathan begin investigating, because though they cannot believe any one of the couples is guilty, someone bashed Wickham’s head.

I LOVED this book so much! From its opening, when I realized Claudia Gray had brought all of Austen's heroines together under one roof, to the ever so polite conversations and worries about propriety, and finally to the reveal of the murderer, this was one totally enjoyable and confection of a story.

I liked how skillfully Gray extrapolated the feelings, behaviours and speech patterns of all these characters after years of marriage, child-rearing, and various other events. As well as how fun it was to watch Juliet and Jonathan team up as sleuths.

The story’s pacing is a little slow in points, but the unravelling of the motives and secrets was fun, as well as the growing respect between Juliet and Jonathan. I thoroughly enjoyed this entertaining story.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Penguin Random House Canada for this ARC in exchange for my review.

Synopsis: Emma Knightley (née Woodhouse) and her husband are hosting a house party to which other characters from Jane Austen’s are invited. There are Elizabeth (Bennet) and Fitzwilliam Darcy, accompanied by their son Jonathan; Colonel Brandon and his new bride Marianne (née Woodhouse); Captain Wentworth and his wife Anne (née Elliot), who are the Knightley’ tenants; clergyman Edmund Bertram and his wife Fanny; and finally Juliet Tilney, daughter of Catherine (Moreland) and Henry Tilney. When Mr. Wickham intrudes on the party and ends up murdered, the culprit is particularly hard to identify because every guest — with the exception of Juliet Tilney — has an excellent motive to want to Wickham dead.

▪ The characters feel true to Austen’s version. I have never read a book adaptation or spin-off of Austen in which I was entirely happy with how the characters are portrayed. I always feel like one of them does or says something that doesn’t fit with what I think I now of them. (This is of course extremely subjective, I feel like we all have our own version of them in our minds.) This novel, however, felt entirely believable. Throughout, the characters behaved exactly the way I imagine they would. I felt like Gray loves them, and wanted do right by them. It’s just perfectly done.

▪ Marital troubles past the “happy ever after”. Sure, Austen’s novels are not romance novels. They are much too cynical for that. But the abundance of Regency romances on the marked make it easy to forget that. Once Darcy and Elizabeth, or Emma and Knightley are married, we imagine nothing but quiet felicity for them, although we may be slightly less certain of pairings like Marianne and Colonel Brandon. Here, we see some of the cracks in the relationships, all the little ways their quirks of personality as portrayed by Austen could trip them up in their lives together. This novel is a bit of a romance too, because overall the investigation force them to communicate things they have been keeping hidden, and they come out better for it.

▪ A pair of original characters as detectives. Because the canonical characters all have a motive for killing Wickham, it is the pair made up of Juliet Tilney and Jonathan Darcy who end up investigating. They are very distinct and clever. Their collaboration is hindered by the fact that they are an unmarried young man and woman in a time when their behaviour — and they opportunity to speak to each other alone — was strongly regimented. I almost wish this could be a series, although it would be hard to think of ways for them to investigate more mysteries in the Austen world now that all the main characters have been suspects already.

▪ Neurodivergent character. Jonathan Darcy, to the confusion of his parents, is not neurotypical. This makes it really hard for him to behave in the ways Regency society expects a young man to behave, and he feels inadequate because of it. It’s nice ti see the acknowledgement that neurodiversity existed at the time, and to see a character negotiating how to be himself within the constraints of his world.

I cannot encourage you strongly enough to read this book if you enjoy cosy mysteries, particularly if you are a Jane Austen fan. (I do think it would probably be much less enjoyable if you aren’t familiar with Austen’s characters. The characters would probably lose some depth if you didn’t know their pasts, even though Gray does summarize their backstories.)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that I will read pretty much any Jane Austen related novel. (And, subsequently, will use a bastardized version of the opening line of Pride and Prejudice in my review.) I was delighted by the description of The Murder of Mr. Wickham and was really looking forward to Claudia Gray’s novel. A locked room murder mystery featuring characters from all of Austen’s novels in one book? Count me in! And, happily, I absolutely adored this book. It was too much fun!

Here's the book’s description:
The happily married Mr. Knightley and Emma are throwing a house party, bringing together distant relatives and new acquaintances—characters beloved by Jane Austen fans. Definitely not invited is Mr. Wickham, whose latest financial scheme has netted him an even broader array of enemies. As tempers flare and secrets are revealed, it’s clear that everyone would be happier if Mr. Wickham got his comeuppance. Yet they’re all shocked when Wickham turns up murdered—except, of course, for the killer hidden in their midst.
Nearly everyone at the house party is a suspect, so it falls to the party’s two youngest guests to solve the mystery: Juliet Tilney, the smart and resourceful daughter of Catherine and Henry, eager for adventure beyond Northanger Abbey; and Jonathan Darcy, the Darcys’ eldest son, whose adherence to propriety makes his father seem almost relaxed. The unlikely pair must put aside their own poor first impressions and uncover the guilty party—before an innocent person is sentenced to hang.
I will say that I think you need to have an understanding of all six of Austen’s major novels to fully enjoy Gray’s novel. I don’t think I would have loved it as much had I not recently reread (or read for the first time) Austen’s books. Of course, I do think you can read it even if, say, you’ve only ever read (or seen) Pride and Prejudice, but there’s an extra layer of enjoyment you can get if you know the full story behind each of the characters.

Related to knowing the characters – I really didn’t know who was going to the be culprit. As Juliet and Jonathan realize, the murderer had to have been one of the members of the house party which meant that one of Austen’s beloved characters had blood on their hands. It was a strange sensation! I had my suspicions of who may have done it, but Gray kept me guessing and I honestly could not have predicted the end. Which I consider a win for a mystery!

I appreciate that Gray used two of her own creations as main characters. Instead of centring the book on the perspective of one of Austen’s well-known characters, Gray chose to use the children of two characters to help propel the storyline. I had a lot of fun following along with Juliet and Jonathan as they pair tried to solve the murder to help their new friends and prevent the police from bungling the case or looking in the wrong direction.

I’ve focused a lot on the characters in this review because to say too much about the mystery itself could inadvertently spoil it for anyone who wishes to read this book. I don’t consider myself a mystery aficionado, but I do enjoy them, as I enjoyed this one. I couldn’t guess who the murderer would be, and I felt that Gray dropped clues in such a way that was smart and not heavy-handed. I’d be interested to know if avid mystery readers could have figured it out before Juliet and Jonathan!

I highly recommend The Murder of Mr. Wickham to anyone who enjoys Jane Austen and mystery novels. Claudia Gray did a wonderful job of respecting Austen’s characters while also putting her own spin on them. it made for a thoroughly enjoyable whodunit that kept me guessing until the very end. And, at the end, left me wanting more from all the characters. A mark of a great novel if you ask me!

*An egalley of this novel was provided by the publisher, Penguin Random House Canada, via NetGalley in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*

This was basically mystery au crossover fic of the whole austenverse, which tbh is kind of the dream. I will say I did have really high hopes for this (see above) and for the most part they were met, but I would have liked if it moved a little faster. However, the mystery was well developed and kept me going back and forth about who I thought did it.

I think the real strength of this lay in how well Claudia Gray captured the essence of these characters, as well as aging a few of them in a way that made sense. I never felt like the actions of the characters was in any way out of place and that probably required a pretty close reading of the source material so I definitely commend her for that. She even captured a subtle disdain for Fanny and Edmund that was absolutely a necessary inclusion for me to take this book seriously.

And I have to admit that adding the characters of Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney was such a good choice and added such a fun element to the storyline. I would happily read a sequel all about the scheming of Emma, Lizzie and Marianne to get those two together and married.

Overall, this was a fun, enjoyable read that did justice to its source material and added just enough of a fun spin to make it stand well on its own. Would highly recommend to Janeites everywhere!

This is one of the most entertaining Austen-ish books I’ve read! (And I’ve read a lot…) Gray encapsulates so many of Austen’s characters, and pushes them further without changing them as we know them. We always imagine them within their own separate worlds, and thinking about them as contemporaries has changed how I look at them. I also adored that she brought in the “next generation”! (Although Northanger Abbey is my favourite novel and I’m a little sad we don’t get Catherine Morland as detective…)
The mystery itself was also fantastic. It wasn’t predictable, and Gray skillfully brought a multi-layered murder to life without resulting to tropes. One of my new favourite historical fiction books!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the arc of "The Murder of Mr. Wickham" by Claudia Gray.

What would happen if all of Jane Austen's characters were invited to Donwell Abbey for a house party? Why murder or course!

As a reader of many of Jane Austen's book (with a hope to get through all of them one day) it was a lot of fun to see them all together in one place. Having Gray give them all interconnecting backstories that allows George Wickham to be the villain for each and every person was wonderful.

This book read like an Austen novel itself. That being said it was a bit slow and laborious up until the very last 10% of the book that I devoured eager to understand exactly how this murder mystery was going to play out. I really appreciated the deviations from Regency Era manners to give Jonathon Darcy (Elizabeth and FitzWilliam's son) very obvious characteristics of autism and also to add in the tidbit, and appropriate horror at, for Fanny's brother.

I thought this was a great book even if it did take me longer than I would have liked to read and it was a fun story to consume.

This was a Jane Austen fan's dream, taking almost all of the couples of joining them together, but in a mystery! Having Stephanie Barron and Carrie Bebris' mysteries, the former features Jane herself as the sleuth and the latter feature Elizabeth and Darcy as a crime solving couple, I enjoyed delving into Austenland again through the genre. The invention of Juliet Tilney and Jonathan Darcy gave a new set of eyes into each of the characters and brought in the romance associated with Austen's books here. The revealing of the murderer takes until the last few chapters of the book, so there is a lot of waiting. When you finally find out who killed Mr. Wickham, it felt a little deflating. Worth the read for re-visiting Austen characters later on in their relationships, a little less so for the mystery.

I thought that The Murder of Mr Wickham was a really creative take on Austen’s works and the characters. By bringing all of the main players to the same location by fate and machination, it made a really interesting dynamic and I was interested to see how that would play out in comparison to what I thought would happen if the characters all got together. I was not a huge fan of how all the relationships had some sort of strain or issue that was getting in the way of complete happiness (although in some cases it made sense) because it felt a bit contrived in places. Other than that, this was an interesting take on Austen’s complete work and I thought it did what it said it would, while giving different insight into characters and their lives after the original storylines.

Mr. Wickham arrives, uninvited, to a dinner party. With bad weather keeping everyone indoors and unable to go home, the little group soon realizes that Mr. Wickham has wronged almost everyone in attendance. So when he is found murdered, everyone is a suspect.

This was a fun murder mystery with all your favourite Jane Austen characters. While it may not be a true “where are they now” it’s a nice look at what their lives might have looked like down the line.

The writing and story were consistent in Austens style and their was even a nice little twist at the end.

A good read for any Austen fan.

In this sequel to Jane Austen novels the Darcys have been married for twenty two years, and they and their son Jonathan have been invited to a house party by the Knightlys of Donwell Abbey. The other couples include the Wentworths, Brandons and Bertrams, but also seventeen year old Juliet Tilney. Unfortunately to the chagrin of some of the guests, George Wickham, unwanted and uninvited arrives and is forced by the storm to spend the night. When he is discovered dead, secrets may need to be exposed to reveal the guilty party. It is Jonathan and Juliet that aid magistrate Frank Churchill.
An entertaining well-written historical mystery, with its cast of familiar and likeable characters which I suspect no one wants any to be found guilty.

All characters of the Jane Austen realm in one book!

During a dinner party, Mr Wickham turns out looking for his money, after ripping off people in one of his schemes.

Most of the people at the party have a reason to hurt Mr. Wickham and everyone is a suspect... can they find out who did it or will an innocent party find themselves in peril?

I want to love this book. I wanted to so much but I found it so mundane. I couldn't find commonality or anything to love about characters I already love. They felt void of personality. I don't know why I felt this way because I actually love the authors book usually so it might have just been my head space for this book. I may pick it up again in a year and love it.

3 stars because it was well written but the story felt flat to me.

The happily married Knightly couple decide to throw a house party, with four other couples attending. These couples are the Darcys and their son, Jonathan, the Wentworths, the Brandons, and the Bertrams, as well as Juliet Tilney, the daughter of the Tilneys. The party comes to an abrupt stop when Mr. Wickham shows up. He has harmed each member of the party, either by personally harming a female relative or swindling them out of money. Mr. Wickham is trapped there with everyone during a storm. Then one night he is found dead. Everyone there has a motive to kill him, but Juliet Tilney and Jonathan Darcy both have alibis. This younger generation take on the task of investigating the murder on their own, to prevent an innocent person from conviction.

I love Jane Austen’s novels so I knew I would love this novel with all of them brought together. It was so well written! Each of the stories were assigned a year at the beginning of the book to show when they took place, so many years had passed from the events of some of the novels. It would be helpful for readers to be familiar with these characters before reading this one. The only problem I had was that the characters were very similar because they were similar in the original novels, but that isn’t a fault for this book.

Mr. Wickham was a deplorable character from Pride and Prejudice, and he didn’t have any redeeming qualities. I don’t think I’ve ever read a mystery where I thought the victim deserved to be murdered right from the start. He had done horrible things to all of the characters, so any of them could be justified in murdering him. I was surprised at the outcome but I was glad at how it ended.

The Murder of Mr. Wickham is a great murder mystery!

Thank you Vintage and Austenprose for providing a copy of this book.

This mystery follows various couples from Jane Austen's books, who are all together visiting one house for a month. Mr. Wickham shows up at the home and from there chaos erupts. We find how Mr. Wickham has weaved his way in many of the couple's lives, not just Mr. and Mrs. Darcy. When he turns up dead, there is a very Agatha Christie, "And then there were none" investigation to find the killer.
I did find it a bit choppy with so many characters to introduce at first, but the story picked up once the investigation started. I would definitely read book 2 in the series.

An engaging cozy murder mystery with all my favorite Austen couples. Jonathan and Juliet were the sweetest sleuths.

The following review will be posted on Tuesday, April 26th, a week before publication. It will be shared on Twitter and Instagram between that Tuesday and the publication date (Tuesday, May 3rd), but the review has already been posted on Goodreads. The blog post includes links to pre-order the books and to its Goodreads page, so readers can add it to their to-be-read books.



“Anywhere in the world will be home, as long as you are with me.”

Genre: Historical Fiction
Actual Rating: 4 stars
Content Warnings: Discusses death, sexual assault, and mental illness.

“The Murder of Mr. Wickham” brings together the characters we loved (and hated) from Jane Austen’s novels and brings them into a summer they won’t forget. As they’re all gather in a summer house, Mr. Wickham mysteriously gets murdered. With the party-goers as the only suspects, Jonathan Darcy—son of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy (nee Bennet)—and Juliet Tilney—daughter of Mr. Henry Tilney and Mrs. Catherine Tilney (nee Morland)—set out to unmask the murderer, let someone else be wrongfully accused for the… misfortune?

This book had me sold by the end of the Prologue. When I was younger I was the biggest fan of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie novels. The two styles couldn’t be any more different, yet Claudia Gray has found a way to mesh them and I’m here for it. In an expertly told story, Gray has given us more to love about the characters Jane Austen so carefully crafted. But you don’t have to have read all of the Jane Austen books to understand this novel, as Gray has taken the time to insert the Austen characters’ stories here and there, subtly building her story up with those pre-existing back stories that some may or may not know. For instance, I have not read “Mansfield Park” and so was not familiar with the Bertrams, yet I did not feel like I understood Gray’s story any less because of this.

Told through regal language, I would recommend this book to readers who’ve enjoyed Jane Austen and other classical novels, and who are up for some murder mystery vibes. I would love love love to see this book made into a movie, to the likes of the “Murder on the Orient Express” 2017 movie.

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ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: May 03, 2022

Such a fun book! I loved seeing all of Austen's characters together and interacting with one another. I loved seeing where people think these characters have ended up many years into the future and how their relationships have survived. I don't think anyone will ever come close to the way Austen wrote her characters but I am not opposed to an attempt!

The murder mystery aspect of it was also super fun and kept you guessing, however I did not like how the chapters were written. I thought it was confusing at times when the narrative would shift between six different characters within the same chapter. I'm (obviously) not a writer so I don't know if having a each chapter dedicated to one character's POV was even doable, but I do think it would have made the reading experience a bit more joyful.

All-in-all, what a cool concept and what a great execution of it! Now I want to reread Emma!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for this digital arc in exchange for a honest review.