Many of Jane Austen’s beloved characters join together for a house party when an uninvited guest arrives and stirs up trouble—Mr. Wickham! When he is murdered soon after, the young Jonathan Darcy and young Juliet Tilney work to solve the case behind the adults’ (and suspects) backs. Which of our heroes is capable of murder? Apparently all of them have motive and opportunity, but the truth will out.
This book is well written and a fun idea, with a satisfying conclusion and a delightful budding romance. My one quibble is that the adults seemed more interested in healing their various marital troubles than figuring out which one of them was the murderer. They were content to wait for the magistrate (Frank Churchill!) to figure it out, and only the two young people were occupied with the clue gathering. That didn’t seem realistic, but with all the manners and propriety of the times, maybe it is. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy. I would definitely read a sequel.

The Murder of Mr. Wickham brings characters from Austen's 5 main novels together for a house party at Donwell Abbey when one Mr. Wickham shows up uninvited and seems to have a history with most parties present. It's no surprise that he shows up murdered within 48hrs. I admit to struggling with so many main characters, even though I have read their stories before, and remembering who knows Wickham how and why each couple are on the outs with each other. However, I found the main storyline with Juliet and Jonathan to be adorable and is where the story really shined for me. The mystery was fairly well done, in that I didn't guess who the killer was, and I don't feel cheated by who it was, which had me a little nervous with the book being about beloved characters. I typically avoid Pride and Prejudice sequals, but I am a fan of Claudia Gray, so I had to give this one a try. She definitely did justice to these well-written characters, and it was interesting to see someone's view of what they think these characters' happily ever after looks like.

Mr. & Mrs. Knightley hold an impromptu house party, full of guests connected in almost obscure ways, but connected nonetheless. There are Mr. & Mrs. Darcy and their son, Jonathan, Colonel Brandon and his wife Marianne, Edmund and Fanny Bertram, Anne and Wentworth, and Ms. Juliet Tilney. An unexpected guest appears in the midst of a storm and quickly the mood changes from happiness to unease: George Wickham. Wickham has a sordid history with just about all the guests present. He's either hurt a loved one, compromised a loved one, cheated someone out of money, or worse. So when he ends up dead in the gallery it's a shock, but no one is that... upset.

The novel is like an Agatha Christie/Jane Austen mash-up that will have you trying to deduce who could have murdered Mr. Wickham before you reach the end.

Claudia Gray does Jane Austen and does it well. Does that sound right? I'm not sure, but I am sure that I adored this book. What a fun book to revisit beloved characters, even if you haven't read Jane Austen's novels you can find yourself enjoying The Murder of Mr. Wickham.

Gray's story is fast-paced, nuanced, and relevant. I especially adored the characters of Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney. Her style of writing gave you a feel of an Austen novel. I felt this was far easier to read. If you're a fan of Austen you might feel sentimental or nostalgic while reading it, at the same time being engrossed in a new story and a mystery at that. If you aren't an Austen fan, that contented happiness at revisiting old friends may not be present, but the characters and mystery are more than enough to enjoy!

3.5 stars rounded up

Taking one of those “why didn’t I think of that?” ideas, the author has crafted an agreeable and leisurely-paced murder mystery set at a house party peopled by Jane Austen characters.

Most of the couples from Ms Austen’s books are at a house party at Donwell Abbey, seat of the Knightleys. Cleverly, they are all aged according to the publication dates of their novels. It turns out that they all have some sort of connection to Emma (nee Woodhouse) and her husband, though after I read it I immediately forget what it was. Just as they’re all getting settled in, an unwelcome visitor turns up in the middle of a storm - George Wickham! It also turns out that they all have had disagreeable business with the amoral and thoroughly unpleasant Mr Wickham, so when his dead body is found with its skull smashed in, everyone is under suspicion.

The inquiry is led by the local magistrate, Frank Churchill, but at Donwell Abbey, two unconventional young people conduct their own investigation. Jonathan Darcy, oldest son of Elizabeth (nee Bennet) and Fittzwilliam Darcy and Juliet Tilney, daughter of Catherine (nee Morland) and Henry Tilney, have to work their way around the conventions and proprieties of the early 19th century to dig into their fellow guests’ connections with Wickham and their whereabouts on the night of the murder.

The mystery itself is quite slight and, though I spent a lot of the book troubled by the idea that one of my favorite Austen characters was going to be hanged, it works through very satisfyingly. The real joy is, of course, seeing what has happened to these couples after the end of their novels, or at least Ms Gray’s idea of what has happened.

The author does a decent job with the characters with the most personality: Elizabeth Darcy and Emma Knightley sparkle and she gives some welcome backbone to the wretchedly pious and lame Fanny Bertram (nee Price). Other characters, particularly the men, are a little more generically Austen and easily mixed up.

Our two new protagonists are splendid. Jonathan appears to be neurodivergent, though obviously this was not identifiable at the time, and he has difficulty in navigating the etiquette of social interactions. Juliet, much like her mother, gets swept up in the drama of the investigation and daringly breaks the rules which young ladies are meant to follow. They make an appealing duo and there appears to be the promise of a sequel to follow.

It’s been a long while since I read Jane Austen and I suspect my attention span would now be challenged by the slow pace. Ms Gray is clearly a Janeite and has had tremendous fun bringing these characters together, but the novel does sag a bit in the middle and I was ready for a conclusion to be reached quite some time before it was.

Thanks to Vintage and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

I'm a sucker for an English house party murder mystery. So I was excited that maybe (finally!) the Jane Austen people would actually DO something besides take a walk and come back betrothed to the guy who passed by in the lane or go to a ball.

The lead up to the murder was good and there are so many suspects. However this book just dragged on forever to me. I did like the two amateur sleuths, Jonathan and Juliet, a lot. Seems like there could be future encounters of these two. Wonder who will get bumped off next??

*I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher and I am required to disclose that in my review in compliance with federal law.

1820

Emma and George Knightley are throwing a month-long house party for a number of their friends and relatives. Included are many Jane Austen characters you may be familiar with so I won’t list them all here.

At dinner the first evening, the butler interrupts with the news that George Wickham, villain known to many attendees, has arrived uninvited demanding to speak to George. George is furious that he is there. As the weather outside is quite bad, Emma graciously offers him a room for the night where he can speak with George the next day and then take his leave.

The bad weather continues and Wickham approaches some attendees, in addition to looking around their rooms, trying to intimidate them. When he winds up dead, we wonder who got rid of this miserable man.

This book is for lovers of Jane Austen books and her characters. I admit that it has been quite awhile since I have read Jane Austen’s books, so I am not up-to-date with the characters. I think that for someone to be enthralled with this book, they should probably be a "Austen Addict." I found the story rather dry and somewhat tedious. However, Austen fans should be delighted with this book.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

It was so great to be back with some beloved Jane Austen characters in this book. They all come together from various books as characters in this story! Although if you haven’t read all of them you may be a bit confused. The characters really come alive and the added mystery element was great! I wanted to love this one but it didn’t wow me. A solid ⭐️⭐️⭐️ with some pacing issues and may too many POV

This novel is perfect for Jane Austin’s fans. Beloved couples from most of her novels get together for a house party at the Knightley’s when an unwelcome addition arrives, the infamous George Wickham. As the title suggests, Wickham is found dead soon after his arrival and the rest of the novel is basically a closed circle mystery. None of the characters were fond of Wickham and in fact most, had a good reason to do away with him. I liked the two new characters that we meet in this novel - Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney. They make a nice detective couple. Overall, an enjoyable read. Definitely recommend.

If you've read and loved Jane Austen's novels, then you will surely enjoy this murder mystery romp and the downfall of Wickham. Having not read many of Austen's novels, I still enjoyed this and the newer generation of characters, Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney. They were adorable together, even though they weren't actually together, while trying to solve the case. Ah, the crazy rules of the times that would not allow correspondence between young, unmarried men and women.

I think any fan of Pride & Prejudice will be intrigued by the title of this book. I was. Then I started reading and realized the cast of characters is the who's who of Jane Austen novels: Emma & Mr. Knightley, Elizabeth and Darcy, Anne & Captain Wentworth, Marianne & Colonel Brandon, Fanny and Edmund (all brought together at a month-long house party), and I wasn't sure I wanted to read a book where some of my favorite literary characters are now "old married couples", some apparently not getting along as well as you'd have hoped. I also wasn't sure how well the author would be able to pull off Austen's characters. However, the two main characters, really, are children of earlier characters: Isabel Tilney (Henry from Northanger Abbey's daughter), Jonathan Darcy. They take it upon themselves to investigate when George Wickham is murdered after showing up uninvited at the Knightley's house party to collect on a debt. Since it turns out that most of the other guests, and the Knightley's themselves, have good reason to wish the world rid of Wickham, Isabel and Jonathan have their work cut out for them, especially as they must maintain manners and decorum of unmarried young people in that era. I found myself enjoying the story, and at a loss to decide who of Austen's beloved characters was capable of murder.

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.

My rating: ✨✨✨ + 🐢⁠

🚦 My Face at the End - 😖

💜 Mr Wickham is murdered, and it could be any number of people gathered at the Knightly estate. Indeed, we have at least 1 character from each of Jane Austen's books gathered here...and they are all suspect.

💥 So at first I was just so excited for this. Sense and Sensibility is my favorite movie. But this book made it very hard to keep track of everyone and their motives. It moved so slow and sometimes there was nothing happening but people just randomly talking about inconsequential stuff. Also there were some details which were in correct (for example it references Mary as the youngest Bennett daughter, which is not so). I was just really disappointed for this.

a wonderful whodunit! lots of twists and turns in this unpredictable haunting story make this a real page turner. This informative descriptive and witty story is filled with interesting, complex and quirky characters. this is a fun must must read!

Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) provided by the Author and Publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I think we can all agree that if you had to pick one Jane Austen character to off it would be Mr. Wickham. There is a whole cottage industry that has emerged where authors have taken the characters of the original Jane Austen novels and have spun whole new tales about them, set in the Regency Period all the way to modern times. I have likewise been intrigued by these characters and the "what if" their stories could become. Here author Claudia Gray has spun a house party hosted by the Knightley's where we get to see all our favorites and one of them may be guilty of murder. Her characterizations are spot on for me. I could hear their voices just as I had imagined them to be.

I'm not going to rehash the plot. But it is a feast for readers who love a diabolical villain and all the nuances that go with a Regency period book. We have Jane Austen's characters smashed up with an Agatha Christie "locked room" mystery or a game of Clue (the butler with a mace in the gallery). It is a delicious banquet that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Imagine yourself surrounded by Jane Austen's literary characters - characters beloved by her fans - in one big house party for a month when the unthinkable happens there is a dead body Mr Wickham's dead body and now there is a mystery to be solved or else an innocent person will be hanged.

It felt so nice seeing all these characters back once again in a novel talking about their lives and communicating with each other. There are so many characters in this novel and we get to see almost each one speaking from his point of view which in this case gets a bit confusing coz they are a lot.
The story was slow-paced which irritated me at times, it could have been better.
Overall, I liked the idea of the novel and the banter between the men and the women and how the author reflected on society's faults and social behaviours.
100% recommended
Make sure to grab your copies.

I think everybody experimented, at some point in their life, with what is called a "book hangover". When you can't just stop thinking about the characters, about something that was an amazing idea, or
how a scene could be better or worse. In my opinion, this is the reason a lot of people write or read fanfictions about books characters. But to do this with a classic? This was a brilliant idea! We have this amazing opportunity to see again characters like Elizabeth and Darcy, Emma and George Knightley, or Colonel and Marianne Brandon. And here came my favorite part of this book. Claudia Gray doesn’t just give us some new adventures of the characters that we loved in our teenage( Jane Austen was one of the few classic authors that I enjoyed in high school) but she came up with the idea to change the style and took inspiration from the famous Agatha Christie. So Claudia Grey took all the main characters of all Jane Austen's books and transformed them into possible murders. She gave them reasons to kill and at this point, I hoped that someone would become Hercule Poirot.
Yes, the book is a little slow but I don’t have a problem with that. It was written to be similar to Jane Austen's books ( even if it took some inspiration from the thrillers that Agatha wrote) and that novels aren’t the most alerted ones.
Because The Murder of Mr. Wickham is a thriller, the most important thing for me was to not be able to tell who is the criminal in the first half of the book. When the magistrate was called, everyone was suspect, and I liked the confusion and the fact that everyone has their reasons,
In the end, I can say I really enjoyed this book and I am looking forward to reading more by the author.

The married couple, the Knightley’s are having a summer house party for several of their family members and new acquaintances. An uninvited guest arrive arrives during a storm so the hosts have no choice but to allow the guest to stay. When the guest ends up murdered, the two youngest guests, Juliet Tilney and Jonathan Darcy take the opportunity for some sleuthing and adventure while trying to discover which of the other guests committed the act. The list is long as it becomes apparent that none of the guests had anything good to say about the deceased.

The Murder of Mr. Wickham finds characters from several Austen novels gathered at a house party at Knightley & Emma's house: Darcy & Elizabeth (Pride & Prejudice), Colonel Brandon & Marianne (Sense & Sensibility), Fanny & Edmund Bertram (Mansfield Park), and Captain Wentworth & Anne (Persuasion). Also in attendance are the Darcys' eldest son Jonathan and Henry & Catherine Tilney (Northanger Abbey)'s daughter Juliet. When the villainous Wickham shows up - and is shortly, thereafter, murdered - Jonathan and Juliet work together to uncover which member of the house party committed murder.

I loved this story so much! Not only is it fun to check back in with beloved - and not so beloved - Austen characters, but the mystery is well plotted and quite intriguing! I thought Claudia Gray did a wonderful job of staying true to the characters while bringing out their weaknesses that could, potentially, cause them to commit murder. Everyone, save Juliet, had a motive; Jonathan's alibi cleared him immediately, but all of the other guests could have done it. I can't say anything more without divulging some secrets best to be discovered by the reader, but just trust me when I say that the mystery unfolds in an intriguing manner and comes to a satisfactory resolution. I sincerely hope Gray has more Austen-esque novels in her, as I would dearly love to revisit Jonathan and Juliet again!

I was very intrigued when I learned about this book. An Agatha Christie-style murder mystery featuring Jane Austen characters written by one of my favorite science fiction writers? I was cautiously optimistic by this colliding of worlds, and luckily, it paid off.

Claudia Gray skillfully captured the tone of Jane Austen’s writing and the essence of her characters. I love the way she imagined the main couples of Austen’s works coming together for an ill-fated house party. No one is too sad to be rid of Mr. Wickham permanently, but everyone is on edge knowing a murderer is among them. Gray’s original characters Juliet Tilney and Jonathan Darcy delight as they sneak around for clandestine meetings…to solve the crime. I have my fingers crossed for a sequel reuniting those two. And I appreciate the sensitive neurodivergent representation in the young Mr. Darcy.

This definitely falls into the cozy mystery category. I would have liked a little more suspense with a killer on the loose; instead, the murder investigation sometimes to a backseat to other Regency-era pursuits, like a ball (NOT that I am complaining about the ball scene). That being said, I did not guess the murderer, and I had fun trying to put all the clues together even though I hoped for a few more thrills.

If you are a Jane Austen fan, I think you will really like this book! I have only read Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Northanger Abbey; so I naturally was less suspicious of the characters I was already familiar with. I think I would have enjoyed this a bit more if I had completed reading Jane Austen’s oeuvre beforehand, but it inspired me to pick up my next classic sooner rather than later!

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the gifted eARC.

What a fun romp through the lives of Jane Austen’s leading literary characters!

Have you ever wondered what would happen if all the major characters of Austen's novels knew each other? Well, the Murder of Mr. Wickham answers that question in an entertaining way!

I was so excited to see all of these characters together in one spot to see how their stories lined up. The Darcys have been married for several years and have an adult son, Jonathan, attending the party. Emma and Marianne are similar in age and are in the first few years of their marriages.

The best part about this book is that you don’t have to have read all of Jane Austen’s novels to understand the characters in this book. The author does an excellent job of giving a concise introduction to each of Austen’s couples. Of course, if you want the full depth of each character and their backstory, then I encourage you to read all of Austen’s novels…I mean, how could you not?

Before I gush too much at the Austen synergy of it all, I have to say that all of these characters made it difficult to solve the mystery. There were many characters with many motives and not enough clues in the book to figure out whodunit.

There is also a budding romance between Juliet Tilney and Jonathan Darcy. I do wish there was more time spent on these two characters and the romance aspect of the story.

I enjoyed this book for its entertaining imagining of a house party of Austen characters and that Mr. Wickham finally got what was coming to him!

4.5 rounded up