This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviews at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @‌thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next good freelance job.

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Have you ever wondered what Catherine DeBourgh got up to before she was well, Catherine DeBourgh? Young Lady Catherine takes place 22 years before Fitzwilliam Darcy courts Elizabeth Bennet and features Catherine’s courtship as a young woman. It’s a charming, refreshingly-written romance that manages to show a softer side to Catherine — and places her in an angst-laden, twist-filled plot.

Once upon a time, Catherine was Lady Catherine Fitzwilliam, and she was the intended wife of her cousin, Phillip Lewis DeBourgh, upon her debut. There’s only one problem with that – Phillip decides to propose to someone else, Rachel, instead. Catherine is publicly humiliated when Phillip spurns her, much to the dismay of her social-climbing mother. But soon after she encounters the popular Charles Ashcroft, sixth Earl of Renalt.

Charles is handsome and witty and kind, but he doesn’t want a love match, and fears that might be just what he’s getting with spirited Catherine. She mistakenly believes him to be the second son of his father, which leads to all manner of chaos. She tumbles head over heels in love with him and meets him in secret, risking her reputation, and wears a necklace he’s given her.

Phillip finds out — and offers her marriage to cover up the scandal. When Phillip realizes Charles and Catherine might have a romance brewing, he becomes bitterly jealous, setting up a triangle in which only one man can win the keys to Rosing Park – and Catherine’s heart.

You can probably guess from the last names here who Catherine is going to end up with and why…or can you? I loved reading Young Lady Catherine. The prose is laden with Austenian wit and social mores as well as deep angst and sadness; the characters are well-drawn and complex. The prose is so easy to dig into, it’s positively edible. And the ultimate tragedy of our proud heroine is that she never manages to realize that her own hubris is what leads her to her ending.

I loved this version of Catherine – she’s credibly haughty and status-conscious, but also young and naive, smart, ambitious and possessing many other positive qualities. Her imperfections make her all the more intriguing and I was happy to stick with her throughout the novel. She’s a person with layers and – for the first time in the history of her fictional existence – I enjoyed spending time with her.

Charles, too – invented whole-cloth as he is – is a perfect, swoonworthy hero. Noble to a fault, he can also tease, flirt and be a temptation to anything in skirts. The plot twists his character through the story, and, makes him several shades darker as a person, but then makes him even more wonderful and noble. The book puts both of them through the wringer and I wasn’t able to look away until I finished it..

The yearning and anxiety and need in Catherine and Charles’ relationship definitely had me dying. This is a big, long heartbreaking romance, one that made me frown and laugh and cry and angst along with them.
Phillip is, of course, another matter entirely. I won’t spoil much about his character and his machinations other than to reveal that he drinks a lot and manipulates often. The hows and the whys of it all will be revealed, should you pick it up.

We get to meet a lot of interesting characters throughout the course of the book: we witness the first stirring of Anne Fitzwilliam’s love affair with Andrew Darcy, which will produce the Darcy of Austen’s books. We watch Catherine’s troubled and terrible relationship with her mother – which will affect how she treats Anne in the future.

And beyond that we see how society works to destroy vibrant, passionate people like Catherine and Charles — and how they try to carry on afterward. Young Lady Catherine is a lovely book and a fantastic Pride and Prejudice prequel.