Edmund Bertram’s Diary by Amanda Grange

Edmund Bertram’s Diary is item number six for my Everything Austen Challenge list. I am complete with the original challenge number and will be continuing on for the X2 Challenge!

I am now on a Mansfield Park kick. I am currently listening to the audiobook version of Mansfield Park and just finished up the novel Edmund Bertram’s Diary by Amanda Grange. I have enjoyed Grange’s previous diary installments and found this novel to also be enjoyable.

The novel starts when Edmund is a young man and his young cousin Fanny Price has first come to live with the Bertram family at Mansfield Park. Edmund has a great friendship with his fun loving brother Tom, but grows to have a deeper friendship based on mutual understanding and love of learning with Fanny. When Henry and Mary Crawford move to the neighborhood, Edmund finds himself falling in love with the captivating Mary Crawford. Over time he discovers that Mary considers wealth above all things and does not have the morals that he finds very important. He then begins to think about Fanny in a different light.

As with other Grange diaries, I enjoyed reading things from Edmund’s perspective. I do wish the diary would have contained more information beyond the ending of Mansfield Park. The story really seems like the love story of Edmund and Mary with Fanny as a surprise replacement at the end. It would have been nice to have the end section and their love expanded a bit more.