Breakaway Books

Authored by Lee Welch; Published August 2025; Romance

⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️

Mr. Collins In Love reads like fan fiction from a truly devout Austen acolyte. For me, there wasn’t enough originality or romance to rank among my favorites. 

Whatever happened to Mr. Collins, the curate who proposed to Lizzie Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, only to be none too gently rebuffed? Did the stuttering mass of anxiety make a good match with Lizzie’s friend, Charlotte Lucas? Mr. Collins in Love explores precisely how Mr. Collins came to make his proposals for marriage and what a happy ending looks likes for him. 

There is no doubt that crafting a romance between two men in nineteenth century England is a tough task. What’s the best happy ending they can possibly imagine? Unfortunately, because this is the premise behind the novel, and the best realistic happy ending possible is somewhat lackluster, I found this romance to be monumentally unsatisfying. Mr. Collins does find companionship with his childhood friend Jem, but there’s no commitment and certainly no declaration of their true feelings. There’s, quite simply, nothing to swoon over. It felt like there wasn’t a point to the novel, especially since Pride and Prejudice left me with the impression that Mr. Collins’s canonical match with Ms. Lucas was one of companionship, rather than love, anyway. In this version, Mr. Collins’s partner is one he seems to be fond of, certainly, but it’s tough to say more than that.

At the heart of my antipathy for this novel is Mr. Collins himself, and his ceaseless dithering about how he will be perceived by those around him. It is, to be blunt, profoundly annoying to hear him go back and forth, back and forth, about every tiny decision that he makes and whether it will displease Lady Catherine. I’m not saying this isn’t true to the original novel; I’m saying a whole novel about him is way too much. He is clearly an anxious man, and I hated having his voice in my ear (literally, as I consumed this novel via audiobook). All of which, I would hope, would be countered by his match Jem, but I found Jem to be a flat and one-dimensional character, whose main characteristic appears to be that he is uneducated. 

I can only assume that Mr. Collins in Love is for those Austen fans who simply can never get enough. I am not one of them.