Pride, Prejudice & Penguins

It is a truth universally acknowledged that witches raised as mundanes are going to be very, very confused.

Until this morning, Lizzy Bennett thought the oddest thing in her life was the fact that her mother named her and all her four sisters after Jane Austen characters. Then two penguins appeared and ran amuck in her home, closely followed by the Magical Council barging in and arresting her father for keeping her and the rest of her family under a strong compulsion. Now, she and her sister Jena (her mother thought "Jane" was too plain) are being sent away to a magical college to learn how to wield their own magic--which, apparently, exists.

Finding herself in a supposedly-abandoned medieval castle on a Scottish island, Lizzy tries to adapt to life at the Academy. But that's not so easily done when it's discovered that she's not only blind to magic, unlike every other witch, but also saddled with a Narrative Syndrome, a curse so rare the school has only dealt with it once before. She probably should have guessed when she met the much-too-handsome Mr. David Fitzwilliam of Pemberton, not to mention his friends Charles and Caro Bingham and her professor, Charlie Lucas. Apparently, being a romantic heroine is not for the faint of heart.

But all her other challenges are nothing to the menacing man who shows up in her dream, stealing her necklace and some of her memories, all while proclaiming that she belongs to him.

Now learning about the magical world with a seeing-magic imp on her shoulder and her friends' and roommates' support, she'll have to try not to fall into a narrative trap by liking Fitz way too much, which is easier said than done. But when she and her family visit his Pemberton estate over the holidays and her sister Liddy is abducted by a mysterious man known only as GW, that darn narrative may be the least of her worries--because there's an all-powerful, otherworldly elf king who believes he owns Lizzy completely, and he's very tired of waiting. Can she and her friends find a way to save both Liddy and herself?

Pride, Prejudice & Penguins is a perfect introduction to the More in Heaven and Earth universe. Continuing readers will delight in visits from old friends, while new readers can easily enjoy the loads of quirky humor, romance, and suspense of this magical school story meets funny, updated regency romance.

On a Katherine Gilbert wackiness scale of 1-to-10 sarcastic talking cats*, this one is a 8.

*Warning: Not all stories contain talking cats. Wackiness may take other forms.

The More in Heaven and Earth series is all set in the same magical universe filled with angels, witches, werewolves, demons, vampires, ghosts, and many other supernatural creatures. These intriguing tales can be read in any order or as stand-alones and will introduce the reader to a variety of fascinating characters throughout the many unique locales of this exciting world.