Girl Races Time — C.M. Mitchell

Like every book in the series, this novel can be read without reading any other books in the saga, but all the books are linked to each other. It's a truth, generally believed, that a girl who is described as being intelligent must be doing something to make herself continually look it. In modern day, Melinda Bennet was never considered the exceptional one out of her sisters. She was plain, had no exceptional talent, and was hailed as awkward. Yet to make matters worse, while her sisters had all begun to experience good fortune, Melinda's life has fallen into a downward spiral. On the brink of graduating from college for Journalism, she has failed to get any internship that she has applied for, no news station will touch her, and she feels as if her future looks bleak. One day, her friend and roommate Abbey won two tickets to Barton Park, a regency fairy tale land where people are allowed to dress and live as if they are back in the times of 19th century. At first Melinda is reluctant to join her, but eventually accepts and joins Abbey in this journey, in hopes of being able to start her life anew. Upon going, she is hurled back in time to a classical world where she experiences friendship, apathy, cruelty, and companionship. Also, much to her surprise, she experiences falling in love for the first time. Yet what she comes upon is more shocking. While at Barton, she begins to uncover a secret about the houses's past that is most shocking and a connection that has to do with the Darcys! And yet she comes upon something even more shocking, and is amazed to discover how history has repeated itself! She then begins to find her path, answers to her present, a will to find her future, and unknowingly, she helps the 'Mary Bennet' of Longbourn who was alive two hundred years before her time!