Review: Prejudice & Pride by Lynn Messina

Prejudice & Pride by Lynn Messina

Blurb from Goodreads:

You know Darcy: rich, proud, standoffish, disapproving, one of the greatest romantic heroes of all time. But you don't know this Darcy because THIS Darcy is a woman. 

In PREJUDICE & PRIDE, Lynn Messina’s modern retelling with a gender-bendy twist, everything is vaguely familiar and yet wholly new. Bingley is here, in the form of Charlotte "Bingley" Bingston, an heiress staying at the Netherfield hotel on Central Park, as is Longbourn, transformed from an ancestral home into a perennially cash-strapped art museum on the edge of the city. Naturally, it employs an audacious fundraiser with an amused glint in his eye called Bennet. 

All the favorite characters are present and cleverly updated: Providing the cringe-worthy bon mots is Mr. Meryton, the nerve-wracked executive director of the Longbourn who’s always on the lookout for heiresses to join his museum’s very important committees. (Universally acknowledged truth: Any woman in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a social committee to chair.) Collin Parsons is still in obsequious, if ironic, awe of his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. The wicked Georgia Wickham toils as a graphic designer at Redcoat Design by day and schemes against Darcy by night. 

With her trademark wit and style, Lynn Messina takes the genres she does best—chick lit, mashups, and Regency romance—and weaves them into one delightfully entertaining tale that doubles as a fun guessing game. 

My Review:
I really enjoyed this retelling -- you all know I read a lot of retellings of Jane Austen, some better than others.  I believe this is the first gender reversal retelling I've read and it was really good.  The art fundraising/patronage made the perfect modern setting to keep with the canon of P&P and I really, really liked both Bennet and Darcy.  All of the secondary characters were spot on, especially Mr. Meryton.  I laughed out loud several times!  The only complaint I have is part of the ending -- while the overall ending was definitely canon, there was this lead up to the ending that felt so not canon to me.  Obviously, retellings are fun because they stretch canon and sometime turn it on its head but since the rest of the book was so close to the original, this part that was so based on lust felt very off to me.

I would have no hesitation in recommending this book to fans of Jane Austen -- I loved the gender bending twist of this retelling of P&P.  It felt modern but true to canon, which I love!!

Prejudice & Pride came out recently, you can purchase HERE, and I highly recommend it!

A gentleman should have a thorough knowledge of music, literature, art, theater, wine and cigars.  He should be well-traveled and speak at least three languages, one of which has to be Mandarin if he has any hope of remaining relevant in the modern world.  He should know how to tip a maitre d' without arousing attention and have a clear understanding of his financial portfolio.  Plus, he should have a certain athleticism about him-- that is, how to pull of a bicycle kick, how to get out of greenside bunker at St. Andrews and how to return a rolling nick shot in squash.