I have rarely been so disappointed in a book. I thought that being an Austen loving trans man, I would be the target audience, but found that to absolutely not be the case. This book feels like such a missed opportunity and has very much put me off reading any of the other remixes. That is to say, I disliked it, most ardently.

I suggest any Austen fans wanting to read this consider it mostly historically inaccurate, very, very, very loosely based on parts of the story and some of the characters in P&P, and lower their expectations before reading.

I will acknowledge that some of my issues with it (juvenile writing, lack of depth) may be down to it being aimed at a YA audience, though it does read more for children in some places than teens. It feels like some of the changes from the original were due to the YA angle, like ageing down the characters - but this gutted the story. Despite there having been some historical research, the modernisms that often crept in, as well as the change in setting to London (which felt extremely lazy), and the change in several character motivations felt like a strange misunderstanding of the social and cultural dynamics at play in Austen's work. Something that should have been as core to this story as it was to all of hers.

In regards to the ageing down, I understand this might have been because of the YA audience, but then write something else, write a pre-P&P story - ageing them down completely changes the social dynamic. which then does not work at all in this book. Not least because the way they are written flails wildly between juvenile and worldly adult (presumably the bits more closely copied from Austen).

The move to London again alters the social dynamic and feels like it was only done to give the author access to more interesting locations to send his characters. Could this not have taken place during the time Lizzy is in London with her aunt and uncle in the original? Which again, speaks to how shallow the story itself is.

The changes to the character standings and motivations of Collins and Wickham again gut the social dynamics at play in the original, in favour of rather crap new storylines that have no real depth. "Wickham is greedy", should not be the beginning and end of his character. It's baffling. It just doesn't feel like this was written by someone who has much experience of, or interest in Austen's writing.

With all these elements I couldn't help getting distracted the whole way through with ideas of how Lizzy could have absolutely been written as a trans man and still kept within the tone and sensibility of the original. Even including a change in Wickham's motivations, to ignore Wickham ending up with Lydia, could have worked if done more skilfully.

I almost didn't finish this, and genuinely struggled with every page, only able to finish it by divorcing it in my mind from Austen and pretending it was an original work, but even then it's just not that good.

Even for a YA novel, the writing is juvenile and the story lacks depth. The tone is all over the place as it goes from embedding Austen alongside way too many modernisms - some of the dialogue actually made me mad. It's too short and shallow, it races from plot point to plot point, abbreviating scenes that might have been interesting to draw out and skipping over entire swaths of the original. That isn't to say I think that it should have been a word for word rewrite, but that in leaving so much out and changing things unnecessarily, it completely misses the point of Austen's novels and P&P especially.

It could also have done with a more rigorous edit - there's quite a bit of repetition between pages, especially at the beginning. They might also have done more to call out/amend the modernisms, and they may have also caught that the woman Darcy was engaged to changes names during the story (called Genevieve on page 132 by Wickham, Darcy refers to her later as Liliana).

I am genuinely gutted. I had been so excited to read this and saying it was disappointing is not strong enough by far.