Reviews

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, by Sonali Dev

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tarnkaur99's review against another edition

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3.0

That was ehh. It seemed to drag out so much. I didn’t like that one bit.

lilliangretsinger's review against another edition

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3.0

3.5 - slow to start but picked up midway

itsmorton's review against another edition

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2.0

There’s something about these characters that’s likable but not really enough…

kitwhelan's review against another edition

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5.0

I very much enjoyed this gender-swapped version of Pride & Prejudice. It’s not a straight adaptation, which is a relief, as there is plenty of room to modernize and bring that societal analysis into the 21st century. We dive into immigration stories, racism, cops, rape, privilege, politics, familial neglect, difficult pregnancy, illness & end-of-life decisions, and all sorts of issues. There should be a lot of content warnings on this book.

It was honestly difficult being inside our Mr. Darcy (aka Dr. Trisha Raje’s) head sometimes as really she can be so obstinate. But I really loved exploring her interactions with her family. And the descriptions of the food! Prepare to be hungry reading this. I will definitely be checking out the rest of this series.

bookswithbront's review

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challenging emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I thought this book was going to be a lighthearted rom com with some cheesy Pride and Prejudice references, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Somali Dev’s writing is gorgeous, the characters were fascinating, and I’m already so invested in the Raje family after just one book. At times, however, I did really struggle with this book. It did a great job and addressing certain complex topics like intersectional identities, class, and trauma, but I also felt like it yada yada’d some of the biggest issues its characters dealt with. Throughout the whole story, DJ’s biggest grievance with Trisha is that she said she wouldn’t be interested in a member of “the hired help,” something that is borderline unforgivable and that she never really apologizes for. Trisha and DJ both apologize for certain things, but the book acts as though the hurtful things they said to each other were equal, and I don’t think that’s the case at all. The book also made a bit of a straw man of the very complex issues of disability, the right-to-die movement, etc. While Emma’s case was unique, no one else acknowledged the validity of some of her perspective, treating it like a temper tantrum that needed to be resolved. However, I didn’t feel that Dev was pushing any sort of agenda on either of these complex topics, which would be difficult to address at a deeper level in a book like this. And though I was so frustrated by Trisha’s character, I’m hoping that’s a one-off, and I’m excited to read the rest of the Raje family series!

Content Warnings

katiehicks's review against another edition

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3.0

I have a lot of thoughts about this book, but mostly because I always have a lot of thoughts about Pride and Prejudice retellings. I am very sorry, but this is about to be a very long review where I unnecessarily compare, like, every aspect of this book to the original. Please do not read it, it is very snobby.

I am not a book purist, and I don’t think adaptations have a responsibility to make everything a one-to-one comparison. That being said, I think adaptations are more interesting if they find creative ways to modernize the original rather than just making big changes because the author actually just wants to write a different story but bring in the already-established fan base. For example, I still maintain that Clueless is the best modern Jane Austen adaptation despite being very different from the book on which it's based, but I still feel strongly that certain things need to be preserved in order for it to be considered a good adaptation in addition to a good story on its own. For Pride and Prejudice, this means there has to be social commentary, and the misunderstandings that keep the two leads apart should be based in a satire of social class and arbitrary mores. These are the things that make P&P different from every other enemies-to-lovers story, and what makes Austen’s work so enduring in general.

But enough disclaimer. First, what I liked:

I liked the gender-swapping, especially because I think the reason we don’t see it more often despite being a somewhat popular adaptation trend is because people get hung up on “likability” and don’t want to tell stories about a taciturn woman who doesn’t really understand how to vocalize her feelings and shows affection and loyalty through actions rather than words. BUT the other reason I think this isn’t often done is because the fact that we only see Darcy through Lizzie’s eyes ends up creating a lot of suspense in the story, especially now that the story is so famous and most people go into it knowing how it ends. You see Darcy as Lizzie sees him- as arrogant and entitled and only gradually change your mind as she sees other sides of him. With the split POV in P&P&OF, you know right away that both characters have a reason for being so unlikable in their first scene together- DJ has a lot riding on his food being perfect and Trisha has had a tough day and hasn’t eaten- so them fighting over the food and failing to show each other empathy makes sense in a way it's not really meant to and you have more compassion and understanding for the Darcy character in that moment (though I did love how the “do you know what these hands are worth” line took the place of the iconic “not handsome enough to tempt me” and that DJ was super petty about it and kept throwing it in Trisha’s face every chance he got.) Both characters exhibit pride and prejudice, and they both realize this and grow throughout the story, but in the original story the reader gets to experience this transformation with the character rather than seeing it from a more omniscient POV. HOWEVER the split POV also made this story feel a lot more modern so it was a bold choice for an adaptation. I don’t hate it, but I also don’t think it always paid off (though this might also be indicative of the fact that I just don’t really like contemporary romance that much).

I really liked how Darcy/ Trisha’s pride is depicted. It can be a real challenge for modern adaptations of P&P to get this right, because his pride comes from being the scion of a great house and being a part of an archaic, regionally specific class system. To the characters in the story, his pride is understandable and “earned”, but Lizzie chooses to see it as arrogance during the parts of the story where she’s trying to find reasons to dislike him. In most modern adaptations, the Darcy character remains prideful of his wealthy, influential family, but it just doesn’t work in a modern setting, and he often just comes across as an arrogant rich man (which is exactly Lizzie’s first impression of him, but it is supposed to be incorrect and only based on things she overhears out of context, not his actual behavior). I thought making Trisha a brilliant surgeon was a great way to modernize this. She’s not prideful just because she’s rich or comes from an important family (though she is both of those things), but because of the work she has done and the things she has achieved. Especially as a woman of color, you can forgive or even praise her for taking such pride in her work, but for someone who already has an idea of her as an entitled rich person, it comes across as arrogant. Her thinking that she knows best and should decide Emma’s treatment for her was a great approximation of Darcy convincing Bingley to leave Jane, because you can understand where Darcy/Trisha is coming from, but both actions are objectively wrong and they were rightly called out for it by Lizzie/ DJ. I thought it was really well done.

I liked that Trisha and DJ met each other’s sisters early on and part of what confused their feelings was bonding over their love for their sisters, but I have some mixed feelings about the family dynamics not being gender-swapped. Georgiana is one of the biggest reasons Lizzie starts to change her mind about Darcy, and the Bennet family is one of the main reasons Darcy is so reluctant to marry Lizzie despite loving her, so this was the one area where it almost didn’t feel like a P&P adaptation at all. The story combines Jane Bennet and Georgiana Darcy, giving half of each role to DJ’s sister Emma and Trisha’s sister Nisha. I really missed the Darcy/ Georgiana relationship, not just because I love grumpy/sunshine pairings, but also because it felt like it changed a lot of the character dynamics, especially in the Darcy/ Georgiana/ Wickham backstory.

I also don’t love that DJ comes from an impoverished background- it feels like a misunderstanding of the original story. The Bennets are not poor- they are members of the landed gentry and are actually in the same social class as Darcy, which is why they get invited to the same parties. They have less land and therefore less money than Darcy and having 5 daughters makes inheritance and marriage prospects difficult, but they are actually considered higher socially than the Bingleys, whose money comes from trade rather than land. This is important because Lizzie judging Charlotte for marrying Mr. Collins and then getting called out for it makes her realize her privilege and rethink the way she sees the people around her and her own situation. I feel like making DJ struggle as much as he has takes away a lot of Lizzie’s character flaws from the story (I may also be forgetting something, but it seemed like the Charlotte Lucas/ Mr. Collins storyline was cut completely). The character is supposed to be just as wrong as Darcy and grow into a better, less judgemental person, but that gets lost when DJ is a poor child of immigrants who has had to struggle to save his sister from a terminal illness after losing both his parents. It feels like he is supposed to have a chip on his shoulder, and that his prejudice is that of hating rich people just because they’re rich, but…. Is that supposed to be a character flaw? Because someone who has experienced homelessness due to his racist grandparents cutting off his black mother and who is currently trying to hold down a job so he doesn’t go bankrupt paying for his sister’s life-saving medical treatments being resentful of a wealthy woman that (from his perspective) keeps threatening to fire him out of pettiness and spite doesn’t play the same way that Lizzie’s hypocritical judgmentalness did in the original story.

This all comes to a head when she asks him to break into a car that she has locked the keys in. When he points out how it would look for him, a black man, to break into an expensive-looking car in a wealthy part of town, she dismisses him. Obviously, this is part of her character flaw of not recognizing her privilege (and she was upset and worried at the time that she wouldn’t make it in time to take a loved one to the doctor, so this is also in part about his lack of empathy for her) but, again, I think it is taken too far. Her behavior is not balanced out by his- they are both in the wrong, but they are not equally so. That whole scene was really unnecessary and stressful.

I think a lot of this comes back to the pacing. The misinterpretation and misunderstanding worked in P&P because Darcy and Lizzie really only interacted a few times, so her opinion of him was based primarily on second-hand information (some of which came from Wickham), while his opinion of her was based primarily on his understanding of her social situation and her family’s behavior at parties. DJ and Trisha spend too much time together, and his dislike of her is based on things she actually says and does, albeit jumping to conclusions and always assuming the worst. If this book had been edited a lot more and the pacing much quicker, it would have made their initial dislike of each other make a lot more sense.

The bigger issue for me though was the Rajes being stand-ins for the Bennets. On the one hand, the way they are confirms DJ’s preconceived notions about Trisha being arrogant, so that somewhat replicates the Bennent family’s role in the story, but it also loses the class element. Lizzie loves her family despite their flaws, and sees Darcy’s dislike of them as classist (which it is, and is another one of Darcy’s mistakes that he has to make up for in the third act by being kind to the Greenes). The Bennets were inappropriate and vulgar, but the Rajes were mean and at times elitist, so DJ not liking them does not come across as a character flaw in the same way. The social commentary is one of the main reasons the original book is considered a classic, and without it the story is just another enemies-to-lovers rom-com (not that there's anything wrong with that, but again, this book is explicitly an adaptation so it needs to retain the important themes and this is really the biggest one).

There are ALOT of characters, and all of them had complex, detailed (and tragic) backstories, most of which felt unnecessary. I mean, we get backstories for EVERY character, even ones that are dead before the start of the book or characters that are only tangentially related to characters that are actually important to the plot. It was a lot to keep track of and really made the first half of the story drag. The first major plot point after Darcy and Lizzie’s first meeting (Jane getting sick and needing to stay at Netherfield, which in P&P is less than 50 pages in) doesn’t happen until almost the 40% mark here. Also, everyone’s backstory is the MOST tragic and traumatizing- plane crashes and temporary disability and multiple miscarriages. It was a big disappointment, since the quick pacing and snappy writing is one of my favorite parts of the original book.

Finally, just a personal preference- I don’t like when adaptations get meta. I didn’t like that DJ’s mom was “an Austen fan” and his name (Darcy) was explicitly a reference to the original story, especially because it was brought up multiple times. It just feels very cheesy to me but, again, that’s just a personal preference.

TL,DR: I don’t think this book was bad, or even a bad adaptation of P&P, I have just consumed A LOT of P&P adaptations, so it takes a lot to really impress me. It also doesn’t help that I went into this book thinning (for some reason?) that it was a light rom-com that would be a really quick read and it turned out much slower and more dramatic than I thought. Obviously not the book’s fault, but it did affect my enjoyment.