Book written by Amanda Quain, published July 2022
Georgie Darcy has a new year of school ahead of her. The only thing is that everyone at Pemberley Academy hates her for getting Wickham Foster kicked out for dealing drugs and she ruined her older brother's life by making him move across the country to keep an eye on her. Her mission is daunting: to prove that she belongs in the school, deserves to be part of the marching band, and that she has earned the name of Darcy. Only then will Fitz be happy (a little matchmaking wouldn't hurt that either) and Wickham will be forced to keep his new scheme away from her.
Georgie is a cute character, one completely obsessed with her show, Sage Hall, to the point of writing fanfics online about the characters. She is a bit excessive and extreme with her thoughts, but that's pretty typical of a teenage girl. Fitz is about as close to Darcy as a modern-day college student can be. It loosely follows the Pride and Prejudice story in modern-day, with a heavy dose of marching band and the connections that are found there. From the beginning though, it wasn't engrossing or something that held my attention. Mostly due to the interesting storyline choices and swearing, I'm not sure I will ever want to read this one again.
This book contains quite a bit of swearing, mentions of drug dealing, and an abusive relationship.
March on out of here if you don't want to hit the spoilers below.
"Being a Darcy came with certain perks, the most relevant one being that my place was established at Pemberley. I was Fitz's sister. I didn't need to be anything else. But I'd blown that up last year. Now I needed to...un-blow it up."
The idea behind this book intrigued me, as I was very excited to see what could be done with this background story, but the execution was a little lackluster overall. I think most of it was because Georgiana Darcy was such a small part of the original book, and so far removed, that I was expecting more of the original story than we get. Georgie's matchmaking is minimal and childish with "secret admirer" gifts, but I guess that's what happens when it's matchmaking from a distance. I can't help but thinking that it would be more in line with Pride and Prejudice if it was further back in the timeline while she was involved with Wickham, but nobody wants to read about a manipulative relationship that thankfully doesn't work out. I do admire that this story is about Georgie moving on from Wickham and kicking him to the curb after he tries to keep his hold over her, leading to a nice Happily Ever After for her character as well. Plus I just think Avery is sweet. He's my favorite character of the bunch, no doubt. He was obviously "into" Georgie when she was ignoring everyone for Wickham, and has no hesitation dropping everything to help her in whatever new plan she has going. He was her biggest cheerleader, and we all need one of those in our life.
The choice of having Georgie involved with a drug-dealing Wickham was an interesting one, most especially because she wasn't directly involved nor had any knowledge of what was happening, but that it was simply being done out of her room. Plausible deniability was one hundred percent in her favor, so there should have been no issue of Georgiana facing expulsion in the first place for Fitz to use their family influence against. If that makes sense. Why not have an eighteen year old senior year Wickham convince a very smitten underage Georgie to elope or something, and have her involved in illegal actions, but still manipulated into participating. Closer to the original, and still grounds for both of them getting expelled, but slightly less responsibility on her.
I thought it was curious to talk about privilege coming from wealth and Georgiana being disliked for her money in a private boarding school. I thought that you had to have money to be there in the first place, so Avery attending from out of state shouldn't have been so far removed from the world of wealth, right? Obviously, people aren't usually won over with shows of money, but it seemed a bit politically-minded to me, and that is all I will say about that. One last oddity to me was the use of "IRL". The literal text-speak abbreviation, and in more than a few instances, was maddening to me.
I have seen this book get fantastic reviews, so tell me what you liked about it! I like hearing more positive perspectives so that I can feel better about a book instead of being such a grouch.
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