Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe by Melissa de la Cruz
Published by St. Martin's Press on October 17, 2017
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Retelling, Holiday
Pages: 240
Format: eARC
Source: Kindly provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Summary from Goodreads:
Darcy Fitzwilliam is 29, beautiful, successful, and brilliant. She dates hedge funders and basketball stars and is never without her three cellphones—one for work, one for play, and one to throw at her assistant (just kidding). Darcy’s never fallen in love, never has time for anyone else’s drama, and never goes home for Christmas if she can help it. But when her mother falls ill, she comes home to Pemberley, Ohio, to spend the season with her dad and little brother.
Her parents throw their annual Christmas bash, where she meets one Luke Bennet, the smart, sardonic slacker son of their neighbor. Luke is 32 and has never left home. He’s a carpenter and makes beautiful furniture, and is content with his simple life. He comes from a family of five brothers, each one less ambitious than the other. When Darcy and Luke fall into bed after too many eggnogs, Darcy thinks it’s just another one night stand. But why can’t she stop thinking of Luke? What is it about him? And can she fall in love, or will her pride and his prejudice against big-city girls stand in their way?
A charming book for the holiday season, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND MISTLETOE will delight Jan Austen fans and Melissa de la Cruz devotees alike with its new and modern spin on a classic tale. The film adaptation is currently in development with Brad Krevoy Television, with de la Cruz writing the screenplay.
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Review:
Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe is a modern day retelling of Pride and Prejudice with a twist.
I am an absolute fan of the Pride and Prejudice, so when I first heard about this book I was definitely interested in reading it to see what it was like. The flip of characters and general gender swap was so unique and well developed. Reading the role reversals, Darcy Fitwilliam is the woman and Luke Bennet is the male, was intriguing to say the least. It was something that drew me towards this book and brings a classic into modern society. Having read previous books based on Pride and Prejudice, this story has to be my favourite retelling of the classic.
A lot happens when Darcy returns home for the holidays. Dealing with a strained relationship with her father, her mother's illness, and attending her parent's yearly Christmas party, Darcy has her work cut out for her. But what will happen when Darcy's world crashes in Luke Bennent's?
The story was engaging, the characters were written so captivatingly, and there was some twists to keep readers (like myself) wanting to find out more about Darcy and Luke and what ultimately happens to them in the end. The lives of both Darcy and Luke were so satisfying to read. I only wished that the book was a little longer. I couldn't get enough of the characters. Especially the friendship between Darcy and Bingley Charles.
Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe is filled with self discovery, second chances, and beautifully woven moments. This is a book you definitely have to read this holiday season, especially if you're a fan of romance and Jane Austen.
Rating:
★★★★
About The Author:
Melissa de la Cruz is the #1 New York Times, #1 Publisher’s Weekly and #1 IndieBound bestselling author of many critically acclaimed and award-winning novels for readers of all ages. Her more than thirty books have also topped the USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times bestseller lists and have been published in over twenty countries.De la Cruz’s novel, The Isle of the Lost, the prequel to the Disney Channel Original Movie Descendants, spent more than fifty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, fifteen at #1, and has over a million copies in print. Descendants starring Kristen Chenoweth and Dove Cameron is the #1 cable TV movie of 2015, and #5 of all time, and its soundtrack is the #1 bestselling album on iTunes. The Isle of the Lost’s sequel, Return to the Isle of the Lost, also hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and the third book in the series, Rise of the Isle of the Lost, will publish on May 23, 2017 in advance of the Disney Channel’s Descendants2 movie, which premieres July 21, 2017.
De la Cruz is also best-known for the Blue Bloods series (with three million copies in print), and the Witches of East End series, which was turned into a two-season drama series starring Julia Ormond, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Rachel Boston and Mädchen Amick on Lifetime Television. Most recently, HarlequinTEEN’s Seventeen magazine imprint published her young adult novel, Something in Between, based on her own experiences with being an immigrant. Alex & Eliza, about the love story of a young Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler, debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list.
Melissa is also the co-director of YALLFEST (Charleston, SC) and the co-founder of YALLWEST (Santa Monica CA), the two largest and most vibrant young adult book festivals in the country, that attract more than 30,000 readers every year.
A former fashion and beauty editor, Melissa has written for The New York Times, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Allure, The San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney’s, Teen Vogue, CosmoGirl! and Seventeen. She has also appeared as an expert on fashion, trends and fame for CNN, E! and FoxNews.
She grew up in Manila and moved to San Francisco with her family, where she graduated high school salutatorian from The Convent of the Sacred Heart. At Columbia University, she majored in art history and English.
Melissa de la Cruz lives in West Hollywood with her husband and daughter.
Excerpt (from chapter 2)
2
Darcy’s childhood bedroom was half a floor beneath her par-
ents’ and on the end of a marble landing. It overlooked an
Olympic-size swimming pool surrounded by checkerboard tile
and white lounge chairs, with an infinity waterfall segueing into
a clear blue hot tub. The room hadn’t changed one bit since she
had last seen it eight years ago. The navy sateen of her canopy
bed, the wall of plaques and trophies from high school debates
and academic honors and horseback riding competitions. It
was all still there. She locked the door behind her and went to
her bookshelf, which still held all her old favorite books: The
Great Gatsby, Atlas Shrugged, Sense and Sensibility, War
and Peace, and so many more. These had been the books to
get her through the loneliness of high school. She ran her
finger along their spines.
“Oh my God.” She laughed, her eyes falling on the stuffed
animal perched at the end of the shelf. “Little Lion!” Little Lion
had been a present from her father when she was nine years old
and had to have her appendix removed. She could still remem-
ber waking up from surgery to find her father at the side of the
bed, holding the stuffed animal with a red bow around its neck,
made extra bright and shimmery by the painkillers. She had
named him Little Lion because, even then, she didn’t like the
idea of making things up. She liked cold, hard facts that couldn’t
be argued with, and so she gave him a name that would most
accurately represent who he was.
Now she took him in her arms and laid down on the cool cot-
ton sheets of her childhood bed. As she lay there, the sun be-
gan to set outside the wide window, where freshly cut flowers
sat in Le Creuset vases. And as the sun set, her thoughts spun. It
had been a whirlwind twelve hours since she received the
phone call with news of her mother’s heart attack and she
hopped on the first morning flight to Ohio. The transition from
her new life suddenly into her old life felt surreal and jarring.
She couldn’t reconcile the person she was now with the person
she used to be, and she couldn’t get the image of her father’s
disappointed, resentful face out of her head.
At the same time that her old life felt light-years away, it was
also hard to believe that it had been eight whole years since
things had gone sour between her and her father. In some
ways, it felt like just yesterday that she had “let her whole family
and community down” by not agreeing to follow her father’s
plan for her. What he wanted was for her to marry her high
school (and on-and-off-again college) boyfriend, Carl, who
came from a respectable family of lawyers, doctors, and war
heroes who had been the pride and joy of Pemberley, Ohio,
for generations. Darcy had tried hard to feel passionate about
Carl, tried to convince herself that he was the one, but at the end
of the day their days together felt dry and their nights left much
to be desired. Mr. Fitzwilliam’s wishes for his daughter were
twofold, and the second fold involved her doing what a truly
good and honorable woman would do: give birth to children
and dedicate her life to raising them. Like the first fold of his
plan, this didn’t work for her either.
“I don’t have to marry him, Dad,” she had said, sitting across
from him at the long, stretching dining room table.
“No, you don’t,” he had replied triumphantly, as if the card he
held would surely win this game. “Not if you don’t mind living on
your own money.”
“You mean—”
“That’s right. I’ll restrict you from access to your inheritance,
and I certainly won’t finance your life while you gallivant around
New York City doing Lord knows what.”
Darcy had considered this momentarily, but ultimately knew
what she had to do. Her happiness was in jeopardy, after all.
She rejected her family money, broke up with Carl for the doz-
enth time, and moved to New York in search of what it meant to be
independent.
“We made the right decision, didn’t we, Little Lion?” Some-
times she wasn’t so sure. After all, this was her first Christmas
with people other than herself, and here she was talking to a
stuffed lion, the only thing she had ever truly been able to con-
fide in. It wasn’t that she didn’t have any friends; it was just that
nobody could understand her the way an inanimate,
nonresponsive object could.
“You’re pathetic,” she said to herself, then apologized for the
insult. Her therapist, Dr. Springs, liked to talk to her about self-
love and going easy on oneself, something Darcy knew almost
nothing about. In the way of self-care, all Darcy really knew was
setting goals and working toward them, then rewarding or pun-
ishing herself depending on the outcome.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Dr. Springs liked to say. “You can’t
pour from an empty cup. Take care of yourself first, otherwise
you’ll have nothing to work with.”
She repeated these messages in her head, telling herself
that she’d have to relax and put her life back in New York aside if
she wanted to be of any real help to her mom at all. Her mom
would be okay, wouldn’t she? If Mrs. Fitzwilliam was telling the
truth, then she was on the mend and would be good as new
by Christmas. This would be a onetime thing and life would go
on as usual. But Darcy knew all about her mom’s bad hab- its
and faltering health. She’d been a lifelong smoker, had a
sweet tooth the size of Mount Everest, and was one of those
women who made it look glamorous to start drinking Belvedere
at ten in the morning. When Darcy had held her hand upstairs,
it had felt cold and frail. A small wave of fear rolled through the
pit of Darcy’s stomach.
She unzipped her Louis Vuitton suitcase and took out her
favorite Kate Spade deco dot pajamas. She took out her
toothbrush and the lavender-scented, self-cooling eye mask
that she never slept without. As she carried these items to bed,
she felt exhaustion rise up as if from nowhere to claim her. It
closed in around her foggy head, causing her eyelids to droop
suddenly. I’ll just sit down for one minute, she thought, letting
the weight of her body plop down onto the bedding. She let her
eyes close,
Copyright © 2017 by Melissa de la Cruz and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press.
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