A review by bisexualwentworth
Most Ardently: A Pride & Prejudice Remix by Gabe Cole Novoa

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

3.5

This was fun. I didn't love it, but I did enjoy it.

What I liked:
  • The base premise—making Elizabeth a gay trans man living a double life and Mr. Darcy a gay cis man who's really awkward around women because he's not attracted to them and doesn't know how to interact with them—was fun and compelling and there was a lot of potential there.
  • The writing style was fun and fast-paced.
  • I loved the choice to make Charlotte a lesbian and to have her make similar choices to the original book but for different reasons. She very much feels like the same character, just an explicitly queer version of her, and I really liked that.
  • Molly houses!
  • Darcy was fun. Overall I think his characterization worked.
  • Trans allies Aunt and Uncle Gardiner!
  • The romance went waaaaaaay too fast but I did enjoy Oliver and Darcy's dynamic and chemistry a lot.
  • The ending was a bit far-fetched but I don't care because it felt good and possible.

What I didn't like, random changes to Pride and Prejudice edition:
  • Why are the characters aged down SO MUCH? I get that this is YA, but you can make it a coming-of-age story that is appropriate for and relatable to teen audiences without randomly making parents pressure SEVENTEEN YEAR OLDS into marriage??? And it made Georgiana and Lydia impossible to adapt properly, which in turn made the Wickham plot fall apart. Just generally a bad move.
  • Why are they in London? I get that that's where more queer community would be, but Oliver only went to those queer spaces about twice, and having him travel somewhere larger and more queer later would have actually been much more impactful.
  • Charlotte's last name was randomly changed, as was her family situation, and that was frustrating, mostly because it was so unnecessary. 

What I didn't like, other:
  • I liked what we got of Jane but her characterization was inconsistent and there wasn't enough of her (or of Bingley for that matter).
  • The whole book was far too short. It's trying to tell about twice the story of the original novel in far fewer pages, so no wonder it doesn't quite pull it off. It needed at least another fifty pages.
  • At first the dialogue was decently period-accurate and the narrative voice was more modern, which I liked, but it eventually devolved into so many anachronisms that I wondered why it was set in the Regency period at all. This was especially annoying because the author clearly did quite a lot of historical research for this book and then just ignored most of it.
  • I hated the characterization of the Bennet parents. Yes Mr. Bennet would be more immediately accepting, but he definitely wouldn't actually do anything useful. And the Mrs. Bennet of the books is not an evil enforcer of gender roles. She's a silly person who is rightfully anxious about her children's futures and trying (not always well) to do what is best for them while her husband lazes around and makes sarcastic and often misogynistic comments about his family. This book did a disservice to that much more complex and interesting dynamic.

Overall, I think that the concept was strong and the book was fun, but the short length and a lot of unnecessary changes meant that it didn't quite do the job of being a compelling remix/reimagining of Pride and Prejudice. I've read better queer P&P fanfic on AO3, and it's a shame because I think this concept had SO MUCH potential. Truly if Novoa had just made the main characters and Charlotte explicitly queer, changed nothing else about the setting and characters, and then followed the plot through its logical changes throughout, and then tweaked accordingly, this book would have been absolutely stunning. Maybe I'll go write that on AO3 now. That seems like the thing to do.
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