Pride and Premeditation

This is pretty much a chick lit murder mystery with 21st century characters casually dressing up as P&P characters and with a Regency painted backdrop. Pretty mindless entertainment, but entertainment nevertheless. It's a very quick and easy read, sometimes a little silly.

The story kind of, but also kind of doesn't, follow the story of Pride & Prejudice. On one hand, it sticks to it enough that, if you're familiar with the original, a lot of character personalities and dynamics aren't out of place - and you might have some idea about the solution of the mystery pretty early on. But on the other, it does diverge enough from the source material that there is something fresh at every turn in the plot, and the complete picture of the solution probably will still catch you by surprise, so props to the author for that.

I wasn't a huge fan of the main character, Elizabeth. She came across mostly as petulant, impulsive, and sometimes “thick for a solicitor”. She rushed around blurting out unfiltered comments and remarks to every character even while she was trying to investigate the mystery on hand. She jumped to conclusions so often, and seemed to snap back at every male character in the book, “Are you telling me this because I'm a woman?!” I mean, I get that her struggles against the patriarchal society that she's in is a huge part of the plot - after all, she's been overlooked by her dad in getting an employment position in his law firm and constantly has credit stolen from her to bolster Mr Collins's career. But I found that the overcompensation with immediately accusing everyone around her of misogyny without the slightest basis was counterproductive to her cause. I varied between feeling indifferent to annoyed at her, and never really found myself rooting for her honestly.

Needless to say, the book is rife with historical inaccuracies, some of them intended (as the author acknowledged in her notes at the end of the novel) while others weren't. If you are able to put aside qualms relating to that, and go in just expecting a very, very casual modern take on P&P characters (despite being set in the Regency) romping around London solving murders, you might enjoy this. (Of course, it helps that the cover is one of the most gorgeous I've seen this year)