What Would Lizzy Bennet Do? (The Jane Austen Factor, #1)

by Katie Oliver

[Leah]

Katie Oliver seems to have made it her authorly mission to bring Jane Austen into the twenty-first century. She's written seven novels up to now, and all have revolved around Jane Austen in some way. In her newest trilogy, she's taken the names of Austen's characters and made them her own, in a very confusing manner, since there's also a Jane Austen adaptation being filmed next door to the Bennet house, in the Darcy Manor. To be perfectly honest, the novel would have worked just as well with simple characters not named after Austen characters, it would have worked if Lizzy was plain old Sarah, or something.

I quite enjoyed What Would Lizzy Bennet Do? it was a harmless piece of fiction, and I whizzed through it at quite a pace, although I did roll my eyes many times at the way the characters spoke and acted. Lizzy was in love with Hugh Darcy, simply because he helped her with her grief in regards to her mothers death EIGHT YEARS PREVIOUSLY? When she was sixteen? It wasn't love, it was infatuation, the kind of thing you get with doctors when they help you, and it kind of irritated me that she was so obsessed, it wasn't as if they met up weekly in London (where they both lived for a time!!!!). It just didn't really make sense.

Will I read the other books in the series, I do not know. It was an okay read, I read it, but I do think it would have been a far superior novel if it wasn't a re-telling of Austen. Loads of people do re-tellings of Austen, and that's fine, but there's only one Jane Austen, ya know? It seems to be Katie's USP, though, which is up to her, but I would definitely read something different, like the love story of the very normal Samantha and Ben, or something. I tell you which character was my favourite of What Would Lizzy Bennet Do? and that was Harry. Harry was awesome, and reminded me of a certain ginger prince. This wasn't a bad read by any means, I enjoyed it and it whiled away an evening full of cold.