The thing that prevented Prejudice Meets Pride from being a 4-star (or higher) read was Emma. For 90% of the book, Emma was soooo annoying! ...but only around Kevin. Around everyone else, she was fine. But for some reason she was a total, annoying bitch around Kevin.
Incident #1: The grocery store
Emma goes to the grocery store. But when it comes time to pay, she realizes she doesn't have her credit card because her nieces had been "playing shop" with her wallet and removed the credit card. So she can't pay for her groceries! She's really holding up the line and people are annoyed, so Kevin reaches over to pay for it. He's late for work and doesn't mind paying; he just wants to be able to pay and leave. But she runs away, insisting that he can't pay.
Kevin buys them anyway because he recognizes Emma as his neighbour. Then he drops them off at her house.
He nudged one of the bags with his foot. "You're welcome."
"Those aren't mine."
[..] "Of course they're yours. Why would I buy diapers and fruit snacks?"
"I have no idea, but apparently you did. So feel free to do whatever you want with them."
Emma REFUSED to take them! But he'd already bought them, couldn't return them, and if she didn't take them they'd just go to waste. I know this book is called "Prejudice Meets Pride", but honestly... sometimes you just say "thank you" and move on with your life.
Incident #2: The job
Emma doesn't have a job and she's trying to raise two girls. In other words: she's kind of screwed. Bills are piling up and she has groceries to buy. Kevin is nothing but nice, offering to help her out:
"What kind of job are you looking for? Maybe I can help."
She waved his offer away. "Thanks, but uh, I think you've done enough helping for one day." The way she said it made it sound like he'd done the opposite of help.
All Kevin ever does is try to help her... very nicely. And she just constantly acts like a bitch.
Incident #3: Appreciating everyone except Kevin
Apparently it's only Kevin who isn't allowed to help her with anything. He buys her groceries, she gets pissed. He offers to help her fix her sprinklers on the lawn, she gets pissed. He tries to help her find a job, she gets pissed. But the other neighbours are allowed to help!
Her other neighbour, Becky, brings over dinner, cookies, then offers to help her find a job (sound familiar?). Here's how Emma reacts:
"Thank you. I'd really appreciate [you helping me find a job]." First dinner and cookies, and now this. Why couldn't all her neighbors be this nice? If Kevin had showed up with a plate of cookies and a welcoming smile, things would have gone down a whole lot differently. Instead, he'd felt the need to patronize her.
The problem is, I never felt like Kevin patronized her. Yes, he kind of patronized her in his head. He thought she was an irresponsible single mother who was paying the price for getting pregnant really early on, with no husband and no job. BUT, he never said any of that to her face. To her, he was always very nice. So ignoring the fact that I was privvy to his inner thoughts, I felt like Emma had no reason to think he was patronizing her. She was just embarrassed about the stupid grocery shopping incident.
It just annoyed me that she could accept help from Becky, but thought Kevin was a horrible bastard.
Incident #4: She thinks she isn't stupid, but she kind of is
When she gets a new job, the manager starts training her. All Emma has to do is simple data input. But she's horrible at it. Here's a snippet between the manager and Emma:
"Remember how the receptionists initially create the patient files when parents call for the appointment?"
Emma refrained from rolling her eyes—barely. Of course she remembered. She wasn't stupid.
The thing is, Emma was TOTALLY stupid. It took her all day to learn the difference between "tab" and "enter" on the keyboard.. which resulted in her inputting the same patient file like 5 times (because she kept pressing "enter" to go to the next line, but "enter" submits the form instead... as is the case on any internet form).
With a shrug, Emma picked up the first patient file, and after trying a few different things, finally found the Add a new patient option. She typed the last name of Carson in the appropriate field and hit Enter, but instead of moving the cursor to the next line, it took her to a page she didn't recognize. Huh?
Fair enough, not everyone has computer experience. But these are BASICS. But fine, I'll cut her some slack. But if she's so horrible at computers, she shouldn't roll her eyes at the manager and be like, "God, I'm not stupid!" because with computers, she obviously is.
Then there's this as well:
[Emma] still had no idea how to set an alarm on her phone
The least she could do is realize that she's shit with computers, and not get all pissy when people dumb it down for her. She obviously needs it dumbed down.
The book wasn't all bad.. it was actually quite good!
I've had A LOT to complain about. But I didn't hate this book. There were highs and lows. I'd be loving the book, then Emma would say something completely stupid that would piss me off and I'd highlight it. Then the book would go back to being good.. rinse and repeat.
If you ignore the parts that annoyed me, I actually really liked the story. It was quite addicting! I read through the night until 3am because I didn't want to stop. Mostly I ADORED Kevin. He was such a sweet guy and I felt like he had some great character development. Yes he was prejudiced at the beginning, but at least the author made me relate to him (unlike Emma). The one good thing about Emma was that I loved her artistic side. That was a lot of fun to read about and I loved seeing her in her element!
I get that this book is supposed to be about first impressions not being right, and getting over your pride/prejudice. But I think the problem with this book was that the author never got me on the same page as Emma. In Pride and Prejudice, I feel like I can relate to Elizabeth at the beginning, but then we grow and change our opinions together. This didn't happen in Prejudice Meets Pride. I immediately felt like Emma was out of line and just being stupid and petty. I think it didn't help that we could read from Kevin's point of view and see that he was just trying to be a nice guy. That made me even more annoyed at Emma.
If Emma hadn't been so damn annoying, this could have easily been a 4 or 4.5 star read.