That Girl, Darcy: A Pride and Prejudice Story by James Ramos
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

That Girl, Darcy was a witty, angsty, fun read. I received a copy from Inspired Kathy's Book Blast and Blog tours in exchange for an honest review. It is a pretty clean or PG modern retelling of A Pride and Prejudice with the characters turned around. Darcy Fitzwilliam is a sullen, attractive, wealthy high school aged girl with a brother. Elizabeth counterpart is a high school aged young man named Elliot who has no siblings instead of the large family that Elizabeth Bennett comes from though he is very close to his first cousin, Jake. I will leave the other characterizations to each reader to determine because that is part of the fun of this book. The book takes place in the Phoenix, Arizona area and it is great to a story originally based in the countryside of England and London taking place in a city in the United States, in a high school.

The author does a great job getting the characters and the Pride and Prejudice storyline to work. The antagonists were sufficiently awful, especially the way high school students can be towards each other. After reading the author's bio once the book ended I could see him as Elliott and that increased my regard for this book more. The characters really came alive for me as I read the book but putting a face on Elliott actually puts a nice spin on it. Interestingly enough despite how things went with Darcy and Elliott's first meeting, Darcy's character still draws the reader to her. It could be knowing already about Fitzwilliam's character in the original story or because the reader can see the spark between Elliott and Darcy from the time they meet despite how they antagonize each other. Witnessing their relationship as it appeared to grow and change and Elliott's aha moment was great. Of course, Elliott's goofball friends only add to the story. Despite all of the bickering and mooning over girls, it is great to see a group of guys that are not the athletes, top of the food chain in high school, rich kids that are the most popular doing well and figuring life out and what to do next.