Prom and Prejudice: Review

Title: Prom and Prejudice
Author: Elizabeth Eulberg
Release Date: January 2011
Published By: Point
Genre: Contemporary/Classic Retelling
Pages: 231 pages
Goodreads Rating: 3.94 stars


Review: Based loosely on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, PROM AND PREJUDICE tells the story of Lizzie Bennet, a scholarship student at the esteemed Longbourn Academy. A school almost exclusively for the best of high society, any scholarship student is tormented mercilessly until she drops out. Lizzie wasn't able to escape the torture, but she was lucky enough to find a good friend in her roommate, Jane. However, even Jane is swept up in the prom craze, and that's only the least of Lizzie's problems. There's also the mysterious Darcy, with his snobby ways of disliking scholarship students, and Lizzie wouldn't deign herself to be nice to him. Except she finds herself unable to stay away. Will her pride and Darcy's prejudice keep them apart?

I read Pride and Prejudice about two years ago, and while many of the details escaped me, I was able to recognize quite a few references in the book. It was fun to see how the author connected the classic story to modern day life, but it must be noted that while the influence is clear, this is still very much its own story. And it was, in fact, a fun story. I loved reading about the pretentious rich girls who were utterly obsessed with prom, which was practically the most important part of their lives. They had to get everything right, from the scarily expensive dresses to the perfect dates.

The romance between Darcy and Lizzie wasn't quite as good as the one between the original two, but I still enjoyed watching them slowly adjust to each other and cheered them on at every twist and turn. In general, the characters were a bit flat, but I feel like this book was intended more to be a fun read rather than something with a lot of character development and deep themes.

PROM AND PREJUDICE was a super-cute book that's sure to appeal to Pride and Prejudice fans. There are many references, and while I didn't pick them all up, I'm sure a lot of you will. This isn't a book that will provide a lot to think about or deal with anything deep, but it was fun to read and I had a good time. I'll definitely be picking up the author's other book to give that a try as well.