Claire LeZebnik
August 2nd 2011
HarperTeen
Will Elise’s love life be an epic win or an epic fail?
At Coral Tree Prep in Los Angeles, who your parents are can make or break you. Case in point:
As the son of Hollywood royalty, Derek Edwards is pretty much prince of the school—not that he deigns to acknowledge many of his loyal subjects.
As the daughter of the new principal, Elise Benton isn’t exactly on everyone’s must-sit-next-to-at-lunch list.
When Elise’s beautiful sister catches the eye of the prince’s best friend, Elise gets to spend a lot of time with Derek, making her the envy of every girl on campus. Except she refuses to fall for any of his rare smiles and instead warms up to his enemy, the surprisingly charming social outcast Webster Grant. But in this hilarious tale of fitting in and flirting, not all snubs are undeserved, not all celebrity brats are bratty, and pride and prejudice can get in the way of true love for only so long.
As soon as I read the synopsis for this book, I knew that it was just going to be awesome. I mean, come on! It's a modern P&P retelling! And I thought it would be pretty cool to read a retelling of one of my favourite books around about a year after I finally discovered it was wayyyy better than I thought it would be. And even if I wasn't a huge P&P fan, I would still love this book! It was just so adorable :)
As a retelling, it worked really well, as even if you hadn't read the book or known the story or seen the greatness that is Colin Firth as Mr Darcy... You would still be able to appreciate it just as much, and while it stuck to the story a lot, it also deviated in places to fit the modern setting and it made it almost seem like a new story, which I think is the way all retellings should go. Breathing new life into an old and much loved story. Plus it was kind of fun to read it with a sense of familiarity and just sort of laughing at some scenes just because I recognised them... Yeah, yeah... I need a life. I know. ;p
I really liked Elise (and I loved how all of the characters names started with the same letter as the person who they were based after. It made it easy to know who was who and what role they were playing!) I really thought Elise had a real essence of Elizabeth Bennet, but no too much. She felt as much like her own person as she did Elizabeth, and her and Derek together were so cute! I mean, even though they hated each other for a while... And Derek could be a bit a douche. Especially at the beginning. But I really warmed up to him at the end! And he was so Darcy-ish! Awww :3 So adorable.
Epic Fail is an awesome retelling that breathes new life into Pride & Prejudice while having enough different from it that people who have yet to experience the awesomeness of P&P will still be able to follow the story and love it and make them think 'hang on, if this is THIS awesome, how awesome is the original?!' ;)
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