Twenty‑four‑year‑old grad student Lizzie Bennet is saddled with student loan debt and still living at home along with her two sisters—beautiful Jane and reckless Lydia. When she records her reflections on life for her thesis project and posts them on YouTube, she has no idea The Lizzie Bennet Diaries will soon take on a life of their own, turning the Bennet sisters into internet celebrities seemingly overnight.
When rich and handsome Bing Lee comes to town, along with his stuck‑up friend William Darcy, things really start to get interesting for the Bennets—and for Lizzie’s viewers. But not everything happens on‑screen. Lucky for us, Lizzie has a secret diary.
The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet takes readers deep inside Lizzie’s world and well beyond the confines of her camera—from the wedding where she first meets William Darcy to the local hangout of Carter’s bar, and much more. Lizzie’s private musings are filled with revealing details about the Bennet household, including her growing suspicions about her parents’ unstable financial situation, her sister’s budding relationship with Bing Lee, the perils of her unexpected fame, and her uncertainty over her future—and whom she wants to share it with.
Featuring plenty of fresh twists to delight fans and new readers alike, The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet expands on the web series phenomenon that captivated a generation and reimagines the Pride and Prejudice story like never before.
Review: Ok first of all, if you like Pride and Prejudice but haven't seen The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, go and watch them. Now. Seriously.
Here, here's the first one. All you have to do is click on it:
You're welcome.
So now that that's out of the way, let's talk about the book.
I wasn't sure I'd like it. After all, book adaptations of Pride and Prejudice are pretty much a dime a dozen. Between zombies, modernizations, sequels, murder mysteries, Downton Abbey-ification, you name it, there are probably hundreds. But LBD was what I put a LOT of energy into obsessing over for the two months while I was in Korea by myself. So I went ahead and pre-ordered the book.
I was surprised by how much I liked it. I don't know why, because the writing in the videos is great. But I pretty much loved it. It was really great at telling the story without just writing description in between dialogue taken from the videos. I mean, for the first half, that was easy, because the videos are mostly just recaps of stuff anyway. Not a lot of action actually happens on screen, so it was nice to see it "on screen", as it were, in the book.
The second half had a lot of added material, which I love, because it included more Darcy. And it was a great way to include a lot of little things from Pride and Prejudice that didn't make it into the webseries.
Usually I'd like to try and talk about the book on its own, apart from the videos, but I don't know that I can in this case. The videos are such a big part of the book (including links to the videos themselves, so you can see exactly where they fall in the story. This is the only time I've ever been tempted to buy the Nook tablet, bc the links didn't work on my iPad.) that I can't really separate them. The book does tell the whole story, though, so if you're staunchly anti-YouTube, you'll still know what's going on. But you should watch the videos.
Goodreads Shelves: addictive, bechdel-test, fluffy, funny, is-a-movie, is-or-would-be-a-good-movie, is-this-a-kissing-book, my-kind-of-woman, nook-ya, thought-provoking
Rating:
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