Baby, Baby - Amy Grant

Compulsively Mr. Darcy

Author: Nina Benneton
Pages: 351
ARC Acquired from: Sourcebooks Landmark via NetGalley

Brief Summary:
In this modern, rather loose retelling of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet is a doctor specializing in infectious diseases, working in Vietnam. Her sister Jane is also there, working in an orphanage. The Hursts bring along Charles and Caroline Bingley, and Mr. Darcy on their trip to Vietnam to adopt a child. In this way, they are all thrown together.

Review:
As is perhaps unsurprising, I find Jane Austen inspired fiction to be largely disappointing. I mean, what could ever hope to compare to her original work? Still, I do not give up hope and continue to add every single book written about her characters or her to my reading list.

Compulsively Mr. Darcy is, overall, pretty fun and takes a fairly unique view of the characters and the plot. The opening scenes really captivated me, although, I must admit, that that had more to do with the setting (Da Nang in Vietnam) than anything else. I went to Vietnam during college, so I've actually been to Da Nang. I recognize the descriptions of the traffic, the spiny fruit Bingley eats in the first chapter, and some of the social rules herein described. That part was awesome.

I also thought it was pretty cool how Darcy's perfection was reenvisioned as a sever compulsive disorder. That fits so well with our overly diagnosed and medicated modern lifestyle. Charles Bingley, too, suffers from a modern problem: ADHD.

While I was initially impressed by Elizabeth's career as a doctor, I quickly became disheartened. Despite the author's constant assertions that Elizabeth is highly intelligent and respected in her field, it's hard to see her as anything but a ditz. She is such a bonehead, both in her assumptions about people and situations, and in her way of speaking. What doctor would forget to wear a condom before being tested (and what OCD person for that matter)?

All of the characters of the novel are here, in one form or another, but they are all quite different, and there are some new folks as well. I would argue that Darcy is perhaps the least changed. The Jane of this book is much more Lizzy than Lizzy, which was actually kind of interesting to see. Wickham is here, but he doesn't get to be the big bad of the story, a change I found to be rather refreshing, especially since Lydia got to be slightly different for once. Oh, and, for some strange reason, there's a crossover, because a couple of characters from Sense and Sensibility make cameo appearances.

What I liked least was all the romance novel type sex going on. Normally, this wouldn't bother me. I mean, who doesn't want to live vicariously through fictional characters? However, these scenes were not doing it for me at all. I also didn't especially like that Elizabeth was a virgin at 28, while Darcy got to be a crazy party animal in the past. What the heck, double standard?!?! The one cool thing about their relationship was that Benneton (I'm guessing this is a pen name) completely changed up the timeline. However, their romance is definitely as cheesily romantic as this song.

One more awkward thing about this novel was that it did that confusing thing where it couldn't decide whether to retell a story or just happen to have characters of the same names as those in a book do the same things. That wasn't clear. In the book, there are numerous references to the BBC productions of P&P. This is highly odd, as it seems to imply that these people just happen to have the same names as the characters but not to have noticed. This is a bad thing to do in fiction; I would also like the writers for the recent Get Smart movie to make note of this.

So yeah, if you're a romance fan, you'll probably like this, and as Austen-inspired books go, it's not too bad. There are some clever, amusing things here and it is a quick read.

Rating: 2.5/5

"And ever since the day you put my heart in motion
Baby I realize that
There's just no getting over you
Over you

Baby, baby
Always and forever
Baby. I'm so glad
Here for you baby
So glad you're mine
Baby I'm so glad
When I think about you it makes me smile"