TBR Challenge: Melanie Coles - Evan and Darcy

Jane Austen gets a little dusty in this outback retelling of a beloved story about a man who learns that first impressions can be wrong when you’re looking for Ms Right.
Wheat farmer Evan Bennet is happy being single until his brother falls for the new girl in town, wealthy hotel owner Claire Bingley. Suddenly finding a girl seems more appealing…unless you’re talking about Claire’s best friend, pretentious lawyer Darcy Fitzwilliam. Her cold manners have Evan seeing red, and when a cute girl with links to Darcy’s past catches his eye, he’s even more determined to dislike her.
When a startling revelation turns Evan’s world upside down and he unexpectedly crosses Darcy’s path again, he’s forced to reassess his opinion of her. But just as he starts to open his heart, a crisis engulfs his family, threatening to destroy any hope of a future with Darcy.
With a cloud hanging over his family, Evan knows his chance of winning Darcy’s heart is gone… until some surprising news and a generous gift leave him wondering if her heart might be his after all.

Comment: In July, the TBR Challenge theme is "opposites attract" and as it probably happens with a vast majority of readers, it's probably one of the tropes in romance that is easier to find. I went with a book I had already planned to read and that has two very different protagonists. It has the added bonus of being a retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern day Australia and I was curious to see how the author would develop it.

In this novel, Evan Bennett is a farmer, along with his father and brothers and he loves it all but his dream is to have a winery. His life is pretty much happy but then news come of the recent purchase of a propriety nearby and the new owner, Claire Bingley, wants to transform the place into a hotel, things start to become more hectic. When the Bennetts meet her and her brother, they also meet Darcy Fitzwilliam, a young woman who seems very aloof and with whom Evan doesn't get along. However, in the world of coincidences, their paths keep meeting and once Jemma Wickham shows up to work with the horses in a neighborly estate, it's impossible to avoid each other even more, especially when Darcy and Jemma also know each other. Evan realizes with time that there's more to Darcy than her posh personality, but is he ready to accept their differences?

This is the first book I try by this author and I only got aware of it after some recommendation somewhere. I don't purposely seek retellings, but I thought this one might be interesting, due to the gender swap in relation to the original work. 

Well, I have to say the author certainly succeeded in her assignment in retelling Pride and Prejudice this way, with two very opposite characters, whose personality clashes right away and they don't seem to see eye to eye in simple things such as how to interact with people they just recently met. For those who are fans of the original work, everything in this book is recognizable and I actually have to say it: I think the author took the retelling task a bit too far and I struggled to truly see her "voice" in such a work.

In fact, while reading this, I kept picturing a friend from high school who once shared a text she wrote for English class where they had to do a retelling of a fairy tale but set in modern times. She did a funny text where the heroine worked in McDonald's, but I can't remember which tale. Melanie Coles could probably be lauded for a similar task here, but while I wasn't very impressed in terms of content - it's not that original after all - I still read it until the end, more with the purpose of checking every little item she used from Pride and Prejudice I could put in context. For instance, the Pemberley tour Elizabeth and her uncle and aunt do is exchanged for a winery setting and Evan does a tour of the propriety which produces amazing and exclusive wine.

This said, I suppose the plot isn't hard to guess nor to anticipate and, to be honest, the actual swap of things was a little juvenile, I don't think the writing is bad but clearly the author wasn't really recreating things with her own ideas in mind. Certainly she had to pay attention and know Jane Austen's work well and for me, having read it also, it was a bit fun to laugh at some choices but in terms of execution? Not so impressive because there's nothing truly new here, and I even think the author tried to use as much as she could, to the point some things were very irrelevant foe the setting she invented.

The relationship between Evan and Darcy isn't very romantic nor amazing because the author stuck to the obvious and the reasons why they had opposed personalities didn't really matter in the big scheme of things. I also think the little differences between these characters and the ones they are based on could have been developed better, but in the end, they aren't very fleshed nor layered and I was not convinced of their new feelings when Darcy sends the letter that changed everything between them. I think that, for this retelling to be successful, the author should have added her own interpretation of things or added complexity to the characters' actions... it was also disappointing how the present life details weren't very exploited and the dynamics too close to the 19th century novel. This means some things feel very... silly or unlikely for a modern lifestyle whereas in the original it was part of typical social behavior.

For me, part of why P&P is so incredible and why I loved reading it, was to see the slow but believable development of a relationship between two people who antagonize each other right away but are obviously immediately attracted too and how special it is they slowly get to know each other despite their social and personal differences and fall in love. I wonder, however, as other readers have mentioned in their reviews, if a reader finds this book and doesn't know the original, would some of these elements be perceived in the retelling? Would some things make that much sense after all? It seems as if the goal was really just the fun experience of retelling, not the actual need to deliver a book the author felt she had to write and share.

I've read this book easily, that is true and I think the task of retelling was a fun experience but I don't think it was a well accomplished exercise. All the necessary things are there and the story does have its positive aspects but I also believe the author could have done much better.

In terms of opposites attracting, I think it was obvious enough how this subject was done and the novel gives us that, but I hoped for more interactions between the main characters and a romantic way of it happening, which ended up not being the goal.

Grade: 5/10