Lola at Last is the second book in the Barnes Sister series by J.C. Peterson. The first was Being Mary Bennett. Both are inspired by the Bennett sisters from Pride and Prejudice - my favorite book. So, when I saw these YA reads, I was thrilled to read.

Lola at Last is loosely a YA Lydia redemption arc. Let me tell you, I was along for the ride. The pacing was absolutely perfect. The struggles were so relatable. The drama was on point

What I absolutely have to flail about is Lola's voice. I absolutely could hear her and it made her hot mess so endearing to me. It was the perfect amalgamation of Lydia Bennett, Regina George, and Cher Horowitz. I could *feel* her eye rolls, and the gusts of air as she huffed away in storms of self-righteous indignation. It was immersive in a way I haven't felt in a while. J.C. Peterson's craft is so strong. I cannot wait to read more from her.

Summary: Lola has been a mean girl with her plastic posse since forever. She has always had an entourage, including her twin sister, Kat. During her sophomore year, she takes things too far in the form of going after someone else's boyfriend. It goes viral when someone posts in online and her parents ship her of to France for a year.

When she returns home to the Bay Area, ready to reclaim her throne, she finds herself a pariah. In a moment of desperation, she accidentally sets a smallish yacht on fire. As punishment, she is forced to join a local self-growth group, Hike Like a Girl. Lola's reaction - Ew, nature. As if.

Along beautifully descripted trails, Lola finds herself on a journey of self-discovery and comes to a realization that changes everything. The characters she meets along the way are charming and impactful. I really suggest joining Lola for this delightful and charming journey.

This sequel to Being Mary Bennet brings youngest daughter, Lola, aka the Lydia Bennet of the family, to the forefront. Lydia is introduced as a boy crazy teenager desperate to win back her popularity after the events that sent her to France. When we first meet her, she's a boy crazy teenager desperate to win back her social standing and popularity after the events that sent her to France. Prone to bad decisions in the spur of the moment, she's an insecure attention seeker and who doesn't take things seriously because no one expects her to.

But as her forced participation in Georgia's Hike Like a Girl program, she begins to gain confidence in herself and her abilities. She grows frustrated at the fact that no one believes she can do it - especially her mother who can't understand why she hasn't quit - and becomes determined to prove them wrong. While doing so, she begins to learn more about herself and the reasons she seeks attention and begins to effect real change in herself moving forward. While don't like the outdoors or hiking, I had to cheer her on with every step she took literally and figuratively to becoming a better person.

At the same time, she runs into a Rueben, a boy she hasn't talked to since briefly sharing a class freshman year, who is interested in hiking and rock climbing. Rueben, a bona fide boy scout, isn't the type of guy she would usually go for, but his genuine interest in her as a person and not as an object - as opposed to Tully - draw her in. Of course, she thinks he's cute too (this is Lola we're talking about), and we find out he's been nursing a crush on her every since freshman year. Which makes it all the sweeter as they start to get together. Rueben is a foil to Tully, the boy that landed her in so much trouble previously. Lola and Rueben's sweet, earnest romance had me from the beginning.

Lola's relationship with her twin sister is also center stage. Kat is Lola's former partner in crime, but in the beginning they aren't as connected as they once were. Lola feels like Kat has abandoned her for a new set of intellectual friends, and Kat believes her sister to be self absorbed, which she in the beginning. Kat doesn't see the subtle changes in her sister at first, and as a result the two don't talk leading to a fight and eventually make up. I found their relationship believable, and fans of Pride and Prejudice will be able to see where each character is similar to, but also grows beyond their inspirations.

Now, let's talk about her so called "friends". I really hated them. Typical mean girls, and Tully is one of those guys that never grows up that I couldn't stand at that age, and still can't. In the beginning, Lola is desperate to fall back into her old crowd that dropped her over the events that lead to her being sent to France. We finally get the whole story here, and Lola was a victim and as well as partially to blame. She did fool around with a boy who already had a girlfriend, but the thing is, he was older a senior to her sophomore, and he egged her behavior on. Behavior that culminated in a a massive public fight in the cafeteria and Lola being shut shamed. The boy, Tully, acts like nothing happened and isn't punished for his part, and he continues to try to egg her on into bad behavior. Her so called best friend started a shut shamming social media account with pictures of Lola and this boy making out, but Lola doesn't know she's responsible. So, after initially making a bad decision, her friend's slut shaming, along with the boy's behavior, lead to Lola's more self destructive decisions later on turning her from willing participant to victim. Lola realizes this while on her journey, leading her to make more self aware decisions about about who her friend are and the decisions she makes.

I was hoping Kat would be her own book next, but it seems she also get a happily ever after here as she begins dating one of Lola's new Hike Like a Girl friends, Corrine. Kat and Corrine are bi, but while Lola doesn't realize this about Kat, there are subtle hints throughout that Kat isn't straight. She's not a major player here, but rounds out the cast and story well as the fifth Barnes sister.

Four Lightsabers

Funny, charming, character-driven with unexpected scenarios and great character growth. Lola's love interest is adorable and this is a delightful read.

Lola at Last is a hilarious and heartfelt read that will have Jane Austen fans falling in love! This delightful novel proves that everyone deserves to be the protagonist of their own story. With its captivating characters and witty dialogue, Lola at Last is sure to leave readers with a smile on their face.

Absolutely loved this unique retelling. The romance was super sweet and cute and I loved watching the characters evolve over time and discover new aspects of themselves.

After a year away, Lola Barnes is back at home and trying to find her place among her family and old friends. After being egged on at a summer party on a boat, Lola, completely accidentally, sets the boat on fire. She is given a choice -- either face punishment or spend the summer as part of a program called Hike Like a Girl, where participants spend the summer on various hiking trips as a build up to an end of the summer 50 mile hike. Lola reluctantly agrees to participate in the program. As she spends more time with the other participants, she finds an unexpected interest in the outdoors and new friends and a new romance in surprising place.

This is a charming, modern twist on Pride and Prejudice, full of a heartwarming story and great characters.

Highly recommended!

Lola at Last is published by an imprint of HarperCollins and as such I will be withholding my review at this time in support of the HarperCollins Union strike. I look forward to reviewing this title once HarperCollins has worked with the union and agreed to a fair contract.

Peterson has done the impossible, made me love Lydia Bennet (aka Lola Barnes). Can that be my entire review?

If there's anything you should know about me, it's that I'm a hater. Specifically a Lydia Bennet hater. She makes my blood boil and to pull off the unimaginable and give her an epic redemption arc makes you one fantastic writer in my book.

So, basically what I'm saying is that I'm a major JC Peterson fan and you should read this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Join Lola Barnes, a.k.a. a modern Lydia Bennet, at the beginning of a summer gone truly wrong: where a boat party-turned-fiery-fiasco ends with the ship, Lola’s summer plans, and her reputation truly sunk.

(The boat was barely on fire, for the record—and all the partygoers were just fine.)

Luckily, this disaster of a summer has another thing in store for her: a path of self-discovery she never saw coming.

Given an ultimatum—jail time, or spending the summer with the nonprofit Hike Like a Girl—she laces up her hiking boots and takes to the wilderness. Along the way, she’ll encounter unexpected friends, a sweet romance, strength she didn’t know she had—and herself, Lola, at last.


This was a fun read! A character driven story of self growth. Learning to be happy in your own company. Sister bonds and a new love. Great messages without being obvious.

4.5 ⭐️

A companion novel to Being Mary Bennett and a take off on Pride & Prejudice’s own Lydia Bennett, this book has it all: a girl who is super full of herself, has to be the center of attention, only to be knocked down and has to “hike” her way back to the top. She has to find her way, both literally and metaphorically. I will say I truly disliked Lola but she grew on me! A sweet romance is added with Ezra, the awkward outsider who has glowed up before Lola’s eyes. Can Lola learn to listen? Not expect to be always be the center of attention? There’s a lot of laughs, a poignant reconnection with her twin and a burning boat. Yes, I said it. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC and JC Peterson for another laugh out loud novel. Cannot wait to see which Bennett sister you write about next!

Thoughts

This book was so fun, and I didn't expect it to be. Lola might be one of the most infuriating main characters I've read... who I ultimately ended up liking. I love the trajectory of her story, the way she grows and matures, and the atmosphere of this book--all the hiking scenes!--was just great.


Pros
Double Standards: Lola starts out in a predicament--or in the aftermath of one. She made a mistake. Her life was disrupted. And now she's back, trying to figure out how to fit into her old life--and how much of her old life she wants back. But she wasn't the only one in the "situation" that disrupted her life in the first place, and where she had her whole world uprooted, the boy who was part of her Incident didn't. He's still living the same as ever, no worse for wear, and that comes up again and again in this book. This double standard really isn't fair, as Lola points out, and I love that J.C. Peterson decides to tackle this gendered double standard. At the same time, this thread of the plot is just an undercurrent in the story, an undercurrent in Lola's life--changing the hue but not the overall picture. And I appreciate that, too. Double standards aren't what this story is about, but they do lay the groundwork. That careful balance is important, and Peterson nails it.

Pride and Prejudice: Fans of Jane Austen are likely to enjoy this book not because it is, precisely, an Austen retelling but because it captures a lot of what makes Austen's writing so fun. This book is very loosely inspired by the characters in Pride and Prejudice, and the characters are what matter. There is just enough inspiration in these pages to delight fans over the references without taking it too far. Pride and Prejudice is an excellent book, the kind that doesn't really need retelling even two hundred years later. But that inspiration, that nod toward a different story, is excellent.

Disaster: Lola is an absolute disaster, and while that does come with some frustration (that I will go into later), it is nonetheless fun to follow a character who really just doesn't have it together. So many YA protagonists are cool and composed, beyond their years. The rest tend to be immature in an exaggerated way, a way that doesn't quite make sense with the age they are. Lola isn't either of these things. She's just kind of, you know, bad at life.


Cons
Off-the-Walls: As much as I enjoyed Lola being a complete disaster all of the time, there were some instances where her decisions just... didn't make sense. Not even for the character herself. Because some of her choices come out of left field, it can be irritating to follow along with her. These choices were made to up the ante, increase the drama--not because they were entirely consistent with Lola's character. And that was disappointing.

Exaggerated Mom: I know this is Pride and Prejudice inspired, so I know the mom here needs to be a little bit shallow. That's a very identifiable part of the original Austen character. But the mother character here feels more than shallow. She's vapid, annoying, and utterly self-absorbed. At least Mrs. Bennet seems to have her daughters' best interests in mind, even if she doesn't always listen to them. This mom doesn't seem to care about her daughters at all. All of the characters J.C. Peterson creates are definitely inspired by their P&P counterparts, but they feel level-headed, down-to-earth: i.e. like real people. Except this one.

Rich Rich: This is a story that really benefits from the reader feeling a close sort of camaraderie with Lola. Lola might be an annoying disaster of a person, but as long as we get a glimpse through her eyes and feel like we can see ourselves in her, the slow transformation she undergoes is beautiful. But it is hard to like a character--especially a character like Lola, who makes off-the-walls crazy decisions--when this same character is absolutely swimming in the lap of luxury. Lola needs to be relatable to the audience so the readers don't, you know, just give up on her. And the glimpses we get of her country club living really don't help in that cause--or reflect the Pride and Prejudice inspiration, for that matter.


Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
8/10

Fans of Joan F. Smith's The Half-Orphan's Handbook will enjoy this summer-activity-with-a-wholesome-twist type of story. Those who enjoyed Karen Bischer's The Secret Recipe for Moving On will love Lola Barnes's comeback.

Things are not going well for Lola Barnes.

On paper, Lola has it made. She's recently returned from a year in France, she's prepared to do whatever it takes to reclaim her queen bee spot at her California school, and her family is in a position—financial and otherwise—to fund whatever adventures she can dream up.

But paper doesn't always match reality, and Lola is still feeling the sting of the events that saw her whisked off to France. Now she's home (no more the French sophisticate than she was to begin with) her former friends don't want to rekindle their friendship, and oh, there's the little matter of accidentally setting a boat on fire. A boat that turns out to belong to Lola's brother-in-law. And any plans Lola had for the summer, or for regaining her popular-party-girl reputation, are well and truly sunk.

Now, I'll be honest: I read "Being Mary Bennet" last year, and when I saw that Peterson had followed up with Lydia/Lola's story, I flung the book bodily onto my to-read shelf without reading the rest of the description. (It's a risky move, but when it pays off...) So you can imagine my delight when it turned out that Lola's punishment/last-ditch effort at forcing her to build some character involved a summer of hiking and camping and learning to set sanctioned fires. Be still my beating heart. (This sounds sarcastic, but it's not—truly, give me all the books where the characters spend their time tromping about in the woods. Better, give me a tent and some woods without wild boars to read those books in.)

Be warned: Lola is exhausting. She *has* to be exhausting, mind, because she's Lydia Bennet incarnate, and if she were anything other than exhausting—and energetic, and petty, and shallow—she'd be a disappointment. It's a story best read *after* setting aside the need to love the protagonist from beginning to end. But Peterson walks a masterful line here, allowing Lola to be all of those things (some of them right to the end of the book) while also allowing Lola the complexity that comes with self-awareness, and loyalty, and (eventually) genuine desire to be something other than the story that has been written for her. Plus, Lola is self-aware enough to be *funny*, and that alone makes up for a multitude of sins. Did not disappoint.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a free review copy through NetGalley.

I'll pick up any P & P adaptation. This made Lydia's (Lola's) character sympathetic in a good way. I was a little confused by Elizabeth and Darcy's characters' backstories. Maybe this was in Being Mary Bennett?

This is a super cute pride and prejudice inspired tale about Lola. At first Lola is a god awful person until she is required to help at a hiking program. It's really nice to see her grow as the story goes on!

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for allowing me to read this arc in exchange for an honest review!

What I read: Lola at Last by JC Peterson

Why I picked it up: I liked the description and requested it on NetGalley. I received this copy for free in exchange for my honest review.

How I read it: The ARC ebook on Kindle over 6 days – way too long for a YA love story.

What it’s about: Lola has gotten into some trouble recently and instead of going to jail for setting fire to a boat, she’s been enrolled in “Hike Like a Girl.” This is a summer program dedicated to 5 young women as a very exclusive opportunity for growth (ie: young women want this on their college applications – but I didn’t quite get the reasons why). The young woman is from a very entitled family (her mom was the worst) and spends most of the book being kind of a jerk to everyone, including herself.

What I liked: Georgia was one of my favorites – although she was one of Lola’s least favorite people. I think that’s why I liked her so much, to be honest.

What I disliked: I really did not like Lola. While she grew over the course of the summer the book was set, I’m not sure she ended up as someone I’d really like. The writing was fine, the story fleshed out – but I could never like the main character – or most of her friends.

Genre: Young Adult, chaste love story, finding oneself, super entitled MC, retelling the classics.

Rating & Recommendation: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ and I don’t think so – even though I downloaded the author’s debut audiobook. I’m hoping it’s not the same world, just the same style – this is a Pride & Prejudice retelling.

3.75/5 stars. I am always on board to read Jane Austen re-tellings. The premise of this story had me really excited. I've always wondered at how merely forcing Lydia and Wickham somehow managed to avoid all the scandal. So the idea that this book starts of with Lola entrenched in scandal. It was wonderful to see Lydia shake off her bad name from the original and grow into her own, fully-developed woman. I did feel that some of the rest of the cast of characters could have had more energy put into them. They fell a bit flat at times.

I received an advance review copy for free through NetGalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily

I didn't know what to expect when I went into this book, and ended up finding myself counting down the minutes until I was done with work so I could get back to this story!

Lola is a brat, pure and simple. She comes from a family of high-achieving girls, but her biggest accomplishment is tarnishing the family name by hooking up with a guy who already has a girlfriend... After an incident that involves a high school party, a yacht, and a flare-shot-off-accidentally, she is given the choice: jail time or participating in the Hike Like a Girl summer wilderness program.

Extremely begrudgingly, Lola picks Hike Like A girl, essentially by process of elimination. She is not into the outdoors at all, so this is going to be one long summer.

Despite Lola being a pretty annoying and easy-to-hate character (on purpose of course!), she absolutely grew on me throughout the story. Ash she gained perspective and found something she was passionate about, and worked on the relationships with her family and friends she cared about, she showed tremendous growth. I also found her narration/POV pretty funny — she was entertaining!

I highly recommend that you add this fabulous YA book to your TBRs this year — it publishes on 2/28!!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book, especially the humor!

I will be withholding my review until Harper gives their Harper Collins union workers a fair contract. Thank you again for the copy.

You had me at "Pride and Prejudice inspired tale." This was so much fun! Lola At Last is a modern spin on the infamous Lydia Bennett. I didn't know I wanted this book, but it did not disappoint. I somehow missed Being Mary Bennet, but I've got to read that one now. I'm hoping that we will get perspectives from all the sisters and maybe even Charlotte too!

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced digital copy.