Most Ardently is a fun, easy on the soul treasure – a femmeslash Pride and Prejudice AU, if you will.

Honors student Elisa Benitez – spirited, outspoken, poor, and independent – meets Darcy Fitzgerald, a mega-rich Kardashian type, in a lit class at Stevenson Community College.  They fight over Lord of the Flies, with Darcy saying it represents our current political climate and Eliza declaring that a dour outlook, which brands Darcy in Elisa’s mind as a snob and Elisa in Darcy’s mind as mildly infuriating.  Then Darcy defends Elisa to their teacher, and the wheels in her head begin to turn.

Elisa’s mother, Alejandra, decides to fix Elisa up with Robert – Bobby -  Charles III, resident of the very ritzy Netherfield Park neighborhood, who is famous for starring in a series of increasingly campy B-movies about slaughter at a summer camp.  Of course, neither Alejandra nor her daughter know Robert, but that’s not going to stop her.  When Bobby falls for Elisa’s older, accomplished sister Julieta and vice-versa, Elisa is relieved to have avoided her mom’s matchmaking – but also ends up moving in with Julieta and Bobby when the couple shacks up together.  That means dealing with Bobby’s annoying sisters, Cora and Louise – and it means coming into closer contact with Darcy, with whom she shares a ride to college every day.

As they banter about the crux where activism and fiction collide, Elisa and Darcy just might be falling in love – but then Darcy’s bitter cousin Wick surfaces with devastating news that might make Elisa hate Darcy and ruin their chance at happiness.

Most Ardently does a great job of both tweaking and paying tribute to Pride and Prejudice’s conventions.  The baseline truth of the story – about two people who disagree falling in love, and about how gossip can color and make romantic and family life difficult – strides onward.  The whole experience of reading the novel is comfortable and thrilling, and while some of the elements in the story aren’t wholly fresh, they’re still fun.

I really enjoyed being in Elisa’s head; her point of view feels realistically teenaged without feeling mannered, while Darcy feels more florid, though she’s horrible at articulating herself (just like original canon! Darcy).  Their romance is awkward and fun as well as intellectually stimulating.

The way Mesler-Evans has changed the story in several ways made it even more fun.  I liked the complication of Alejandra being divorced from her husband in this version of events; I liked the atmosphere of a college town, and the lockstep conformity of Netherfield Park versus the looser world of the Benitez sisters.  There is some nice though not front-and-center trans rep in the novel; Elisa has a trans sister, Camila, who doesn’t appear very often, but she’s fun when she’s on-page. Also fun when he’s on-page: frat boy Colin Burger, the Mr. Collins stand-in here.

The storytelling in general is extremely lively and has a lot of punch and vigor.

Most Ardently is a fabulous little novel that earns very high marks for being so entertaining yet so grounded, so sweet yet so moving. It’s a fabulous book for readers young and old alike.

NOTE: This book includes a minor plotline about statutory rape.

Buy it at: Amazon/Apple Books/Barnes & Noble/Kobo
Visit our Amazon Storefront

I am kind of bummed about this one. I love Pride and Prejudice and will read basically any retelling/variant I can find, and I was especially excited for a gay retelling, but as good as the author’s intentions clearly were, this one just did not work for me. I am not a P&P purist and don’t mind if a retelling deviates pretty significantly from the original, but this was kind of a confusing combination of the two. It followed the plot and characters pretty closely, but the tone and some of the outcomes were pretty different in a way that felt like it kind of... missed the point? The biggest example of this was Colin/Mr. Collins. Here, he turns out to be pretty likable and he and Charlotte/Charlene fall in love and are madly happy together. In the original, my take is that Charlotte’s choice to marry Mr. Collins even though he’s horrible is a social and feminist commentary on women’s limited options. I would have loved to see that concept explored in a modern way here rather than having them just become a bland side story with a standard-issue happy ending. Same with Elisa/Elizabeth and Darcy - I felt like they got reduced to just a standard issues enemies to lovers romantic comedy plot device instead of the societal commentary and exploration of, you know, pride and prejudice that they are in the original. I just somehow felt like maybe the author didn’t read up on Austen/dive into P&P lit crit before she wrote this? She clearly knew the plot very well but I didn’t get the sense that she’d given overly much consideration to the themes and messages of the book. She even referred to it as a “classic romantic comedy” in the acknowledgements, which... I mean, yes, that’s one element of it, but the original book is so much more than that (huh, maybe I’m more of a purist than I thought I was...). I just didn’t come away feeling like I understood WHY the author wanted to give a fresh take on the book, or what she was trying to bring to the story beyond making some of the characters queer.

Also, and I do feel bad saying this because the writer seems like a genuinely nice person (I checked her out on Twitter) but the writing in this book is just not very good. It’s not, like, secondhand embarrassing levels of poor, but it’s really not great. First of all, this sounds nitpicky but there was a ton of pronoun confusion in this book, not in the misgendering way but in the “can’t actually tell to whom the verb applies” kind of way because it’s oddly vague and the sentences aren’t tightly written enough to tell. The dialogue is stilted and there is a lot of telling instead of showing. For example, we keep hearing how incredibly boring Colin is when he talks, but we only see a few examples of that and... they aren’t actually boring? I totally thought that best man tidbit was fascinating! Maybe this means I’m as boring as he is, but it just felt like the author wasn’t quite able to render the characters the way she intended. Further, Elisa and Darcy didn’t have any chemistry or really anything building between them, despite the author’s best attempts, so I didn’t feel engaged in having them work things out.

I did appreciate the diversity throughout, including Cam/Kitty being trans, Elisa being fat, and Keegan using them/they pronouns, and even more so that those were just casually mentioned elements of who these people are rather than a focal point of the story. I did get a bit lost with the family being of Mexican heritage, though, because even though it’s mentioned a few times, we don’t actually see any evidence of it other than the terms Abuela and Abuelo. I always think it’s tough to write main characters of a different cultural background from your own, and that was clearly apparent here.

Overall, I really wanted to like this book and I really appreciate what the author was trying to do, but it just did not land well for me. Bummer.

MOST ARDENTLY is the lovely and swoony Pride and Prejudice remix that I've been hoping for. While sticking pretty close to the original in terms of plot, this book introduces us to Elisa Benitez, a relatively poor young woman who is just starting community college, and Darcy Fitzgerald, a wealthy young woman who is taking a couple classes at said community college. Although they notice each other right from the start, a disagreement over human nature in the context of a literature discussion has Elisa feeling at odds.

When at their next encounter, she overhears Darcy disparaging her younger sisters, Elisa has her mind made up- she would never date Darcy, even if she were the last person on Earth. However, as they continue to collide in part because of Elisa's sister, Julieta, and Darcy's close friend, Bobby, who happen to be falling in love, they start to peel back the layers of their initial impressions to look a little deeper.

I am a fan of the original novel, and so, I absolutely adored this new take set in the modern day. There is a lot of character racial/ethnic diversity plus a heroine who is bi (Elisa) and falling in love with a woman. Add that to one of Elisa's sisters being trans and this book is full of great representation.

In terms of the plot, I loved it, but it does follow the original very closely. This includes the character of Wickham (here, 'Wick'), who preys upon young girls. Thus, I would add warnings for sexual predation/grooming, statutory rape, and domestic violence/abuse.

Elisa and Darcy were just as ornery and love-hate as in the original, and I loved their banter. I was definitely cheering for these two. While they didn't seem well-suited at the start, they really end up seeming perfectly suited by the end. I will add that this is a clean romance with no more than kisses described, and I would have loved to see even more of those along the way.

Charming, adorable, and deliciously Pride-and-Prejudicey, MOST ARDENTLY is a retooled classic for the modern era. Highly recommend for anyone who thinks a LGBTQIA+ retake sounds interesting- you won't regret picking this up this delightful read.

Please note that I received an ARC. All opinions are my own.