I love Pride and Prejudice retelling. Unfortunately I didn’t think this one had many parallels to the original story at all. I was hoping for more of a clever connection. I love the cover! If you like “bad boy” romances, this book might be for you.

This was marketed as hilarious, but I didn’t find it very funny. I don’t think I laughed out loud at all a single time.

The writing wasn’t bad and the story was entertaining, but I just didn’t find it funny. Things are fairly fast paced and keeps you reading.

Grab this book if you want a romance with a hidden twist.

This book made my head hurt.....I will say ive never read this author before and the description sound like a great lite rom com but it was a disaster.....

The premise had potential to be a nice modern Pride & Prejudice but it fell short on so many levels. Contains spoilers.

There’s race/ ethnicity involved, but none of the characters claim their background. Various characters have P&P names but they don’t really follow their characters’ name same personality. The two male MC’s are supposed to be bff’s but one of them proves he was a fake friend. Darcy’s side of the family never makes an appearance. There’s a bad guy straight out of left field, which is hard to fit into the story. I liked the connection the two MC’s feel, it felt real enough, but it still left me wanting more. Being a Bostonian myself, I hated how the authors wrote out the ghetto dialogue for Charles, his on-and-off-again girlfriend/ fiancée, his side lover and some of the WAGS. Most people don’t really speak that way. Yes. Even minorities go through basic schooling and learn proper grammar. I felt like the authors just used that to showcase these characters were black or latina. So overall, I was really disappointed with this story.

Already posted on Goodreads.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

CW/TW: parent in jail, sexual harassment, cheating, miscarriage, attempted suicide by a side character (happens off page, but mc walks in after), talk of abortion, death by shooting of a side character.

*I’m going to start off by saying that I listed what I could remember for the content/trigger warnings. Some of these things will be mentioned in passing in this review. This book is marketed as light and fluffy, but a lot of things happen that some people may find triggering and I want them to be aware. *

I am disappointed to say that this book was actually really bad. I thought it would be a fun, cute P&P retelling involving basketball. What I got was a story lacking in a clear plot with pacing issues and some scenes that left a bad taste in my mouth. There were some things said in the story that felt racist, ableist, and just gross. There were a few flippant comments about eating disorders peppered in too. As well as, a suicide attempt by a side-character that wasn’t handled with any kind of care or nuance. There was also a hyper-focus on the main character being African American and Japanese American with light blue eyes and “caramel skin” and, though I do not have heritage from either of those races, the way it was constantly brought up felt very uncomfortable and kinda ew.
The way that difficult topics and scenarios were just used as plot devices was abhorrent to me. There was no nuance in dealing with abortion, miscarriage, and attempted suicide, and definitely not any related to other topics like sexual harassment in the workplace. I feel like the author was trying to cram in a ton of hot topics but never took the time to do it with care and people stumbling onto this book thinking that it would be a cute rom-com based on the cover could end up being triggered and hurt by this.

As for being a Pride & Prejudice retelling, it barely stuck to the original storyline. The author took some names and a couple lines from the original. This premise was so great: a hot shot b-ball player and an up-and-coming reporter disliking each other at first and then coming to realize their prejudices were unfounded and then falling in love? I wish that was what we got here. The idea was solid, but the execution was severely lacking and with all of the issues noted above I doubt there was a sensitivity reader within a hundred feet of this manuscript. Needless to say, I did not like this book.

I would love to hear what others have to say about this, but, truthfully, I wouldn’t recommend that anyone read this book.

So, a few disclaimers. I'd never read anything by this author prior to picking up this e-ARC. I had no idea who she was. I just saw a super cute rom-com cover with a title that suggested that the book would take inspiration from one of my favorite books of all time.

I am a multi-faceted nerd. I enjoy many hobbies including sports. Mostly football and baseball, but I also have a passing knowledge of other popular sports and athletes. As I was reading this book, which is about a sportswriter trying to catch her big break by interviewing a hot-shot basketball star, I just kept thinking to myself, "This feels like it was written by someone who has never actually been to a sporting event. I found out this is not the case, which made the scenes depicting professional sports and the way they work even more disappointing.

I understand that as an ARC, there are potentially still rounds of edits to go before publication. I hope that's the case, because there were so many technical issues with this book that I never felt able to fully settle in and enjoy this story for what it was trying to be: a racially diverse Pride & Prejudice retelling with some basketball thrown in.

The protagonist's name is Hara Isari. We are told she is African American and Japanese American. In Chapter 14, she tells our Mr. Darcy that her name is Japanese and she didn't realize that she wasn't named after the Greek Goddess Hera until she was in middle school. But that doesn't make sense. The names Hera and Hara wouldn't be pronounced the same if Hara was being pronounced as a Japanese name. Also, being the curious person I am, I looked up the name Hara to see what it means in Japanese. 'Hara' is the Japanese word for 'belly' or 'stomach' (think harakiri, which refers to ritual Japanese suicide). I find it strange that her dad would want to name her 'Belly'. Then, going a step further, I looked up the last name, Isari. In Japanese, 'Isari' means 'fishing' or 'searching'. So her name is 'Belly Fishing'. I have to wonder how much research was done into Japanese names before this was chosen for the protagonist.

I'm actually curious why the author chose this ethnic background for her heroine, when the author herself is Puerto Rican. I just wonder if the character would've felt a little more authentic if the author had drawn on her own background to create her. To be clear, I'm not saying that the author isn't allowed to write characters with a different ethnic background from hers, and as a white woman I don't have any place to say whether the representation was good, but I feel like it possibly would've helped.

There is another character, Kitty. Those who know the story of Pride and Prejudice know that Kitty is one of the younger Bennett sisters. In this book, she's in two scenes and serves solely as a plot device to get our heroine into a room where she needs to be for the story to move along. She is supposed to be Italian, which I only realized in the second scene (Chapter 11) she was in because when she's leaving she says, "Ciao" to Hara. Earlier in that scene she throws a couple other non-English words into conversation randomly. The only problem is, one isn't an Italian word and the other wasn't the correct word. Kitty is calling someone a whore and uses the word 'punta', which is Italian (and Spanish) for 'point'. A couple paragraphs later she says something about her 'familia', which is the Spanish word for 'family.' The Italian word is 'famiglia'. Then Kitty disappears never to be seen, heard from, or talked about again, so it doesn't really matter I suppose, but then why is she even in the story to begin with? She's a complete throwaway character.

There's another scene (Chapter 16) where Hara is reading a letter and the letter uses the word 'abeyance'. They use it as a synonym or relation to the word 'obedience'. In reality, this means almost the opposite of what the author intends. The definition of abeyance is: a state of temporary disuse or suspension. So instead of the letter saying 'we would like you to honor (obey to) our agreement', they are instead saying, 'we would like you to suspend our agreement'.

I can't actually point out a character or scene that I enjoyed in this. The romance was too little, too late.. The dialogue was awkward, even cringeworthy at times. There's no fun banter between the characters, which is something I look for in my adult contemporary romances. The passages from Derek Darcy's POV feel totally pointless. This whole story could've been written without them. Hara is one of the most annoying heroines I've read about in a long while. There's a scene (chapter 9) when she gets angry after being insulted and lashes out at another reporter when the reporter wasn't the one who insulted her in the first place. Then we're supposed to side with her and think this guy is a jerk as well because he responds to her outburst in a way any normal person would. None of the side characters feel developed past caricatures that are stereotypes at best, and possibly offensive at worst. There's even a moustache-twirling villain who we're told has an obsession with phallic symbols and it's equated to being depraved and evil and characters are disgusted by it.

The story itself is just bad. It bums me out so much. There is a glimmer, just the faintest glimmer of an interesting story. This could've been a fun updated version of P&P with a racially diverse cast that people today could connect with. But aside from a few inserts of quotes from the source material, vague plot generalities, and a few character names, this has almost nothing to do with Pride & Prejudice. Then the end gets so utterly ridiculous and melodramatic that I don't even know how this whole book isn't one elaborate prank. At one point, our hero ponders whether or not he's stuck in a bad movie, and I couldn't help thinking that even the characters know the situation is absurd.

A couple more head-scratching moments:

1. We're told several times throughout the course of this book that Hara works for a small-town newspaper in a podunk town and that she is the ONLY full-time employee working at the paper along with her boss. Even so, her boss bought multiple plane tickets for her, ordered her a limousine, and put her up in a super swanky boutique hotel. He also bought her fancy clothes for the trip. Yeah...that sounds like real life in a podunk town.

2. There's a lot of girl-hate in this book. The word 'ho' is thrown around liberally and girls literally fight over awful men. Even the girl she befriends is made out to be a naive idiot. It feels like it's done in an attempt to bolster the not-like-other-girls-ness of our protagonist.

I am so thankful to be given the opportunity to read this book before its release, and I wish I had enjoyed it more.

Thanks Netgalley for an arc of this book! I absolutely loved this book.!!! The story immediately pulled me in. I loved Hara’s determination. A little romance, a little mystery, sports, tears and laughs. This book had it all!

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I received this ARC for an honest review. I have to admit I was a little nervous about reading this book. I was like “another Jane Austin ripoff”, but I was wrong. It surprised me. I enjoyed how the authors gave a nod to Jane Austin, but the story was their own. This story is about Hara Isari and Derek Darcy. Hara is a sports writer for a small paper and she won a national contest to interview the elusive basketball player Charles Butler. She got an exclusive one on one at a private party. On her way to meet with Charles, Hara over hears Derek on the phone and was caught eavesdropping by Derek and he was rude. Unbeknownst to Hara, Derek and Charles are best friends. When they both show up for the interview, Hara was surprised. I’m not going to say much more because I suggest that you read this book. I enjoyed it.

This is a winning novel that will appeal to everyone. It has wit, sassiness and a captivating plot.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I am weak for a Pride & Prejudice retelling. My best friend pointed out that I never enjoy them, despite the fact that I will read almost any that come my way.

One of the reasons I so often don’t enjoy them is because I don’t know what I want in a retelling. When do I begrudge the changes made to put the story in a new context? What elements are necessary to retain the spirit of the story I love? Do I need to see Wickham preying on underage Georgiana (must she be underage?) and then hooking up with underage Lydia? Why do updates so often leave out my beloved Aunt and Uncle Gardiner??

These questions were never far from my mind as I sank into Evelyn Lozada’s The Wrong Mr. Darcy. Lozada takes some wild liberties with the story, and ultimately lands in a space that is officially too far from Austen’s original for my personal taste. My affection for the original could not extend cover to this version.

Hara Isari is a sportswriter in her small Oregon hometown. She’s stuck trying to live down her father’s reputation as a bookie known for fixing basketball games. She gets an opportunity to interview Boston Fishers star Charles Butler and leaps at the chance. Her interview brings her into the orbit of the entire Fishers organization, including Charles’s prickly friend Derek Darcy and the very officious Miss Bingley. Once Hara gets her foot in the door, she uncovers more drama than she ever expected. Lozada packs a lot into Hara’s three days in Boston. Side chicks! Bribery scandals! Workplace jealousy! A night at the club! A flood!

The writing isn’t great. For example, I spent way too much time trying to figure out who the Fishers were, assuming they were the team owners. No, it’s actually the name of the basketball team Butler and Darcy play for. While the story is being marketed as a comedy, there weren't any funny scenes. Hara stumbles into a B plot that is mostly confusing and then takes a dark turn that feels wildly out of place.

Aside from the impression that this needs another round of development editing, there’s also too much drama packed into too little time. I want to say it felt unrealistic, but I understand Ms. Lozada is a Real Housewife. Perhaps that life comes at you a bit faster.

It’s hard to get a good handle on Hara, Derek, and Hara and Derek. Hara is a unicorn African American-Japanese woman with blue eyes and good hair. (Honestly, the blue eyed thing was very distracting. I kept trying to figure out how those genetics work. Black folks do carry recessive genes for blue eyes--you know why--but do Japanese folks?) I didn’t get the sense that she had any interest in Derek at all. Derek himself never comes around to that redeeming moment where you can almost forgive him for being a prat earlier in the story. He’s justified in taking offense at her in their first encounter.

My biggest problem with The Wrong Mr. Darcy is that it doesn’t feel inspired by Pride & Prejudice at all, other than lifting a couple of names. A couple of very key characters appear to be wildly inconsistent mash-ups. To wit, Charles Butler is George Wickham and Charles Bingley in one. If you’re wondering how that works, it doesn’t.

This one was a swing and a miss for me. The primary reason I requested it was because I love P&P, but there’s not enough of the original here to suggest the authors feel the same.

Content warning: attempted suicide and pregnancy trauma

I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book via NetGalley in order to facilitate this review.

The wrong mr Darcy review

This was a cute romance with a mysterious twist! It was fun to read, and had an interesting concept. I’d never read much about basketball or the world around it so I enjoyed learning more. It did feel like however there was more focus on the whole “wives ant girlfriends” crew than actual basketball sometimes.

The main character Hara is a budding sports reporter with some freaking amazing sass. She is a woman working in a male dominated field and she handles the sexism like a boss. After winning a contest, she gets an exclusive interview with the hottest basketball star around, Charles Butler. She is flown out to Boston, attends a fancy party, and then interviews Charles Butler. Quickly her reporter instincts kick in and she realizes there is more going on behind this contest. She meets another teammate, Derek Darcy, and he’s got something to prove to the team and zero people skills or manners. As Hara begins to uncover what is happening behind the scenes, she makes new friends, finds herself in some WAGS drama, and in serious danger!

Sometimes I felt like parts of the characters didn’t add up. They were not consistent throughout the book and it didn’t make sense. I did feel like the book struggled to be cohesive. There was enough content for a whole series in one short book, and it made it very chaotic and quickly unrealistic. There was so much happening from the contest, the games, the WAGS, the storm, Naomi... it was just too much. I also struggled to follow the story partly because my ARC didn’t have paragraph breaks when they changed character voices, and partly because it was just so chaotic. The end came very abruptly and was not as satisfying either. I could’ve used a few more nights in bed with Derek though!

Super steamy, a bit mysterious, and full of some good ole drama. Didn’t seem much like Pride and Prejudice. I did like the concept of the story and overall plot so I enjoyed it and gave it 3 stars.

My six word review:
Basketball stars and their closeted drama

I found The Wrong Mr Darcey to be a cheesy read. And, I have to say, I just couldn’t connect with the characters. I’m sure others may enjoy this book and I do recommend you read it.
Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read and review this book for my honest review.

There is so much to like about this book - drama, sports, danger, mystery. The only thing it was missing for me was romance. Don't get me wrong - there is romance in the story - but it is definitely on the sidelines of the rest of the story. And, in a way, it should be. The real story is about both Hara and Derek finding their way professionally and finding their way to trust people again.

There are a few things in the story that need a trigger warning <spoiler>the story includes a miscarriage and a parent in jail, </spoiler> The book also pretty honestly takes a look into the world of the private lives of sports stars.

The book clearly riffs off of Pride and Prejudice, but isn't a retelling in any way. Hara talks about it as her favorite book and there are quotes at the start of every chapter. With that - I was actually suprirsed Hara didn't mention how weird it was that everyone had names so similar to those in Pride and Prejudice ;)

I loved Hara and her dedication to her career. Her determination and professionalism will take her a long way. I didn't like her snap judgments about people - and appreciated that several characters really called her out on it. Derek is definitely serious book boyfriend material. He had a lot of depth to his character - like his namesake character. He is always trying to do the right thing - even when it is hard. His personal moral compass was extremely strong in a sea of really crappy examples.

Overall - this was a great story. I do almost think it should have been a duet. I kept thinking as I hit the 80% mark that there was no way they could deal with everything with so little of the book left. With that in mind - the ending felt a little forced and rushed.

I'd give the book a serious 3.5 stars.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley, but these opinions are all my own.

Now - when can we get Naomi's story? or Kitty? soon please ladies.

I have mixed feelings about this book. Hara's relationship with her father is fascinating and I loved when these two were interacting. The dialogue with other characters (her mom) was just off and stilted. I found myself more invested with her relationship with her dad than the hero. And maybe that's where the story should have focused. I loved having reading about diverse characters. Will I read these authors again probably because I did enjoy the book.

I loved this rom com! Sweet funny and light on the heart. I loved all the characters and their multidimensional personalities. Hara is a reporter who meets an NBA basketball player and boy does her world go upside down! I won’t reveal any spoilers but if you’re a Jane Austen and a Mr Darcy fan then this book is a must. The book sometimes is a slow burn but worth it. Now, i will speak about some certain aspects I didn’t like about the story. I thought that there was an issue bringing the chemistry between the two main protagonists into a tangible thing for the reader. All in all however, the positive outweighs any shortcomings and overall I’m happy I read the book

An interesting look at the world of professional sports that has a little twist of personal attached to it. Having never read this author before I was very impressed.

It was an interesting read. My first from these authors. I recommend it and look forward to reading more from these authors.

Pride and Prejudice brought to modern times.A lovely sweet fun read.As a groupie really enjoyed this take on her writing .A pleasure to read,#netgalley #St.martinsbooks.

Received an ARC from netgalley for an honest opinion and review. Hara is a reporter from a small town in Oregon who wins a writing competition and as her prize gets to interview a big time NBA basketball player. What she doesn't know is that her world will be turned upside down and there is always more to the story than you think. Great book and highly suggest reading!

As an Austen lover through and through I love this different, modern take on the classic story. The characters are so loveable and it makes you want to keep reading even after the story is over!