"Toil and Trouble" by Jamie Lackey is a delightful blend of wit, magic, and heart. The short stories are engaging and creative, offering fresh takes on classic themes. It's a must-read for fans of fantasy who enjoy a touch of humor and charm in their tales.

I thought that the idea of Pride and Prejudice but Lizzie and Mary being witches would be such a fun idea! Unfortunately I soon realised that you could literally take that away from them and… it would be the original story all over again. I did like it but it didn’t really add anything past that little change. I don’t mind when retellings change a bunch of the original story and I felt like Lackey could’ve really gone for it and played around. Added more witches, let them meet all those witches, just something different!

Another reason I would’ve like the witch addition to be more is because it was incredibly of a side plot. They come to their family’s house with the intention of learning how to heal their witch mentor and it takes weeks before they even start to learn anything. It frustrated me because it kept showing that the witch addition could’ve easily been taken out and not changed anything. What’s the point of reading a retelling if it’s basically just the original?

Other than that, I mean the romance is standard, it’s Darcy and Lizzie, and I love to see it. I think they’ve basically made enemies-to-lovers. Darcy being all “oh I love Lizzie, how do I tell her that and propose to her? Oh I know!” Darcy to Lizzie: “Hey, you suck, your family sucks, please marry me?” That’s just classic stuff, if you ask me. Not entirely as good as knife to the throat trope, but still really good. I did like the change from Lydia as the youngest daughter to Claudius and him still having the relationship with Wickman. Mary’s not interested in romance and prefers to work more on her magic skills and it was great to see how barely anyone bat an eyelash.

Any retelling of Pride and Prejudice has an extreme amount of expectation placed on it as a retelling of one of the most beloved novels to exist, and one of the best romance novels ever written. Any novel striving for the goal of an engaging, well done, insightful retelling that both adds to the plot while not reducing any of the beloved elements of the initial novel has set an extremely high bar for itself right out of the gate. I often find these retellings to be in one of two camps the first being badly done and lackluster, the second being engaging and having brought something new to the story. I was glad to find this novel to be in the second camp.

When I first picked this novel up, I found the setup of the first two/three chapters to be a touch of a drag and the world building to be more than a bit in my face with establishing this as the same world as the initial novel but with magic being tolerated and real. However, I found that very quickly after the set up in about chapter three or four the story went into the engaging and delightful area with it quickly becoming a read, I was unwilling to put down. The author did a wonderous job of taking the plot points of the novel and breathing new life into them, from making the youngest sister a man and giving the romance there new life, to making Kitty and Mrs. Bennet feel like more complex women with goals of their own.

Overall I would recommend this novel to you if you enjoy:
- Witches and well done magic systems
- Pride and Prejudice retellings
- Regency Romances
- LGBT novels
- Multiple POVS
- Complex FMC's

I received an advance review copy of this book, and I am leaving this review voluntarily and all thoughts and opinions are wholly my own and unbiased.

This had so much more potential!!! Between one of the most iconic Austen novels and a witch retelling! I think it had good bones to it, but the meat was lacking and that really held it back for me. I think at some parts it felt like not a Pride and Prejudice retelling but more.....just a copy and paste with no significant insight or substance. This pains me to write.

Pride and prejudice with witches. Interesting premise. Written in the spirit of the language and the times. Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.

I really wish I had enjoyed this more, because I'm very fond of the original and loved the idea of a retelling with witches.

I did think this was a pretty good book from a technical standpoint, especially for self-pub. The portions Lackey actually wrote herself are well-written and generally fit well with Austen's original text. And I really appreciated getting to know Mary better - her character was by far the best part of the book.

However, I became frustrated by how much of the text (exposition as well as dialogue) was copied verbatim from Austen's novel with only minor changes. This was especially true in Lizzie's sections, as Lizzie's storyline differs very little from the original. For me, it would have been better either to make more significant changes to Lizzie's storyline or to skip/summarize the parts that were the same as the original, so that much more of the writing was Lackey's own work.

I would have also liked to have seen more broad impact on the story and characters from the major changes made to the setting (witches, acceptance of same-sex relationships). Mary's storyline was the only place where I felt that this was done effectively. Several other major alterations to characters did not feel very connected to the differences in the world, which I found baffling when so much else was kept the same.

I also wanted a lot more witch content, as I didn't get a good sense of what being a witch was really about or how magic functioned in this world. The fact that Mary and (especially) Lizzie were witches often felt like an afterthought, which was unfortunate since this was one of the main things that interested me about this retelling.

Loved this book so much. One of my best reads this year so far 🎀 lovely characters, amazing plot and the storyline is so on point.