I've read plenty of adaptations of classics (especially Jane Austen, of course) in my day - check out some reviews here and here - and while some are more successful than others, I'm still always up for trying another... which brings me to 3 new adaptations of classic literature I have read recently:
Anne of Green Gables meets contemporary romance? Well, I'll definitely try that. In this adaptation, Anne is a grad student living with her best friend Diana in a little Manhattan apartment, finishing up a masters of education - when who should join her program (and be assigned as a partner on a big thesis project), but her old childhood nemesis she hasn't seen in years, Gilbert Blythe. As Anne and Gil get to know each other in adulthood, they start to realize that the constant bickering and competition from their school days was perhaps really their romantic interest in each other all along, of course. Okay, so I love Anne and Gil getting together, and how a modern-day adaptation of it can turn into a romance with one of my favorite tropes, enemies to lovers, but I must say that with my attachment to the original Anne, I wasn't quite ready for an actual play-by-play of the steaminess between them... it's not super steamy compared to other romance/rom-com books I've read lately, but just admittedly felt a little weird to go beyond a chaste kiss with this couple from my youth. What makes this different from a regular contemporary romance is the flashback chapters to Anne and Gil's youth, when we get to see some of the familiar stories of how Anne comes to Green Gables (re-set as a winery in an idyllic small-town area of Long Island), when Gil first calls her "carrots", etc. - these take you a bit out of the contemporary romance book that this really is, but definitely are there for the Anne fans to relive some of their favorite moments in a new way. I had some (or a fair number, to be honest) quibbles with the writing/editing, like the excessive overuse of phrases like "the older woman" or "the younger girl" to refer to a character rather than just using their dang name, but as a beach read it was pretty satisfying, and it definitely made me want to revisit the originals again.
3/5 stars, learned about from Annie on From the Front Porch
Set in the echelons of the rich & famous in Capri and the Hamptons, this modern-day retelling of A Room with a View sets Lucie Churchill as the daughter of an American-born Chinese mother and old-money New Yorker father and explores her position between the two cultures - and between two men and their romantic attentions. Admittedly this is not an original classic that I have a lot of in-depth knowledge of, and thus no strong affinity with. So while I had a general sense of where it took its inspiration, it didn't speak to me as a fan of the original, and this made me feel kind of like it was Crazy Rich Asians 2.0 with all of the descriptions of amazing fashion and food, and the antics of the wealthy behaving badly... which certainly is fun, but perhaps I wasn't quite ready to read another Crazy Rich Asians, and I didn't super connect with any of the characters (again, not having any existing attachment to them like I do with Anne or Austen), so didn't love it as much as I hoped. Definitely a fun read in the dazzling yet snarky vein of Kwan's previous series, so a good pick for fans of Crazy Rich Asians, or someone looking for a beach read (or armchair getaway for that matter - the descriptions of Capri will have you in raptures!)
3.5/5 stars, recommend if you're looking for your next Crazy Rich Asians-type read
In this YA re-imagining of Pride & Prejudice, Lizzie aspires to be able to work in her father's law firm, but of course as a young woman in this era, it isn't exactly in the cards. But when she hears about a young wealthy man, Mr. Bingley, who has been arrested in the murder of his brother-in-law, she decides this is her chance to prove herself to her father, by solving the this scandalous high-society mystery herself. And just maybe she also wants to beat the handsome yet infuriating Mr. Darcy, from a rival law firm, to it... Absolutely breezed through this one - a regency era romp with a feminist twist, my favorite Austen characters in intriguing new roles, new information about the history of the time period presented in an interesting way, plus a slightly cheesy YA whodonut mystery + romance combo to boot? That's 100% my kind of summer reading. Not high literature by any means, but made me think fondly of some of my favorite literature and showed me a great time, and the ways that the standard touchpoints of P&P are adapted to this setting were often quite clever indeed.
4/5 stars, definitely excited this will be a series; if you want something else similar while waiting for the next one check out Dangerous Alliance
A couple of new modern-day takes that are on my list to read soon: Olympus, Texas, which brings Greek mythology to a modern-day sprawling family drama; Anna K Away (I enjoyed Anna K, a YA modern-day Anna Karenina, so I'm very curious to see where the sequel goes).
Are you a sucker for this genre like I am?
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