Lydia Bennet became somewhat of an internet celebrity when her older sister Lizzie's vlogs, made as part of her graduate project, went viral in a major way. Always happy to be the centre of attention, Lydia made her own videos and loved the attention she got on YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr and other social media sites. Unfortunately, when she fell in love with and trusted a man who took terrible advantage of her, she also had to face her private life being open for all to see, and her name became synonymous with "that girl whose boyfriend tried to sell their sex tape to make money". Then her sister Lizzie's powerful boyfriend paid to have the whole ugly situation go away, and Lydia was left traumatised, humiliated and heart-broken.

 

Now Lydia is trying to rebuild her confidence and look to the future. Still living at home with her parents while her two older sisters have found love and moved to big cities, Lydia is completing summer courses at community college in preparation for transferring to San Francisco, where she'll study psychology and live with her taciturn Goth cousin Mary. Trying to re-build your life in a place where everyone is aware of who you are and what mistakes you've made isn't easy, though, and Lydia is so worried that everyone around her is just waiting for her to screw up again that she retreats back into the carefree party girl persona she used to be so comfortable with. All she needs to do to get accepted at the prestigious San Francisco university she wants to transfer into is write her application essay about a time when she experienced failure and what she learned from it. That shouldn't be too difficult, should it?

 

While Lydia's had to grow a lot since her first serious relationship crashed and burned extremely publicly, she's still has a lot of healing and maturing to do. Clearly feeling inadequate in comparison to both her sisters who are working in the fields they're most passionate about, Lydia is still not entirely sure what she wants to do with her life. While she likes the idea of studying psychology, she also has doubts and gets very insecure when she realises how many years the education is likely to take. She tries to cling to her old life while being impatient to move on to a new and better one, yet is uncertain and afraid of screwing up badly again. She's also struggling to rebuild the trust of one of her best friends, her cousin Mary, as well as her sisters and her parents. 

 

The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet is a sequel to both the highly successful YouTube series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which re-imagined Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for the 21st Century (which if you haven't watched - what are you doing with your life?) AND the book The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, which gave us a lot of extra insight into protagonist Lizzie and further re-imagining of a lot of the scenes from the original novel that didn't appear in the series. In the Austen novel, Lydia is the obnoxious and oblivious flighty youngest sister who elopes with Mr Darcy's childhood friend and later nemesis, Mr. Wickham and seems quite happy to have ended up married to him. 

 

In the modern re-imagining, Lydia may have started out similarly wild and irritating, but thanks in large part to the immense charm and skill with which actress Mary Kate Wiles portrayed her, Lydia grew to be a huge fan favourite and because the fate of Lydia Bennet of 200 years ago simply wouldn't work today, the show's writers took her story in a different direction. Running off with a man to whom you are not married wouldn't raise so much as an eyebrow in today's society, but being betrayed by your lover with the release of a sex tape would absolutely cause a stir similar to that of a Regency elopement. In both the book and the YouTube series, Mr. Darcy eventually comes through and sorts things out for the Bennet family in an attempt to make life easier for Lizzie, the woman he loves. In the YouTube series, however, Lizzie and Lydia tearfully begin to re-build their somewhat dysfunctional relationship in the aftermath of the tragedy and Lydia not trapped forever in a relationship with Wickham.

 

Kate Rorick and Rachel Kiley, two of the writers of the show, write in the acknowledgements that fans kept asking for Lydia's continued story and wanted to see that she had a chance at the same happy ending that her two sisters got. This book shows us what how Lydia's life progressed after the scandal that nearly ruined her life. There are appearances from Lizzie and Jane, but the most important supporting character is Mary, who in the YouTube re-imagining is the Bennet sisters' gloomy cousin, rather than their sister. Mary only appeared in a couple of episodes in the main YouTube series, but was quite prominent in Lydia's own videos (a spin-off of the main series). In this book she's working in a coffee shop off campus of the community college, waiting for Lydia to finish her courses so they can move to San Francisco together. She has a lovely sub-plot where she becomes the bassist of a local band, mainly through Lydia's machinations. 

 

Having listened to the audio book of Pride and Prejudice at the end of last year and then read Jo Baker's Longbourn, it's interesting to have three very different versions of Lydia Bennet and her story in my head. The modern version is the only one I'd really be interested in reading more about, though, and I'm really glad that Rorick and Kiley decided to pen the continuing story of the youngest Bennet sisters, to give fans of the show an idea of what the future brings for her. It was absolutely nice to catch up with the older sisters and seeing where their lives had taken them, but getting more Lydia and Mary was more fun than I was expecting. Like in the series, Lydia occasionally really annoyed me and I kept wanting to shake her for some of the choices she was making, but slowly but surely, she figures out what she wants and who she wants to be, and in many ways, that was even more satisfying than her sister's Lizzie's development. Lydia's views on Dracula were also hilarious. Absolutely a worth-while book to pick up if you liked The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. 

 

 

    I am pleasantly surprised by this book. I honestly had some reservations at the beginning, I wasn't sure just how well a modernization of a classic like Pride and Prejudice would translate. I have to say that I believe it came across quite well. The only thing I had trouble picturing in a modern setting was the mother still trying to marry off all her daughters to wealthy bachelors, because that was (in her mind) the best they could possibly hope for. That ideal felt too antiquated to belong in this time period, in my humble opinion.

 

 

   Other than that I thought  most everything else, including the main themes of the original story, shone through brilliantly. I must admit though that after I devoured this book, I then went and watched the YouTube videos that it was based off, and I thought those were fabulous. I might be slightly biased there though, just for the fact that I actually got my daughter to watch them with me and she really liked them too....she even asked to borrow the book when I was finished!

 

(yeah this was a huge victory, she's 12 and a total busy body who has a really hard time getting/staying interested in anything book related. *Insert devastating sad face* So yeah, total win for team mom!)

 

   I think that's probably the best part about this story, it bridges a gap between generations. I mean obviously I would love to see youngsters picking up the Jane Austen original, but quite frankly I don't think a lot of them are. So this was a really genius way to bring a classic story to a new demographic. And who knows, maybe this new group of enthusiasts for The Lizzie Bennet Diaries will be so taken with the story that they'll want to pick up Pride and Prejudice and see where it all came from.

 

   

I didn't read as many books as I wanted this year but all the books in my top 14 have a special place in my heart. I know that a lot of these books aren't the most well written books. I know that. But these are the books that had the more fun reading(The selection, TSDoLB....), that made me cry(ItSB...), that made me laught, that took my breath away...

So to cut a long story short, those are the books that I enjoyed the most:

 

Top 14 Books of 2014!

1.Into the still blue by Veronica Rossi

2.The program by Suzane Young

3.The secret diary of Lizzie Bennet by Bernie Su and Kate Rorick

4.The Selection series(yup, a full series,it's my to 2014 so it's my rules;) by Kiera Cass

5.Silver shadows by Richelle Mead

6.The madman's daughter by Megan Sheperd

7.On the island by Tracey Garvis Graves

8.Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Galbadon

9.Quintana of Charyn by Melina Marchetta

10.The trap by Andrew Fukuda

11.The Bone season by Samantha Shannon

12.The silver linings playbook by Matthew Quick

13.The farm by Emily McKay

14.Cress by Marissa Meyer

 

There’s always something a little startling about reading (and/or watching) a retelling of a classic piece of literature. There’s also something a little cringe-worthy about it. Sure, there’s always going to be gems out there but there’s also going to be a lot of duds and you never know what you’re going to get until you’re beyond the sell-by date and have invested serious time into it.

 

For me, this retelling of Jane Austen’s famous Pride and Prejudice was neither gem nor dud. It was something in between the two – there really needs to be a word for this; something that’s more layered and complex than simply saying ‘average’, which, in this case, would really be a misnomer. Before I get to that, though, I really need to preface my thoughts by saying that I, like most people, watched the Youtube series first and so went into this with certain expectations.

 

These expectations were not necessarily high – I enjoyed the Youtube series and thought the retelling was fun and unique, but I didn’t love it like others did (I had some serious issues with some of the actors – well, acting (surely I wasn’t the only one who cringed at how poorly some of pivotal and most memorable scenes from the book were acted out? It was almost as if the actors felt the weight of the audiences’ expectations’ and just couldn’t quite get it to work) and how the vlog style storytelling narrowed the view) – but they were still there.

 

I wanted to like this but I wasn’t invested. Not like I was with the original. That’s probably to be expected, though.

 

Expectations aside, however, I thought this book was actually better than the Youtube series. I know, I know: this wouldn’t even exist without the Youtube series. But that’s the thing: even though this is a companion to the series, it actually gives you a chance to get invested.

 

Yes, we’re only getting a view through Lizzie’s eyes (it’s her diary after all) but there’s still a lot of stuff going on that never actually made its way into the Youtube series. Sure, Lizzie brushes over certain topics in some of the videos but, really, I never felt like Lizzie and Darcy got enough time to connect to make the whole proposal/love confession/etc. happen. In the show, it just felt rushed and sloppy and misplaced.

 

Here, though: I totally got it. The same stands true for a lot of other situations as well. For example, when Lizzie goes to shadow Pemberley Digital and spend time with the Darcy’s, we never actually see it - understandable considering how the show was styled and time constraints – but it still loses something in the translation.

 

Being able to read about it in Lizzie’s diary? It really showcased how pivotal to their relationship that time was. Also how devious (and sweet) Georgiana could be (not a bad thing!).

 

Regardless, however, I did really enjoy this. It wasn’t perfect – if this was Lizzie’s diary, there’s no reason why she’d recap, word for word no less, certain conversations or bring up obvious facts about her own life that both she and we already knew about – but neither was the series itself. That they had the actress who actually played Lizzie come in and do the reading for the audiobook was similarly a mixed blessing but I digress.

 

In the end, I think if you were to take the two pieces together – and why wouldn’t you? – this retelling was probably closer to gem than dud but still has a long way to go before it can be called either.

 

Cross posted from Humble Womble's Bits 'n' Books

Let two things be known. First, that I’m a massive Jane Austen fan. Second, that I’m a sucker for modern updates of classic literature or drama. Thus, Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, She’s the Man? Totally my thing. So, obviously The Lizzie Bennet diaries were going to be totally up my street. Thankfully, I didn’t discover them until they’d almost finished. That way, I got to binge on them to my heart’s content during my final exams for my undergraduate degree. They were definitely a great way to take my mind off things when I was feeling just a little stressed out.

So, it was pretty natural that I would love this book. And I did. It directly follows the plot of both Pride and Prejudice and the Lizzie Bennet Diaries videos, the premise being that this diary is a supplementary document for Lizzie to submit as part of her thesis to flesh out the gaps between her own private life and the private-public version of herself that she presents in her videos. It’s a really interesting idea, and I found myself being totally immersed in this world, to the point that I almost couldn’t remember what had happened in which version!

The format obviously has a few problems. While many of the entries offer more detail on things we saw in the videos (and some deal with things we didn’t see, more of which in a second) some are very, very close to being exact rehashes of what happened on screen. And two of the entries – at two pivotal points in the story! – are transcripts from the video. This just feels lazy. I also occasionally felt the voice strayed away from something that would be natural to write in your private diary into directly aping Lizzie’s (and other characters’) voices from the videos. Few people write the way they speak. I can accept this more in an ordinary novel; for example, many thought the voices of Hazel and Gus were unnatural in The Fault in our Stars, but I saw it more as an idealised version of how we think we sound as teenagers, as opposed to something that was supposed to directly mirror reality. However, in this diary, I found that sometimes Lizzie could have done with having a looser, more natural voice, as that’s how one tends to write in such a personal account.

However, reading this was more than worth it for all the extras and bonuses that the writers through our way. Chief among these was the choice to give a few extra details about Jane and Bing’s relationship and the detailing of the day out in San Francisco. The diary did have the unfortunate side effect of making me like Lydia less rather than more but I guess I’m just never gonna love her. I get that it’s from Lizzie’s often biased perspective, but I don’t like how her irresponsible behaviour in this iteration gets turned round into being everyone else’s fault but hers. Maybe that’s just my perspective getting in the way, though. There are some genuinely sweet moments in this books between all the characters.

I’d recommend this to anyone who liked the Youtube show, but I don’t know if it would necessarily work outwith that. I think it would, but I think the Youtube show is ideally viewed first. How do you know if you’ll like the Youtube series? If you like “quirky”, modern takes on classic literature that aren’t too serious, and are relatively faithful to the source material (but aren’t too anal about exact detail-matching) then I would definitely recommend it. Also, it certainly is light-years beyond the vast majority of the Jane Austen “sequels” and other such stuff that have been written.