There is a lot to recommend A Certain Appeal. ED is a family friendly blog and it’s important that a head’s up about salacious sexy times is given. While I’m not a fan of doing summaries in my book reviews, that’s what other reviews and summaries at the back of books are for, it’s important to understand that this is a super inventive, and very sexy, way of telling the timeless story. He falls in love with Charles Bingley, Darcy’s best friend and may one day happen to be an investor at Meryton. Jane is Bennet’s (as she preferred to be called) best friend who also happens to be gay. Will Darcy is in wealth management and whose family line stretches back far and wide and the owner of Pemberley, the New York possible hot spot event space. Lizzy Bennet is a struggling interior designer currently working as a glorified admin assistant and works at Meryton, a burlesque club, at night. Somehow the four sisters are wrapped into it, as is Wickham, and Pemberly and Meryton become name of places or villages.Įnter A Certain Appeal which takes the Pride and Prejudice trope for a refreshing and sexy spin. The heroine is Elizabeth Bennet and the hero is Fitzwilliam Darcy. So, what make a story an exact Pride and Prejudice retelling? Honestly? It’s the use of names. It’s one of most popular tropes in the romance genre. The story of a couple who can’t stand each other, realise how terribly wrong they are about the other, and then have a HEA is a story of all times. They can either be really good or really terrible (hello Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) and you really don’t know until you get into the story.īut Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is ripe for retelling. Pride and Prejudice retellings are a crapshoot. Love’s the last thing on her mind when she locks eyes with Will Darcy across the crowded club, yet the spark between them is undeniable-that is, until she overhears the uptight wealth manager call her merely “tolerable.” Bennet is determined to write Darcy off, but once their besties fall head-over-heels, they’re thrown into each other’s orbit again and again.(Other reviews: Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)) Now an executive assistant by day and stage kitten by night, she’s discovered a second home with the performers at Meryton, Manhattan’s top-tier burlesque venue. After a betrayal derailed her interior design career, Liz Bennet found a fresh start in New York. A sparkling contemporary retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in the tantalizing world of New York City burlesque, perfect for fans of The Kiss Quotient and The Roommate.

A Certain Appeal by Vanessa King