Pride and Prejudice (With a Twist!)

Hello, everyone! This week I bring tidings of old stories and new twists! This week I finished Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, which was an interesting read. I got the inspiration to read it from a retelling of the original story that I read and loved called Lavender and Parsley by Lisa K. Nakamura! When I was planning this post, I thought I'd just do a review on Lavender and Parsley because it's not as well known as Pride and Prejudice but someone gave me the fabulous idea to do a comparison between the two novels, so here we go!

Let's start with the original first! Pride in Prejudice was first published in 1813 which gives you a good idea of the writing style of the story. If you haven't read any old books before I meant that the writer uses language and punctuation that is not used in today's literature which makes the story a bit more challenging to understand. I enjoyed reading this book and am glad I finally made the push to start and finish it. I started reading it because I had just finished a murder mystery/romance that had made me quite moody, so I thought that Pride and Prejudice would be a nice book with no serious emotional whiplash to use to recuperate from the last book I'd read. NOPE. Jane Austen, while having written Pride and Prejudice way back when somehow created her characters so that their personalities are relevant in today's novels. I especially loved Elizabeth as a character! It seems like a current heroine got lost and ended up in an older story and it was a pleasant surprise. Especially because the main goal of the other characters in the story was to get married to a rich man, no matter how the man treated them. This was disappointing but understandable because women were believed incapable to do anything except bear children and clean. Thank goodness our society is evolving! Anyway, I digress. I recommend this book to anyone looking to challenge themselves with a classic, but also want an engaging novel with themes of love and standing up for oneself and others.

Then we have the amazing retelling, Lavender and Parsley by Lisa K. Nakamura! Someone sent me this book to read after they recommended it and when I started reading it, I was immediately was drawn into a rich story. The story is so realistic and the settings are so vivid and well written that I felt transported to the different locations in the story. The story is also culturally diverse and has some major themes of girl power which was refreshing because the original story had did not have these elements as the main parts of the story! I would say that I enjoyed this book more than Pride and Prejudice because of how it has a culturally diverse cast of characters and has themes of woman empowerment. That being said, I do recommend reading Pride and Prejudice before Lavender and Parsley because it gives you a background on the storyline and who the characters are, but Lavender and Parsley can for sure be read alone.

I would rate Pride and Prejudice 4/5 stars because I enjoyed the novel but didn't love it, especially because of how in the period that the story takes place, women are considered property and less capable than a man which frustrates meme. I would say the story is geared towards older audiences but there is no content in the novel that is unsuitable to younger audiences so I would say if you can understand older pieces, go for it! I would give Lavender and Parsley 5/5 stars because I loved the book and all of the new twists that Lisa K. Nakamura added to the original storyline! I would recommend this book for 12+ year old readers, though, once again, there is no content in the novel that is unsuitable for younger people, I just feel that the story would be more appreciated by those 12 years old and above. I hope ya'll enjoyed this incredibly lengthy review/comparison of Pride and Prejudice and Lavender and Parsley! Thanks ya'll for reading and I shall see ya'll next time for another October update!

-Lady Renee of Bookshire

(Here's an amazing pic of Seattle! Thank you to the fabulous photographer that took this picture!)