*Spoiler free*
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Georgiana Darcy should have been expelled after The Incident with Wickham Foster last year – at least if you ask any of her Pemberley Academy classmates. She may have escaped expulsion because of her family name, but she didn’t escape the disappointment of her big brother Fitz, the scorn of the entire school, or, it turns out, Wickham’s influence. But she’s back for her junior year, and she needs to prove to everyone—Fitz, Wickham, her former friends, and maybe even herself—that she’s more than just an embarrassment to the family name. How hard can it be to become the Perfect Darcy? All she has to do is:
– Rebuild her reputation with the marching band (even if it kills her)
– Forget about Wickham and his lies (no matter how tempting they still are), and
– Distract Fitz Darcy—helicopter-sibling extraordinaire—by getting him to fall in love with his classmate, Lizzie Bennet (this one might be difficult…)
Sure, it’s a complicated plan, but so is being a Darcy. With the help of her fellow bandmate, Avery, matchmaking ideas lifted straight from her favorite fanfics, and a whole lot of pancakes, Georgie is going to see every one of her plans through. But when the weight of being the Perfect Darcy comes crashing down, Georgie will have to find her own way before she loses everything permanently—including the one guy who sees her for who she really is.
A Pride & Prejudice retelling set at a boarding school, about a girl who wants to get her life back on track. Yes, I was interested to see what this book was all about. Plus, I had seen a lot of love for this one online, so I was eager to see what I thought about it myself!
I really, really love this book. But there are also some things that kept me from loving it completely. So my feelings towards it are complicated.
One of the things I love most about this book was Georgie. She wants to be enough, to be her best, so much. She wants to try so hard. She’s doing her best, but things still seem to crumble around her. The self-hatred she feels, it hit me in the chest a bit. She wants to badly, but life seems to get in the way. She feels like there is so much she needs to change about herself to make the people around her happy, to make herself happy. I loved her so much, even through her mistakes, because she wanted to become better.
I basically loved all the characters. Avery is adorable and dorky. I ended up loving Finn a whole lot more than I thought I was going to, and he had his own storyline and journey as well. I loved Lizzie, and how she fit together with Finn. And Charlie was amazing. He is basically the epitome of a himbo.
The writing was also another thing that I loved. The angst and the pain and simple miserableness that Georgie sometimes felt was so, so well written. It was simply amazing.
So, the thing that I did not completely love was how the emotional journey and plot came to a close. I wanted more out of them. It felt like things were bad bad bad, then things were talked out a bit, and things were getting better. Emotions are messy. I didn’t want, and I didn’t expect, things to be perfect after things were talked out. (I would’ve been even more disappointed if they were haha.) I just wanted more out of the conclusion. I wanted things to be messier, because emotions are messy. Things are good and bad and in between, and emotions are never really wrapped up in the way a book is. I felt like Georgie’s emotional journey was leading somewhere, and then it didn’t go as deep as it could’ve, as deep as I wanted. Of course, this is just a personal thing.
Overall, I truly did fall in love with this book. It’s angsty and wonderful and geeky and adorable and so, so good. I did love it.
Accomplished comes out July 26, 2022! You can add it on Goodreads and pre-order a copy in the meantime!
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