I’ve been leery of Pride and Prejudice retellings in recent years – they jumped the shark a while ago, but this particular story is told from the point of view of the Bennetts’ servants, and had really good reviews, so I decided to jump on it when it came up as a Kindle deal. And I really enjoyed it.
The nice thing is that it deals very little with the actual story of Pride and Prejudice – it only dips in and out, at the points in the story where the servants were visible. And the servants’ stories exist mostly independently of the Bennetts, which makes this work. The dependencies make sense – Wickham is fully as reprehensible as he is in the other world, but the story is also really only dealing with the things that are important to the servants. I found it refreshing, really.
That said, I now really need to go back and read the original book – I was left with a bad taste in my mouth for the Bennetts’ side of things, which makes sense in relation to the servants’ story, but is not what I want to be left with for a feeling overall, of that particular story’s world.