Accomplished

Gr 7 Up–A light boarding school YA with a light Pride and Prejudice flavor. Georgie Darcy is back at Pemberley Academy for her junior year despite The Incident with Wickham Foster that almost got her expelled. She hopes to repair her reputation and her relationship with her brother (and guardian) Fitz, but the return of manipulative drug dealer Wickham is making it difficult. The two make a deal—if she can get back in her brother’s good graces, ex-boyfriend Wickham will leave her alone. She decides to play matchmaker to her overbearing brother so that she can devote her time to becoming the perfect Darcy. Charlie Bingley and Lizzie Bennet make appearances, but it’s really the fleshing out of Georgie’s tale that makes this contemporary retelling a fun read for non-purist Janeites. Character development isn’t always consistent, and the charming tone sometimes clashes with the more serious aspects of the novel—Georgie’s low self-esteem and desperate attempts to fit in her family, Wickham’s sinister gaslighting of the younger girl. However, the heroine’s reckoning with her own racial and class privilege is refreshing, and her complicated but loving relationship with her brother is a shining point. All the main characters are assumed white.