Elizabeth of East Hampton

Author: Audrey Bellezza and Emily Harding
Title: Elizabeth of East Hampton
Publisher: Gallery Books
Date Published: 08/06/2024

Read Dates: 07/24/2024- 07/26/2024
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

 📖 I received a gifted e-book ARC. The following is my honest review✍🏻

Elizabeth of East Hampton is a dual POV retelling of the Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice. It features Elizabeth, an East Hampton resident who loves to surf and dreams of becoming a journalist but must fill her days working in her family’s struggling bakery. She meets Will Darcy, a wealthy man from Manhattan who is spending the summer in the Hamptons with his friend Charlie. There is an immediate dislike between them that slowly grows to a mutual understanding.

I really loved this retelling! I love Pride and Prejudice and haven’t had the best of luck with books inspired by it, but this one really hit the mark! It was predictable in the way that retellings always are, but still so creative and interesting. Worth the read, for sure!

This fresh and whip-smart modern retelling of Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice transports you to summer in the Hamptons, where classes clash, rumors run wild, and love has a frustrating habit of popping up where you least expect it.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged—well, by Elizabeth Bennet anyway—that there’s nothing worse than summer in the Hamptons. She should she’s lived out there her whole life. Every June, her hometown on the edge of Long Island is inundated with rich Manhattanites who party until dawn and then disappear by September. And after twenty-five years, Lizzy wants to leave, too.

But after putting her own dreams on hold to help save her family’s failing bakery, she’s still surfing the same beach every morning and waiting for something, anything, to change. She’s not holding her breath though, not even when her sister starts flirting with the hot new bachelor in town, Charlie Pierce, and he introduces Lizzy to his even hotter friend.

Will Darcy is everything Lizzy Bennet is not. Aloof, arrogant…and rich. Of course, he’s never cared about money. In fact, it’s number one on his long list of things that irk him. Number two? His friend Charlie’s insistence on setting him up with his new girlfriend’s sharp-tongued sister. Lizzy Bennet is all wrong for him, from her money-hungry family to her uncanny ability to speak to him as bluntly as he does everyone else. But then maybe that’s why he can’t stop thinking about her.

Lizzy is sure Will hates everybody. He thinks she willfully misunderstands them. Yet, just as they strike an uneasy truce, mistakes threaten Charlie and Annabelle’s romance, with Will and Lizzy caught in the undertow. Between a hurricane and a hypocritical stepmother, a drunken voicemail and a deceptive property developer, the two must sift through the gossip and lies to protect the happiness of everyone they love—even if it means sacrificing their own. But when the truth also forces them to see each other in an entirely new light, they must swallow their pride to learn that love is a lot like sometimes the only way to survive is to let yourself fall.