A gender-swapping, contemporary adaptation of Pride & Prejudice…

Harper’s Bazaar’s list of 15 books to read this winter along with works by Lauren Groff, John Irving, Garth Risk Hallberg, Elizabeth Strout…

“Messina maintains the emotional depth of the characters with easy humor…. An imaginative and witty retelling of universally acknowledged truths.”
Kirkus Reviews

“A fun modern twist.”
NY Daily News

“Lynn Messina has excelled in taking one of my favourite classics and transporting it into the modern age, while maintaining the essence of Pride and Prejudice. Prejudice & Pride is truly magnificent.”
Fresh Fiction

You know Darcy: rich, proud, standoffish, disapproving, one of the greatest romantic heroes of all time. But you don’t know this Darcy because THIS Darcy is a woman.

In Prejudice & Pride, Lynn Messina’s modern retelling with a gender-bendy twist, everything is vaguely familiar and yet wholly new. Bingley is here, in the form of Charlotte “Bingley” Bingston, an heiress staying at the Netherfield hotel on Central Park, as is Longbourn, transformed from an ancestral home into a perennially cash-strapped art museum on the edge of the city. Naturally, it employs an audacious fundraiser with an amused glint in his eye called Bennet.

All the favorite characters are present and cleverly updated: Providing the cringe-worthy bon mots is Mr. Meryton, the nerve-wracked executive director of the Longbourn who’s always on the lookout for heiresses to join his museum’s very important committees. (Universally acknowledged truth: Any woman in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a social committee to chair.) Collin Parsons is still in obsequious, if ironic, awe of his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. The wicked Georgia Wickham toils as a graphic designer at Redcoat Design by day and schemes against Darcy by night.

With her trademark wit and style, Lynn Messina takes the genres she does best—chick lit, mashups, and Regency romance—and weaves them into one delightfully entertaining tale that doubles as a fun guessing game.

Lynn Messina is the author of 15 novels, including Fashionistas, which has been translated into 16 languages. Her essays have appeared in Self, American Baby and the Modern Love column of The New York Times. She’s also a regular contributor to the Times Motherlode blog. Lynn lives in New York City with her husband and sons.