Twelve Dates with Gentlemen Friends: A Modern Pride and Prejudice Reimagining

By: Kimbelle Pease

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

In this reimagining, Jane, Elizabeth, and Mary Baker, along with their dear friend Charlotte Perth, who are named after daughters depicted in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice, work at a suburban middle school. While their lives are fulfilling, these self-proclaimed wallflowers are looking for a little joie de vivre. Elizabeth is challenged with the task of forcing them out of their ordinary, single-gal routines for the summer.

An idea sparks when Elizabeth again sees William Darcy Godfrey behind her in line at the coffee shop, and, unbeknownst to her, she sets her group of girls up with four of New York society’s most eligible bachelors for twelve dates. The women intend to use this opportunity to overcome their most hard-to-break habits, seemingly inherited from the characters for whom they were named. The men, feeling the ticking of their own biological clocks, are hoping these ladies are the ones they have been searching for. Will our quartet of women take a chance on love that they believed was only to be found in books, or will they let it pass them by?

One warning, two cautions, and two notes:

WARNING: The characters of Pride and Prejudice found within this tale are not without some of the traits of those in canon, yet have modern concerns, and many of these preoccupations, too, are not unlike those that beleaguered our heroines of yore. Their hearts long for the kind of love their namesakes also sought in The Novel, but they know that life is not a fairytale.

CAUTION: While writing the group chat/text messages in this reimagining, I took the liberty of adding punctuation to close their texts despite my daughter’s assurances that no one cares about punctuation anymore (oh, the horror). There is ample proof that this is definitely NOT the case for the current generation of JAFF readers.

CAUTION: As this is a modern reimagining, profanity is not so sparingly used by either the ladies or the gentlemen. Given the circumstances of their lives, however, all of the characters often work around the more profane words.

NOTE from the author: This book has a detailed setup and a plethora of conversations, with the hope that those who enjoy modern JAFF feel like Elizabeth and Darcy are only a text away.

NOTE from the author: This reimagining is not a tale that would happen to just anybody. It is fictional and fantastical in nature, but is, perhaps, slightly more plausible than the tale of the daughter of a minor country squire being twice proposed to by a man at the highest levels of society in the Regency era.

Cute idea but would be better with a full cast

While the story idea is cute the execution could have been better. The virtual voice narration made it hard to get into the story. If there was a full cast or duel narration the flow would be better. We need the emotion and inflection of an actual voice to help this story along. It took me over a month to get through this story when normally I fly through anything Pride and Prejudice related. I can’t even really get into the plot and character because all I can focus on is how hard of a listen it was due to the narration.