Book Review: Definitely, Maybe in Love by Ophelia London

NOTE: I received the eARC from Entangled Publishing. Thanks guys!

I love adaptations of Pride and Prejudice. I mean, I LOVE them. Which is why I just had to request Definitely, Maybe in Love. For some reason, I also read some reviews beforehand, and naturally there were both 5star ones and 1star ones. *sigh* You can't have perfection.

But.

Then I started reading it and... Oh. My. Dear. Jane. Austen! The beginning disappointed me so much, instead of truly following the story, I found myself COMPARING it to the original Pride and Prejudice. Believe me, there was A LOT to be desired. True, they aren't supposed to be the same, seeing that the action takes place in an entirely different setting, with a different set of characters. Yet, I couldn't get into the story and just wished for Mr.Darcy to just appear out of nowhere and make it better.

Until.

Yeah, it got better. There's this breakthrough scene involving a fight with baking ingredients and cranberry sauce. Mmmmmm!!! I can see that scene in my mind right now, and I'm thankful for its existence. It turned the whole story around. Somehow whatever happened afterwards was written differently or so it seemed. The whole writing style was on a whole new level. I can't even explain it, but if I have to I'm gonna have to split it to before and after.

BEFORE:
*boring and bland, couldn't catch my attention. It was more like a cliche novel than anything original.
*unrealistic to the point of making my eyes hurt from rolling
*shallow, mediocre characters who didn't grab my attention
*Spring annoyed me with her defensive speech about her hair. Who cares, really?

AFTER:
*interesting, especially how Henry and Spring sort of got to terms with each other. Sure there were almost all the P&P elements, just rewritten to suit the age and characters
*believable, though sometimes I wondered if I were in Spring's place whether I'd act like she did (yes, includes stupid at times)
*delves deeper into the story and the characters. Everyone sort of gets to know each other better
*Spring finally manages to realize the world doesn't revolve around her

One thing that bothered me, and I have to say it lowered my rating, was that I truly believe that even an adaptation of an original book should somehow manage to stick to the characters as they were meant to be. Sure, they wouldn't be exact same copies, but the character traits should be there. And I did not feel like Henry resembled Mr.Darcy all that much. Darcy was memorable, and Henry... I don't know. He was just there. What I did like about him though was how he always made Spring strive to be better, to do more. He challenged her to persevere, but also to look at things from a different, broader perspective.

I can't say all that much about Spring. Even though she was the POV character I couldn't feel close to her. Half the time her reasoning was silly and that annoyed me. I was never annoyed with Elizabeth Benett, so no wonder. Honestly, I can't even remember her all that well and that's saying volumes.

Dart and Julia.... I don't know. Back in the day I'd understand how their relationship might be broken over Mr.Darcy's opinion, but nowadays? No guy would ever break up with his girlfriend just because his best friend was suspicious she didn't love him back. It just doesn't sound right.

To tell you the truth, now that I think of it, Definitely, Maybe In Love reminds me more of Beautiful Disaster by Jaime McGuire(we're talking characters, not adaptation) than P&P.

In conclusion, Definitely, Maybe In Love turned out to be a sweet book. But that's it.

My rating is 3/5 stars