Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, #1) in Pop Sugar's Annual Ultimate Reading Challenge

Dec 19, 2018 Stephanie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: friend-recommend, spoopy

When I picked up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I somehow didn't expect Pride and Prejudice...and zombies.

So literally this is Pride and Prejudice, somewhat glazed over, like you know how you do when you write a research paper and you read a paragraph in some research and you're like "Yeah, exactly that paragraph, but I'm no plagiarizer, so I'm just gonna summarize that and flip around some words." That. This. This is that. But with some added zombie mentions.

My favorite parts of this were tw When I picked up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I somehow didn't expect Pride and Prejudice...and zombies.

So literally this is Pride and Prejudice, somewhat glazed over, like you know how you do when you write a research paper and you read a paragraph in some research and you're like "Yeah, exactly that paragraph, but I'm no plagiarizer, so I'm just gonna summarize that and flip around some words." That. This. This is that. But with some added zombie mentions.

My favorite parts of this were twofold:

First, that I can never get over my love for Darcy and Elizabeth, the OTP to end all OTPs.

Second, the very very few times (time? the one time?) that the zombie-plagued English setting actually had an affect on the story ((view spoiler))

I can't get over how much I wanted something MORE here. I wanted a retelling, I think. I wanted the same notes, the same characters, and kind of the same setting, but with some zombie plotting being most of the heft of the story. It wasn't that. It was awkwardly toned because of that. You can't really seamlessly mix Jane Austen's writing and dialogue and wordy politeness with a zombie thriller/satire. The dialogue was horribly uneven. Sometimes it felt copied and pasted from the original text and sometimes it was fresh dialogue that flowed. I legit skipped over walls of text that I knew wouldn't get me anywhere. I also hated that the narrator would call Elizabeth and Jane by their Christian names most of the time and then suddenly switch to "Miss Bennet and her sister." The pause there while I tried to nail who he was talking about was excruciating (there are a lot of Miss Bennets okay). The added violence was also so jarring.

Anyway, this could've been so much better. The uneven tone, the unimpressive addition of zombies (WHICH COULD'VE BEEN AWESOME), and the slog of re-reading a well-crafted story in a degraded state makes me put this at 2 stars, but only barely.

Does the movie have actual zombie plot in it? I bet it does. Lady Catherine has an eyepatch, so that must be fun. ...more

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