Pride and Preston Lin
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
KIRKUS’ BEST OF 2024 PICKS
Library Journal's Best Books of 2024
Named Booklist’s Top 10 Romance Fiction of 2024
"In a world with so many Pride & Prejudice adaptations, a new one has to be truly special to stand out, and this one is... A warm, sweet story with all the witticisms Austen fans savor." — Starred Review, Kirkus Reviews
When perspiration meets privilege, love might just school them both.
She’s working two jobs to get through college. He’s the golden boy who doesn’t know the meaning of struggle.
One fateful night at the family’s restaurant, Lissie Cheng accidentally serves a dish containing shellfish to an allergic customer, running afoul of the wealthy Lin family and wonder boy Preston in particular. Preston Lin, star swimmer and Stanford Ph.D. student, who is as handsome as he is self-righteous. When his response to the incident threatens the family livelihood, Lissie must scramble to outwit him. If only he didn’t keep popping up in her life, so she could despise him in peace!
Preston’s life hasn’t always been picture-perfect. Before Lissie came on the scene, he worked hard not only at school and at swimming, but also at burying a few things he’d rather forget. But that girl–! The past isn’t the only thing she’s stirring up.
In this sparkling contemporary riff on Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice, the beloved story gets a fresh spin. Who will prevail over Lissie’s heart? Her pride or Preston Lin?
"Compulsively readable." — Publishers Weekly
"Like Crazy (not) Rich Asians meets Jane Austen, Pride and Preston Lin is a delightful retelling of a beloved classic that had me smiling from page one." — Evelyn Skye, New York Times bestselling author of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dudley (The Accidental Servants) puts a slow-burning but compulsively readable Asian American twist on Pride and Prejudice. Fifth-year college senior Lissie Cheng, an especially prickly take on Elizabeth Bennett who moonlights as a waitress at her aunt and uncle's Chinese restaurant, and Preston Lin, a dashing PhD candidate who proves a worthy Mr. Darcy, get off on the wrong foot when Lissie accidentally delivers a dish containing shrimp to Preston's table and his dining companion has an allergic reaction. Following this meet-ugly, the plot hews closely to the original, so much so, in fact, that it somewhat strains credulity that Lissie, an Austenite adapting Pride and Prejudice into a play for her senior thesis, doesn't notice the parallels. Readers familiar with the original will worry that the Mr. Wickham story line—with the part of Wickham here played by Lissie's sister's middle school swim coach, Wayman Wang—is heading somewhere very dark indeed, but Dudley subverts expectations, keeping the story from getting too heavy but also lowering the emotional stakes of the climax. Still, Dudley brings crisp specificity to her characters' culture, exploring family dynamics and generational differences; the protagonists have heaps of chemistry; and the sweet dynamic between Lissie and her sisters adds heart. Fans of diverse Austen reimaginings will want to check this out.
