Saturdays in Books

The first half of this is a lot of fun. Mary really gets a poor treatment in P&P, so I enjoyed getting to see her in a story all her own. But the last half was lacking, and overall, this felt like a pointless excursion with nothing to say trading solely on a cute concept executed in unremarkable prose. Every time it seemed like this might be going somewhere, it snapped back into the familiar shapes of it's source material with no added wit, depth, or delight not lifted directly from them.

And then, while I was still thinking about what was so unsatisfactory about this book, I read the male glance and now I can't disconnect the two. I cannot help but wonder how reviewers would respond to this same book written by a woman. I cannot help but wish I'd read the version of this written by a woman, because it would have had to be so much smarter than this to make it through the publishing world. 

Meanwhile, this is adequate for a jaunt down familiar streets, I suppose. But for that, it's less time and money to read the short story that this novel originated from.