Fall For You(The Jane Austen Academy Series 1)Publisher: The Alpha Division, 2012Genre: YA Contemporary
To say Lizzie and Dante are polar opposites is the understatement of the century. He's a snooty Exeter transfer with more money than Google. She's a driven study-a-holic barely keeping up with tuition. It's obvious that Dante thinks he's way too good for Lizzie. And Lizzie knows Dante is a snob with a gift for pushing her buttons.
But things are changing fast this year at the Academy. And when Lizzie's quest to stop those changes blows up in her face, taking her oldest friendship with it, she has nowhere else to turn but to Dante, with his killer blue eyes, his crazy-sexy smile, and his secrets... Secrets Lizzie can't seem to leave alone, no matter how hard she tries...
It’s a new year at the Jane Austen Academy and Lizzie is already creating trouble. Her newspaper piece is all about the changes occurring at the school, mainly the addition of male students. Lizzie she has Ellie—her best friend and roommate—support, has already planned out more articles of ‘protest’, and she’s sure those articles will get her a spot in Georgetown. But upon arrival at school, all her plans crumble. Suddenly her roommate isn’t Ellie, it’s Anna her nemesis, the Headmistress bribes her into becoming editor of the school’s newspaper, and interviewing the newly arrived male students, and gorgeous, tall, serious, and icy-blue eyed Dante is her competition to get into Georgetown!
A light and quirky take on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Cecilia Gray’s Fall For You is the perfect summer read.
I’m a big fan of Jane Austen’s work, so when I saw this was based on her work I knew I had to read it. This fun and short novelette kept my eyes glued to the page with Lizzie’s antics, and Dante’s sweet if abrupt kindnesses. Though this first book is about Pride and Prejudice, we also get to meet the other characters which are from the other Austen books, and it took me a while to get all the characters straight in my head. There’s a lot of them: Lizzie, Dante, Ellie, Edward, Georgina, Josh, Anne, Rick, and Emma. And I kept trying to figure out who was who and from what Austen book instead of just reading, but eventually I figured it out and dove right into the story.
The way Gray worked the themes of pride and prejudice into the story worked really well. Lizzie is fierce when it comes to journalism and she’s proud of her work, but her articles are quite mean sometimes. And she totally makes assumptions about Dante, before getting her facts right. Like in P&P their interest for each other is filled with little acts of kindness, and just plain sexy tension between them. Though I did like their romance, I just wish there had been more to it. Part of it, I think, its due to the shortness of the story.
On this same note, I must also applaud Gray’s idea of having all the Austen characters attending the same high school. The girls were just amazing, and fun, and I wanted to be their friends. One of my favorites scenes ever is the ‘tree scene.’ It’s even in the trailer, which you can check out HERE. If there’s one thing I know for sure is that I will be keeping an eye out for the other books in this series. I can’t wait to read So Into You, which is based on Sense & Sensibility!
Favorite Quotes:
Lizzie scanned the auditorium and had to admit that a teensy, tiny part of her felt the excitement in the air. There was a buzz, a thrill—there were boys—everywhere. They moved in hordes—they couldn’t have become friends already? A cute one—a boy equivalent of a Labrador with mussy brown hair and big, brown eyes rimmed with impossibly long lashes—grinned at her, so friendly she found herself smiling back.
Mentally, she shook herself. No, they were the enemy. They were the competition.
