When I poked my head into the writing world, I noticed that there was a particular book that was very popular among my fellow female authors: Pride and Prejudice. I’d never read it before (being Canadian and all, I was force fed Canadian lit in my schooling), so I became curious about why it was so popular.

I’ll admit right now, it took me over a year of having seen it mentioned a lot in my twitter feed before I endeavored to dip my toe in the experience of it. I watched the movie. I didn’t get it. Was it good? Sure, but not really romantic or anything. After posting my experience on Facebook, I was directed to the mini-series. Again, I watched the whole thing with hope that, by the end of it, I would be a P&P fan. Nope, didn’t happen.

Fast forward two months, I’m sitting in my living room, Kobo in hand and an urge to read. P&P was a free eBook I’d downloaded once I had my new toy from Santa up and running. I was going to read it. At this point, I’ve engrossed myself with this story enough that a simple few words triggers memories of the speech on the page before me to the point that I feel like I’ve read this book three times a year my entire life. At the very least, it had some very unforgettable verse. But, alas, I still wasn’t a believer. About to give up all hope, I remembered seeing a little book that had been part of my Twitter feed reading for as long as I’ve had an account.

Enter Nancy Kelley’s His Good Opinion.

If anyone was going to make me like this story, it would have to be a fan. In truth, however, I didn’t have any hope of being a fan going into this book.

And I’m still not, but I am a fan of THIS book.

His Good Opinion, which is P&P told entirely from Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy’s POV, has a lot more of the elements I was looking for in the original story. Nancy makes the desire of Elizabeth’s courtship far more believable, if I may say, as she pens the thoughts and feelings of Darcy as if she was Austen herself. While readying the original, thinking that his apparent sudden feelings seemed very absurd (even with the bits and pieces of his perspective), Nancy makes it feel natural and obvious. She does this again with the change that Darcy goes through, and for the first time, I didn’t walk away from the tale wondering what I was missing.

She creates scenes, whether based on the original text or not, that linger in your mind the way a great movie does, and the ending feels far more satisfying than Austen’s.

If anyone was to tell me that they were going to read Pride and Prejudice for the first time, or if they had the same feelings I had about this, I would recommend they go out and buy this book. Like, now!

I’ve been wanting to do book recommendations for a while, as I really enjoy reading and passing along great book suggestions, and I’m really happy that my first one is a fellow Indie. Nancy Kelley, if you ever write another classic based novel, I’ll probably be one of the first people to buy it.

His Good Opinion On Smashwords