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A review by jackiehorne
First & Then by Emma Mills
3.0
Xmas present from my significant other, due to rec on John Green's blog. Not really a retelling of Pride & Prejudice, as some have billed it, more a nod in P&P's direction (and lots of direct references to JA and her novels by our first-person narrator, Devon, a senior in high school). This book opens with Devon meeting with a college counselor, and thinking about how "staunchly average" she is. By book's end, readers, along with Devon, are supposed to recognize that Devon has her strong points (being friendly and easy to talk to), although I wasn't quite convinced that this was in fact true, since we don't often SEE her doing this very much. Thus, I couldn't get very excited about Devon as a character, to tell the truth.
The characters around Devon are far more interesting. There's Foster, the slightly goofy frosh cousin who has come to live with Devon's family after his father's death and his mother's fall into drug addiction. There's Cas, Devon's long-time best friend and the boy she's been secretly crushing on for ages. And there's Ezra, apparently arrogant football star, who befriends Foster when it turns out that Foster is unexpectedly proficient at kicking a football. If you've read your P&P, you won't be surprised at who Devon ends up with on the romantic front. What happens to finally wean her from her own "Mr. Wickham" was painfully spot-on, showing adolescent friendship/relationships when one friend's feelings veer towards romance while the other's don't. The most moving relationship here, though, is between Devon and Foster, although why Foster regards Devon as his "role model" is never quite clear (see thought in paragraph above re Devon's character).
There's also a quirky/strange set of tertiary characters, characters who felt as if they were being included here as set-ups for future sequels.
The characters around Devon are far more interesting. There's Foster, the slightly goofy frosh cousin who has come to live with Devon's family after his father's death and his mother's fall into drug addiction. There's Cas, Devon's long-time best friend and the boy she's been secretly crushing on for ages. And there's Ezra, apparently arrogant football star, who befriends Foster when it turns out that Foster is unexpectedly proficient at kicking a football. If you've read your P&P, you won't be surprised at who Devon ends up with on the romantic front. What happens to finally wean her from her own "Mr. Wickham" was painfully spot-on, showing adolescent friendship/relationships when one friend's feelings veer towards romance while the other's don't. The most moving relationship here, though, is between Devon and Foster, although why Foster regards Devon as his "role model" is never quite clear (see thought in paragraph above re Devon's character).
There's also a quirky/strange set of tertiary characters, characters who felt as if they were being included here as set-ups for future sequels.