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jassmine 's review for:
Good Fortune
by C.K. Chau
"Elizabeth held out the last of the smoldering joint. "No," she said. "Thank you."
Darcy took it from her with a light shrug of gratitude.
She stared at him in amazement as he lifted to his lips and took a drag. "You smoke?"
Brendan snickered, shoving his hands in his pockets. "No," he said, flashing him a quick glance. "He doesn't."
Darcy pressed his lips into a thin line. "It's dead, anyway."
This book gave me all the feels... I really don't know what it is about smoking as a romance trope that's doing it for me - since I don't care much for smoking in real life and I think the "drinking from the same bottle" variant is kind of cringe - but... ugh, the scene above made me kick my feet!
Anyway, maybe I should start from the beginning because Good Fortune isn't on many of my friends radars but it absolutely should be! This book is a contemporary US-Chinese [b:Pride and Prejudice|1885|Pride and Prejudice|Jane Austen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320399351l/1885._SY75_.jpg|3060926] retelling which... honestly, after reading this, I'm kind of convinced that all contemporary P&P retellings should be South-East Asian, because this just fit so well! I loved Ayesha at Last, but I think I loved this book even better. It just softens some of the harsh edges of the Bennet family, leaving some of their relationships tense, but also more loving (I was a bit concerned about this after reading [b:The Other Bennet Sister|45186556|The Other Bennet Sister|Janice Hadlow|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1582124111l/45186556._SY75_.jpg|69908883] earlier this year). It's a bit hard for me to describe... but I just really loved the vibe of the book.
I also really loved Darcy's character. We only see him through Elizabeth's eyes and for most of the book she isn't really charitable towards him and despite that I related to a lot of his behaviour and read it completely differently from her. I am wondering how much of it was authorial intention and how much just my baseless wishing. However, I believe I'm not the first one to read Darcy as neurodivergent and I think the writing in this book is really helping that assumption. Like the scene where Darcy looks kind of lost into the menu and Elizabeth thinks he's just too snobbish to find anything on the menu that would appeal to him. While my brain went immediately to "no, he just never ate here before, didn't look up the menu in advance and they don't have his usual choices, so he's clearly having a decision freeze". I mean, I could totally be wrong, but there were several moments like this one and I was just relating to him super hard from the beginning.
P&P is also kind of the ultimate "he falls first" trope and I do love that, it's one of my favourite. And for that reason I found Darcy's side of the romance very satisfying - the joint scene is just perfection! I am a sucker for a good pining and omg did I feel him pine even though our POV Elizabeth was completely oblivious. If I had to complain, I would say that Elizabeth's side of the romance was a little less satisfactory. I feel like this is a common issue with P&P retellings and it was okay in this one, but I was just so into the romance here that I really wanted it to have a little more powerful ending and it just.... stayed kind of flat? Which, flat on a pretty great level, but I wanted a bit of a crescendo, you know?
Unlike [b:Ayesha at Last|43124133|Ayesha at Last|Uzma Jalaluddin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1544037862l/43124133._SX50_.jpg|57683370] Good Fortune pretty much goes beat by beat with P&P which made it a bit predictable, but it also switches things around enough so that you can never be sure what exactly will happen. For example, Mrs. Bennet/Chen is still interested to see her daughters well married but she's even more obsessed with them getting jobs that would give them enough status in the community. Jane is "the best" of the sisters because she's in medical school not because she's the prettiest. This changes the main theme of the book pretty successfully - there is not a single marriage proposal in sight! And I just loved how that shook things around, still you can generally guess what kind of beat would come next and toward the ending I was ready for it to loosen up a little bit. Although that might be also a consequence of me reading too many P&P retellings this year... ([b:Most Ardently|111673641|Most Ardently|Gabe Cole Novoa|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1684570364l/111673641._SY75_.jpg|95479237], [b:The Clergyman's Wife|44286204|The Clergyman's Wife A Pride & Prejudice Novel|Molly Greeley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1569893224l/44286204._SY75_.jpg|67107724], [b:The Other Bennet Sister|45186556|The Other Bennet Sister|Janice Hadlow|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1582124111l/45186556._SY75_.jpg|69908883]...)
Good Fortune also talks about photography a lot and at the beginning I wasn't quite sure about it (especially since I had hard time imagining Elizabeth Bennet as a photographer geek), but as the story progressed the book used it really cleverly as a narrative instrument and I was won over.
The one thing that I feel could be deal-breaker about this book for some of my bookish friends is the fact that Darcy is filthy rich, which honestly I'm not the biggest fan of either. The book has a big theme of community versus profit and I was really curious how the author will solve the dilemma to make everyone a good person, but she... sort of doesn't really? I mean it kind of turns out that
Spoiler
community was always important for Darcy and apparently he had been heading mentoring programs and other community based projects for years, but for some reason he baited Elizabeth into thinking that he only cared about profit for some reason? It's kind of unclear what had been his intentions with their local community center in the beginning... like did he changed his mind around it or... what was he doing?!Spoiler
Elizabeth and Charlotte are clearing windows and Darcy is like "you should use ladder since you are so small" and Elizabeth goes in her head "well, that's just terrible idea, we done this bazillion of times and I know that's stupid but I'm going to use the ladder just to show him how stupid that is" which is pretty on brand for Elizabeth and then it does in fact go terribly and she and Jane get hurt but for some reason she never goes "See, Darcy, this was terrible idea!" but instead she kind of takes the blame for it? I mean, if she did it knowing it was stupid it is her fault too, but that just undermines her logic in the beginning?! Like, am I going crazy?! Be a little unreasonable, Elizabeth, please!So, yeah, there are some downsides and some places were just a little bit unclear which made me think that just a tiny bit more of editing could have make this book an utter perfection, alas...
I really loved this, I loved the characters, I loved the chemistry, I really enjoyed the Chinese culture bits. The audio narration is also spectacular, I loved that quite a bit, even though the narrator is not doing anything that special, but sometimes that's way better than a narrator trying way too hard. Catherine Ho has a really pleasant voice and I enjoyed her take on the characters. I would absolutely recommend this to anyone who likes a good P&P retelling, C.K. Chau has a great understanding of the original and I loved reading her spin of things. But this novel is absolutely capable of standing on it's own as a great contemporary romance that is really funny and focuses on family quite a bit. Really wish this book will find its readers because I don't understand how it can have so little reads on GR!
4,5⭐ rounded up from me!