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A review by eatingfiction
The Forgotten Book by Mechthild Gläser
2.0
I had no idea what I was getting into when I picked up The Forgotten Book, but I liked the cover and was intrigued by the title alone. So I dived in.
Aaaand this turns out to be a very unsubtle Pride and Prejudice retelling. Now, I'm not the biggest P&P fan but I know the story fairly well (my mum loves that stuff) and once I figured out which character fit into which role, it wasn't hard to predict the entire plot. This book doesn't take the story and spin it into something new - it is the same core characters, with the same story beats, thrown onto a new setting with some fantasy elements on the side. It's kinda cute; a watered-down, modern-day, magical, fluffy, high-school version of Pride and Prejudice would surely appeal to some. This isn't a badly written book. But it is so not my cup of tea.
The Forgotten Book is set at a German boarding school, and follows Emma and her friends going about their daily teenage drama nonsense and oh yeah, they also have a magic book. Everything written in said book will come true. This is an interesting concept but one that was underutilized. Though, I wanted it to go in a much darker direction, one that was never the intention of this novel and it never pretended to be anything other than it was. Again this is more a case of it not being my taste.
The fantasy element didn't gel all that well with the P&P aspect. Each was its own story, only overlapping because they had the same main characters.
Speaking of which...All the characters had original names except for Darcy. Why rename all the characters except him??? Okay...we all know why. So annoying.
Overall rating: 2.5 stars
Aaaand this turns out to be a very unsubtle Pride and Prejudice retelling. Now, I'm not the biggest P&P fan but I know the story fairly well (my mum loves that stuff) and once I figured out which character fit into which role, it wasn't hard to predict the entire plot. This book doesn't take the story and spin it into something new - it is the same core characters, with the same story beats, thrown onto a new setting with some fantasy elements on the side. It's kinda cute; a watered-down, modern-day, magical, fluffy, high-school version of Pride and Prejudice would surely appeal to some. This isn't a badly written book. But it is so not my cup of tea.
The Forgotten Book is set at a German boarding school, and follows Emma and her friends going about their daily teenage drama nonsense and oh yeah, they also have a magic book. Everything written in said book will come true. This is an interesting concept but one that was underutilized. Though, I wanted it to go in a much darker direction, one that was never the intention of this novel and it never pretended to be anything other than it was. Again this is more a case of it not being my taste.
The fantasy element didn't gel all that well with the P&P aspect. Each was its own story, only overlapping because they had the same main characters.
Speaking of which...All the characters had original names except for Darcy. Why rename all the characters except him??? Okay...we all know why. So annoying.
Overall rating: 2.5 stars