Mouse found another one!

You all know by now that I am here for a good Pride & Prejudice variation. If it mentions the novel, chances are I’m picking it up.
After the queer YA version in Most Ardently, I found this one, Just as You Are. A lesbian-sapphic romance that touches on gender norms, expectations, transgender issues, homophobia and elder queers all while telling the story of Lizzie and Darcy. Or in this book, Liz and Daria.
The story itself is well known so, friends, you all know how this goes.

In this version, Liz, Jane, Katie, and Lydia are roommates in New York and work for a queer magazine called Nether Fields, run by a woman named Charlotte Liu. The paper is on the verge of being shut down before it is bought at the last minute by two wealthy lesbians, Daria Fitzgerald and Bailey Cox. From there, the story progresses as usual. Of course Wickham and Caroline appear as the antagonists, Wickham as Weston, a lesbian who sets her sights on Liz and Caroline as herself, only this time she’s Daria’s longtime friend and ex.  Even Lady Catherine makes an appearance as Daria’s Aunt Katherine, rich and the person who paid for Daria’s schooling when her parent’s disowned her.

The climatic scenes, of course, were different but still held a punch Jane and Bailey are on again/off again so much that even I side-eyed Jane in a girl, what are you doing? Sort of way. The story is mostly about Liz and Daria, mostly about Liz. It’s obvious the other characters are in support and sometimes antagonistic roles only.
I enjoyed reading about Liz and her confusion over who she was. Throughout the story she struggles with if she’s too feminine or too butch. She’ll feel girly one moment and then next regret her decision and try to figure out how to hide. If she dresses more masculine, she feels as if she’s pretending. I think a lot of women, queer or straight, struggle with this. It’s the famous line in the Barbie movie, “You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you temp them too much or you threaten other women”. Alternatively, to that, woman can’t wear too masculine of clothes because that makes them threatening. 
Another good line that highlights this is said by Daria. She is an accountant by trade and when she wears suits to her job because she realized early on that, “The men shake hands with each other and hug the women. I’d never noticed it before until I started dressing like this and suddenly men had no idea how they were supposed to greet me.”
The underlying message in this book is “be yourself”. One of what I think was supposed to be a penultimate scene and eventually got lost in the story was a picture Liz finds of three women in 1970 on Christopher Street who were part of the Gay Liberation Rally. The photographer of those photos took them because she didn’t want them to be forgotten. They were wildly being themselves in the best way they knew how.

There were a few things that caught me off guard in this book, like that despite the bones of the book being a Pride &Prejudice variation it sometimes read as a lesbian Sex in the City episode. The nods to other popular media interpretation of the book. The title is what Mark Darcy says to Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones’ Diary, and I saw the nods you gave to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. The abrupt ending. Despite all of this, I enjoyed it. It was good. Spice level is tolerable, but it’s not really needed at all to push along the tension between Daria and Liz. That was perfect all on its own.

Apologies for not posting a musings last week, I was so intent on catching up on my reading that I forgot topic are also something I need to be researching. Rest assured next week we’ll be back on track.
Happy first day of summer! (yesterday, today, whenever you celebrate it) The area around me is having a heat wave so if you’re located in the States or anywhere else that might be extra hot this weekend, remember to hydrate and stay cool. Stay in the shade and try to take your mind off it the heat by opening up a good book.