The Bookish Mindset

Overview:

Title: Pride and Protest
Author: Nikki Payne
Published: 2022
Genre: Romance
Themes: Gentrification

One sentence summary: When gentrification threatens Liza’s community, she stands up to the developers but doesn’t expect to find love in the process.

One sentence review: If you love Pride and Prejudice or a great romance with lots of yearning and built up energy, then you’re going to love this.

Review:

When gentrification threatens Liza’s community, she does what she does best: she rallies and she protests. She has a community behind her and she’s ready. What she didn’t expect is for Dorsey to be at the head of it. Set to be CEO of his late Mother’s company but struggling to push her agenda past the board, he’s at a crossroads.

This is a Pride and Prejudice inspired romance and as a P&P fan, it’s glorious. I love rewrites that reference points in the original because they make me giggle and kick my legs in the air and I adored this retelling for it – we of course have the most splendid potatoes that taste plain as hell, we have the “your mother will never speak to you if you don’t and I’ll never speak to you again if you do” and so many others. A truly glorious retelling.

I’ve read a few retellings in my time and this is my favourite to date. Easy win. There is so much pining, there are sex scenes (yes scenes!) and I am here for it. These two are hot and I love it and I want more if I’m honest.

Payne has done a beautiful and brilliant job of adapting the classic into a diverse and current novel. Themes of pride and prejudice feature heavily through a modern lens that feels natural for the characters with other important topics such a gentrification, social housing community and so much more.

Now don’t mind me, but I’m off to read the other classics that Nikki Payne has rewritten so I can enjoy them just as much.

If reading more is something that you’re looking at doing this year then should check my reading challenge out here! Read nine books from nine prompts over the first six months of the year and be entered into a draw to win a bundle of bookish goodies.

If you’d like to get yourself a copy, you can support local bookshops while doing so on Bookshop.org with this link here.

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And don’t forget to check out my other blogs and reviews – you can find books with similar themes in the same folder link below, or click back onto blogs to see the whole offering.

Last updated 13/01/2025