Title – The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet
Author – Kate Rorick, Rachel Riley
Genre – Contemporary, Young Adult
My Rating – 2/5
GOODREADS BLURB
Based on the Emmy Award-winning “genius” (The Guardian) web series, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, this is a new novel starring Lizzie’s spunky sister Lydia as she navigates the joys and pitfalls of becoming an adult in the digital age.
Before her older sister, Lizzie, started her wildly popular vlog, Lydia was just a normal twenty-year-old plotting the many ways she could get away with skipping her community college classes and finding the perfect fake ID. She may not have had much direction, but she loved her family and had plenty of fun. Then Lizzie’s vlog turned the Bennet sisters into Internet sensations, and Lydia basked in the attention as people watched, debated, tweeted, tumblr’d, and blogged about her life. But not all attention is good…
After her ex-boyfriend, George Wickham took advantage of Lydia’s newfound web-fame, betrayed her trust, and destroyed her online reputation, she’s no longer a naïve, carefree girl. Now, Lydia must work to win back her family’s trust and respect and find her place in a far more judgmental world.
Told in Lydia’s distinctive, eccentric, and endearing voice, The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet picks up right where The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet left off and “offers a fresh take on Pride and Prejudice without ruining it” (The Washington Post, on The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet). Featuring fresh twists, wonderful new characters, and scores of hilarious texts, doodles, and tweets, The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet takes you behind the webcam and into the lives of your favorite sisters in a way that’s sure to satisfy existing fans and delight new ones.
MY REVIEW
The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet picks up the story a little after the ending of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a modern day adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen in the form of vlogs. You can find all the episodes on YouTube.
Given that I loved the series so very much, I had to read the associated books! You can check out my previous review here. My rating of the book says it all doesn’t it?
The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet sucked all the energy out of a character that Mary Kate Wiles brought such a lovely energy too. I get that Lydia had been through a lot in the series and hence needed time to recover, but it didn’t even seem like Lydia anymore. The book was so dull and pointless and I really was quite disappointed by it.
There are several problems with the book, the first and foremost being that it feels utterly aimless. There is no real direction to the plot. It just drones on and on while you wait for something, ANYTHING, to happen. Secondly, the story is supposed to focus on Lydia trying to recover from the traumatic events that followed her brief internet fame. However, it felt like Lydia was hardly doing anything to try and recover! Even when her family tried to intervene and help her out, she seemed more of a passive observer in her own life story. All the bubbly, happy Lydia energy was gone!
The only reason I made it through the book was because of my love for The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and the need for more content on the story. The book as a whole otherwise was simply not the best.
Overall, The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet gets 2 out of 5 stars from me.
And that’s all for today! Hope you have a great day! Until next time –
