Review: Most Ardently: A Pride and Prejudice Remix by Gabe Cole Novoa

Title: Most Ardently

Series: Remixed Classics: Book Nine

Author: Gabe Cole Novoa

Length: 304 Pages

Category: Teen Fiction, Historical Fiction

Rating: 3.5 Stars

At a Glance: This story is told with an abundance of heart, and while I do feel there could have been a deeper dive into the characterizations—Most Ardently relies on the reader being at least somewhat familiar with P&P—and its conflict was wrapped up too handily, it reaches the sweet and uncomplicated happy ending its characters deserved.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: London, 1812.

Oliver Bennet feels trapped. Not just by the endless corsets, petticoats and skirts he’s forced to wear on a daily basis, but also by society’s expectations. The world—and the vast majority of his family and friends—think Oliver is a girl named Elizabeth. He is therefore expected to mingle at balls wearing a pretty dress, entertain suitors regardless of his interest in them, and ultimately become someone’s wife.

But Oliver can’t bear the thought of such a fate. He finds solace in the few times he can sneak out of his family’s home and explore the city rightfully dressed as a young gentleman. It’s during one such excursion when Oliver becomes acquainted with Darcy, a sulky young man who had been rude to “Elizabeth” at a recent social function. But in the comfort of being out of the public eye, Oliver comes to find that Darcy is actually a sweet, intelligent boy with a warm heart. And not to mention incredibly attractive.

As Oliver is able to spend more time as his true self, often with Darcy, part of him dares begin to hope that his dream of love and life as a man could be possible. But suitors are growing bolder—and even threatening—and his mother is growing more desperate to see him settled into an engagement. Oliver will have to choose: Settle for safety, security, and a life of pretending to be something he’s not, or risk it all for a slim chance at freedom, love, and a life that can be truly, honestly his own.

Review: Gabe Cole Novoa’s Most Ardently, a Pride and Prejudice remix, pays homage to the source material while introducing its own themes and representation in Oliver Bennet, the teenage boy who is unseen and unheard in a society that would not accept him for who he truly is.

Though Oliver is not without a handful of allies, he is known to most as the second eldest “daughter” in the Bennet family, one of the five children whom Mrs. Bennet is desperate to marry off to wealthy and well-connected suitors for reasons which don’t need to be spelled out given the setting and time in which the story is told. Every hero needs a nemesis and in Oliver’s case, while Darcy would be expected as the prime candidate, Mrs. Bennet herself serves in that role too, giving Oliver multiple fronts on which to fight the stereotypes, sexism, genderism, and expectations he faces. The moment of redemption Mrs. Bennet gets in the end is effortless and without much in the way of contrition, which discounted the extremes to which she went, but when the time comes to stand up for her family alongside Mr. Bennet, who has already lovingly accepted Oliver as his son, Mrs. Bennet steps in to protect her own.

Most Ardently is a definitive enemies-to friends-to more story. Darcy behaves as Darcy does to “Elizabeth”; though when Oliver finds the opportunity to sneak out of the house as his true self, he gets to know a different Darcy, a softer and kinder Darcy—a boy who loves books and enjoys the company of other boys rather than the girls he is expected to woo, as he is, as the original poses, in possession of a good fortune and therefore must be in want of a wife. It’s clear that Darcy can be charming and sweet, that he is enamored of Oliver, and that interest is reciprocated. But there are those who would wish to smear Darcy’s character. Oliver grapples a bit with those rumors while connecting them to both the off-putting Darcy he’d first encountered and the Darcy he comes to know.

Gabe Cole Novoa’s adaptation of this classic story reads as personal and intimate, resonant with the voice of lived experience and offering queer teens the opportunity to see some of their own cares and concerns on the page. The story is told with an abundance of heart, Oliver’s strife and struggles both internal and external, and while I do feel there could have been a deeper dive into the characterizations—Most Ardently relies on the reader being at least somewhat familiar with P&P—and its conflict was wrapped up too handily, it reaches the sweet and uncomplicated happy ending Oliver and Darcy deserved.