ARC Review : Out, Proud, and Prejudiced By Megan Reddaway

Title : Out, Proud and Prejudiced by Megan Reddaway
Genre(s) : Contemporary gay romance, LGBTQ+, retelling
Publication Date : June 4th 2018
My Rating(s) : 3.5/5 Stars
Buy link : Amazon

One’s proud, one’s prejudiced, and they can’t stand each other.  

     Quick-tempered Bennet Rourke dislikes Darius Lanniker on sight. Darius may be a hotshot city lawyer, but that doesn’t give him the right to sneer at Bennet, his friends, and their college. It doesn’t help that Bennet’s restaurant job has him waiting at Darius’s table. So when his tutor recommends him for an internship at Darius’s Pemberley estate, Bennet isn’t sure he wants it. He’s also not sure he can afford to turn it down.
    Darius is a fish out of water in the small college town of Meriton, but something keeps pulling him back there. He’s helping out a friend with business advice, nothing more. If he’s interested in Bennet, it’s not serious. Sure, Bennet challenges him in a way no other man has. But they have nothing in common. Right?
     Wrong. Their best friends are falling in love, and Bennet and Darius can’t seem to escape each other. Soon they’re sharing climbing ropes and birthday cake, and there’s a spark between them that won’t be denied.
     But betrayal is around the corner. Darius must swallow his pride and Bennet must drop his prejudices to see the rainbow shining through the storm clouds.
A modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

I've been grew up with Jane Austen's book and had read Pride and Prejudice more than once and also read many another retelling story that wrote based on the original book. So when I saw the promotion about this book and know that this book gonna be another retelling of Jane's book and also a gay version, I'm SOLD!

The author smoothly 'moved' the original story to the modern setting without ruined the basic plot but with some 'adjustment' here and there but you can still feels the red line to the original plot.

You can feel the Pride and Prejudice typical push and pull between the two main characters (Darius and Bennet) and also their friends Tim and James love story. The setting changed into modern story which put Bennet and his bestfriend, James in the final terms of their studies on the very high and well-known college in Meriton.

They meet a very rich guy who bought one of gallery near the college, Tim and his friend, Darius who work as a very famous lawyer at London. Fire and of course 'hate' at first meet had sparked between Bennet and Darius right from the start. Both Bennet and Darius drown in their prejudices to each other based only what they seen from outside. But even while they both feels the mutual dislikes among each other, they also can't denied the strong attraction that grew between them.

And like any other Pride and Prejudice retelling story, we definitely know for sure there will be this *shifty* 'Mr. Wickham' in every story and this time will be portraying by a character named  Mr. Wyndham's that will come, interfere, manipulated and ruined what had happened between Bennet and Darius before they finally come to their sense and found their HEA, including the ambitious aunt who eager to ruined their already fragile 'relationship' like usual.

I must admit that the story was very interesting right from the first page and I can't put it down even when I already KNOW where the story will goes with all the drama and twist, but still I really enjoying every part of it. The only complaint that unsatisfied me is the ending who suddenly felt way to rush as if the author want to end the story right away after that long tortures up and down feeling the readers felt since the very beginning. And that's why I deducted my rating from solid 4 stars into 3.5 stars.

But overall, the story still interesting and enjoyable enough to follow. And for all Pride and Prejudice fans out there, I still will recommended this gay version of the already famous story to ALL!!