Eligible - Curtis Sittenfeld (Review)

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld 
Series The Austen Project # 4
Genres: Fiction, Romance
Publication date: April 19th 2016
Publisher: Random House  
Format: ebook, 512 pages
How I got it: NetGalley for an honest review
Buy it: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
My rating: 3/5
 
This version of the Bennet family—and Mr. Darcy—is one that you have and haven’t met before: Liz is a magazine writer in her late thirties who, like her yoga instructor older sister, Jane, lives in New York City. When their father has a health scare, they return to their childhood home in Cincinnati to help—and discover that the sprawling Tudor they grew up in is crumbling and the family is in disarray.

Youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia are too busy with their CrossFit workouts and Paleo diets to get jobs. Mary, the middle sister, is earning her third online master’s degree and barely leaves her room, except for those mysterious Tuesday-night outings she won’t discuss. And Mrs. Bennet has one thing on her mind: how to marry off her daughters, especially as Jane’s fortieth birthday fast approaches.

Enter Chip Bingley, a handsome new-in-town doctor who recently appeared on the juggernaut reality TV dating show Eligible. At a Fourth of July barbecue, Chip takes an immediate interest in Jane, but Chip’s friend neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy reveals himself to Liz to be much less charming. . . .

And yet, first impressions can be deceiving.

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My thoughts:

This book follows the Bennet family as they are going through a crisis of Mr. Bennet having a health scare.   The Bennet's have five daughters, three of which live at home and the other two live in New York city.  The three daughters that live at home haven't really tried to get their own lives.   The oldest two daughters who live in New York both have jobs and are self sufficient.

I really enjoyed reading about the Bennet sisters.  They all have very unique personalities as well as goals in their lives.  I loved how no matter what they were going to be their for each other, even if they didn't like one another that much.  The author did a great job with keeping the importance of family as a major theme throughout the book, which I really enjoyed reading about.  Also,  I loved Mrs. Bennet she was out in left field a good portion of the time and that made me laugh while reading the book. 

I really enjoyed about reading of Liz's past experience with love.  I completely felt with learning a lot more about Liz we got to see where she was coming from and also why she was nervous about love.   Liz was a very strong character that the author did a great job developing. 

The author did a great job with all of the descriptions of the different settings in the book.  I felt like I could image exactly what the characters where seeing as well as interacting with each other.  I completely can image exactly what the Tudor looked like.

Things I didn't love about the story was at parts I felt like it was dragging on and was never going to end.  I felt like there were a lot of details that didn't really end up adding a lot to the story and that  could have been kept out of the book.   About half way through I figured out who was going to end up together and it felt like I would never reach the final ending.  It felt like some the build up was just not necessary to keep the reader engaged.  

Also, I didn't really care for the entire story being told from Liz's eyes.  I felt like the author really missed out on getting other perspectives of the four other sister as well as parents.  The story felt too controlled only being told in Liz's perspective.   Also, I think that if we got other perspectives the story would have flowed a lot better.   The details where sometime backstories that we didn't really need and if another character jumped in it would have made it more interesting to here what they thought was really going on.

I would suggest this as a nighttime read.  It was an easy book to pickup and put down since the chapters where very neatly divided and most of the chapters where very short so it was easy to find a natural stopping point.  I also thought the story was a good escape from reality so it allowed you to jump into a new world. 
 
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of providing an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

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About the Author

Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of the new novel Eligible, a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice (due out April 2016) as well as the bestselling novels Sisterland, American Wife, Prep, and The Man of My Dreams, which have been translated into twenty-five languages. Curtis's writing has appeared in many publications, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, Vanity Fair,Time, Slate, Glamour, and on public radio's This American Life. A graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she currently lives in St. Louis, MO.

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