Revisited Austen in “Pride and Preston Lin”

Christina Hwang Dudley’s fun new novel Pride and Preston Lin takes inspiration from the Jane Austen classic, Pride and Prejudice, without being a beat-for-beat modernization.

Lissie Cheng, along with her older sister Jenny and younger sister Jojo, went to live with their aunt and uncle after their parents’ death. Aunt Rhoda and Uncle Mason own and run a Chinese restaurant, Four Treasures, and now Lissie works in the restaurant, while finishing her fifth year at state college. Jenny’s a new grad, who also works at the restaurant while anxiously studying for MCATs.  The Cheng sisters are not exactly poor, but a family restaurant isn’t on the same level as the wealthy Bings and Lins. There’s a very real class difference between the Chengs and the real estate investor Lins, which helps update the classic P&P plotline.

You guys know I love Jane Austen reinventions, and I love Chinese-American fiction,  so I already knew I was going to enjoy Pride and Preston Lin, but I didn’t expect Lissie Cheng, a Lizzie Bennet with exactly my Mandarin skills! (That’s 牛肉，白菜， 鱼，米饭, if you’re wondering. I can also say 啤酒 )

Preston Lin comes from a wealthy and well-connected family, and his own talents have taken him further, with a top university and nationally-ranked athletics.  It’s a solid updating, because Preston, just like classic Darcy, has a mental class system. Preston and his family know exactly where Stanford and San Jose State fall on it. So it’s not surprising when he and his family are unimpressed with student / waitress Lissie, especially when she dramatically screws up their meal. 

It takes a while for the Lissie and Preston chemistry to come together, which I loved. I know loads of contemporary romcom and romance novels like instalove, but that’s not really my favorite, and anyway, the original P&P is all about snap judgements being wrong! So I enjoyed seeing their original judgements reconsidered. Jenny and Bing, of course, have perfect instalove, as they should!

In the original novel, some of the plot is propelled by the very real concern that the Bennet sister will be dependent spinster relatives if they don’t marry well. Here, Jenny Cheng is worrying about her MCAT scores and her future, because she doesn’t have family money or connections to help her out. Lissie is on the five-year plan at college, after switching her major (another thing for the super successful Preston to look down on!), with graduation and a job search ahead. Even though sad spinsterhood isn’t looming for the Cheng sisters, their worry about future security is real.  This worked well for me, one common issue with a lot of modernized P&P is that the young women’s need to marry into financial stability doesn’t motivate a modern plot well. Social-climbing Mrs. Bennet works well in any setting, but the idea of marrying for money doesn’t feel like a sympathetic main character in 2024. This reinvention kept the sisters’ financial worries, in a relatable, modern way. 

P&P‘s Lydia and Wickham is a rough storyline for modern readers. Through Darcy’s intervention and bribery, in order to save the Bennets from the social ruin of Lydia ad Wickham running off together, teenage Lydia is married off to a scammer with no morals, no friends, and no income, but scandal is averted, so it’s a successful resolution in the book.  There’s a reinvention of the Wickham/Lydia storyline in Pride and Preston Lin,  that involves a tween and her swim coach. I was absolutely on edge the whole time because I thought it was going, well, just the way you think a starstuck tween girl athlete and her charismatic, slightly shady coach is going to go. And, without spoilers, it doesn’t. Jojo does perfectly believable tween actions, absolutely worrying, but fortunately not the life-changing horror of original Lydia/Wickham. 

Overall, Pride and Preston Lin is a fun, contemporary read for Jane Austen fans. The books shows warm affection between the sisters, as well as sharp class distinctions. I liked the twists on the familiar characters,  and I enjoyed how the story followed the themes and overall structure of the original, without being too tied to the original scenes or pacing. 

I got Pride and Preston Lin through Austenprose, thanks for including me in this book tour! Opinions on my blog are my own, as always.