'Evan and Darcy' by Melanie Coles

I needed a true blue Australian fan fiction for my 2025 Aussie Book Challenge. This one ticks off that category more than I'd even imagined. I discovered it at a $1 - $2 book sale at my local library. As soon I saw the blurb, I knew I must add it to my stack. It is Jane Austen like you've never imagined. 

MY THOUGHTS: 

Since my mania for fanfic started, I've been reading quite a few. This is everything I hope for whenever I crack open a new one. It's a gender-reversed Pride & Prejudice, set in the agrarian rural community of Meryton in present-day Australia.

The Bennet family owns a wheat and barley farm named Longbourn, and they have five sons to help run it. Meanwhile, rich girl Claire Bingley has just purchased nearby Netherfield, a lavish country estate she plans to turn into a function centre. When Jamie, the good-natured, eldest Bennet boy, becomes besotted with Claire, his more cynical brother Evan is willing to humor him. But Evan gets deeply offended by Claire's best friend, a polished young lawyer named Darcy Fitzwilliam. Evan overhears Darcy referring to him as a swaggering farm boy she'd waste no time on. From then on, he considers her a snooty ice-queen who makes him see red whenever he thinks about her. 

I felt compelled to keep turning pages to see how it all plays out in this topsy turvy, up-to-date rural setting. The character counterparts to Jane Austen are all excellent supporting roles. The third Bennet son is nerdy, try-hard Mark who is a terrible musician. And the two youngest brothers, lazy party boys Caleb and Liam, kept stealing the show for me in their scenes.

Melanie Coles has proven that an excellent plot is both timeless and geographically transferable. It can be copied and pasted, so to speak, to work anywhere. If this modern version occasionally lacks the same Regency era urgency (Charlie Lucas doesn't have Charlotte's same sense of desperation before hooking up with Cara Collins), it's more than compensated for at other times. When cute but crooked Jemma Wickham seduces teenager Liam Bennet, the stakes are enormous indeed. You'll see if you read it. Wow, the nerve of that girl! 

Evan and Darcy's romance, at the heart of the story, is swoon-worthy in its own right to the extent that I sometimes forgot all about that most famous literary couple they are meant to mirror. What's more, Coles shows us that the filthy rich have their own problems to deal with, and work extremely hard. 

I'll be recommending this fan fiction far and wide to anyone willing for their rosy ideals to be shaken up a bit. In my opinion, it takes an Aussie author to pull off something so hilarious, compelling, and cool. 

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