Eligible

Wow, this didn't work for me at all. The choices that Sittenfeld made about modernizing the Pride & Prejudice characters and setting were ill-advised, leaving “Liz” and Darcy ciphers at best and dislikeable at worst. “Chip” Bingley and Jane Bennet barely register, and while it might have seemed like a great opportunity to skewer reality TV by having Bingley participate in a Bachelor-type show, the book goes off the rails when most of the main characters somehow end up in front of the cameras. The final straw was the way Sittenfeld updated Darcy's rescuing of the Bennets from financial and societal ruin, which allows Elizabeth in P&P to see him in a new light. In Eligible he is reduced to advising the senior Bennets in a way that could be seen as offensive to LGBTQ individuals when he tells them that Lydia's new transgendered husband should be considered to have a "birth defect" and therefore shouldn't be blamed for his condition.

Sittenfeld's books are hit-and-miss for me, but I think she should stick with original material. There are much better Pride & Prejudice adaptations and modernizations - The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Bridget Jones' Diary, just to name a few.