Reviewed by Chris

TITLE:  The California Dashwoods 

AUTHOR:  Lisa Henry

PUBLISHER:  Self-Published

LENGTH:  211 pages

RELEASE DATE:  May 1, 2018

BLURB:  

Make a new future. Choose your true family. Know your own heart.

When Elliott Dashwood’s father dies, leaving his family virtually penniless, it’s up to Elliott to do what he’s always done: be the responsible one. Now isn’t the right time for any added complications. So what the hell is he doing hooking up with Ned Ferrars? It’s just a fling, right?

Elliott tries to put it behind him when the family makes a fresh start in California, and if he secretly hopes to hear from Ned again, nobody else needs to know. While his mom is slowly coming to terms with her grief, teenage Greta is more vulnerable than she’s letting on, and Marianne—romantic, reckless Marianne—seems determined to throw herself headfirst into a risky love affair. And when Elliott discovers the secret Ned’s been keeping, he realizes that Marianne isn’t the only one pinning her hopes on a fantasy.

All the Dashwoods can tell you that feelings are messy and heartbreak hurts. But Elliott has to figure out if he can stop being the sensible one for once, and if he’s willing to risk his heart on his own romance.

A modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

REVIEW:  

The California Dashwoods is a modern day, queered-retelling of Jane Austen’s very popular story, Sense and Sensibility. Elliott Dashwood (a gender-flipped Elinor), his two younger sister Marianne and Margaret (known as Greta), and his very-recently widowed mother, are forced out of their home by his father’s very rich–and incredibly stuck-up–family. But not before he meets the brother of his half-brother’s wife, Ned Ferrars (a moderned up Edward). What follows is…well, Sense and Sensibility. A very very very well written retelling of it, anyways.

I know I could go more in depth with the plot and stuff, but to be honest, I’m kinda thinking that a lot of you already know the bare bones of what to expect out of this book. If you haven’t read the original story (and I don’t blame you if you haven’t, sometimes the prose can be a bit dense to modern readers) you most likely have seen the movie(s). And while some parts of this story have changed to fit the new time-period, most of the major story beats remain the same. Some names have been changed, like how Edward became Ned, and John Willoughby becomes Jack (probably because there were already two Johns in this story and that would have been ridiculous keeping them all straight), but overall you will find that a lot of the character moments loved by readers in Austen’s story are here as well. Just made to fit in this new version.

I’m thinking to talk about this review I’m going to have to do it in two parts: the adaptation, and how the story works on its own merits.

Firstly, how does The California Dashwoods do as an adaptation of Sense and Sensibility?

Incredibly well. Both as a modern update, and as a queered-up version of the original.

On the modern front, I found that Lisa Henry did an excellent job of knowing just what she could keep, and what could be trimmed from the story, setting, and/or plot to make Sense and Sensibility work in our world. A lot of the major plot points or character moments remain, but done in such a way that it makes sense in 2018, if not 1811 (the year the novel was first published). And I’m not even talking about how homosexuality would have been a major No-No back then. The characters all act like they would in 2018…even if some of them are still massive assholes, no matter what time-period. The situations are ones that could realistically happen right now. There is no four people living off a meager inheritance waiting around to get married. It did not once feel like the author just jammed the characters into slightly different clothes and let them wander around the setting talking like and acting like they still belong in the past. If anything was directly lifted from S&S I didn’t notice it, so it was clearly done perfectly. Thank god. (You have no idea how it drives me up the freaking wall every time I have to read that damn “…in want of a wife” line every. Fucking. Time. I read a retelling of Pride and Prejudice.)

The whole gay romance aspect is helped a lot by the modernization. While I think it could work in a historical context (and heaven knows I wouldn’t slam the door on ever reading a version like that), being able to give Elliott and Ned a real HEA is kinda essential to my enjoyment of this story. Mostly because I had always been more drawn to Elinor than I had ever been to Marianne. And I really like that this felt like Elliott’s story, not Marianne’s. Don’t get me wrong, she has a definite place in this version, but I always felt that she, being the more outgoing and rather more obvious example of “romance” tended to dominate other tellings of the original. Which made me a bit sad, because I always thought her a bit too over-the-top for my tastes. Elliott’s more quiet, but no less intense attraction to Ned really hit it out of the park in this book, though. And the famous scene–you totally know what I am talking about if you have seen the 1995 movie–was done to absolute perfection.

But even taking away the fact that I really do adore S&S–it is in fact tied for first place with Mansfield Park as my favorite Jane Austen story–if you were to come into this story cold–never heard of, seen, read, or possessed a passing knowledge by osmosis of Austen’s story–you would still find this to be an incredibly moving story on its own. Elliott and Ned just work in a way that leaps off the page. The family dynamics make  you understand everything that Elliott has chosen to give up. The plot does not use the original as a crutch. The characters are fully fleshed out. All the elements work together to make a whole that is as equally entrancing as the original, but can easily stand on its own two feet.

I have honestly never read a retelling of any of Austen’s stories that made me feel in that last chapter the way I felt the first time I finished Austen’s novel, or the first time I watched that 1995 movie, until now. That sweet-warm-tingly-omfg-yes-yes-fucking-yes feeling. When you can honestly truly feel like the characters are in love and that everything is going to be perfect and fine from now on–even if it isn’t.

RATING:  

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