I was in a unique position while reading this book, because I am a huge fan of Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen is a beloved author in my family, the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries is regular viewing material, and it’s not uncommon to hear quotes from Austen’s works tossed around in everyday conversation. The best moment in high school English class was when the teacher assigned Pride and Prejudice, because I didn’t have to study for weeks. I followed the Emmy-award winning web-series adaptation, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, from the moment the first episode aired to the finale three years later. I know this book. So when Paige picked The Wrong Mr. Darcy by Evelyn Lozada and Holly Lörincz, I was cautiously excited. A basketball-centered Pride and Prejudice? I love Jane Austen, but I know close to nothing about basketball. In some ways I was the perfect authorial audience. In others, I was the last person on Earth who would pick up this book.
As I moved into the narrative of The Wrong Mr. Darcy, my caution turned to resistance. The narrative style is not something I typically look for. The language was simple, outright clunky to me at times, “She sat up and shook off the drama queen moment. Hara liked to find reasons to be happy, not emo” (Lozada and Lörincz, 2). I found myself thinking how the slang would age this story, how I didn’t like how certain passages were written. I was confused why it opened with the main character reading Pride and Prejudice, and why Hara didn’t feel like a Lizzie Bennet at all. I couldn’t translate Hara’s family to the Bennets outside of a marriage-obsessed mother. It seemed the only thing this book had in common with Pride and Prejudice was the enemies-to-lovers trope, and the names of a few of the characters. But then I stopped myself. I was being too judgemental; I was approaching this story with too many expectations in place. Even if the style wasn’t my typical read, it was still well-written in places, and there were parts of it that I enjoyed. I needed to let go of my authorial preconceptions and allow myself to move into the narrative audience.
The real strength of The Wrong Mr. Darcy isn’t in its ties to Pride and Prejudice—in fact, I think the story would be stronger without them. It is in the glimpse into the world of basketball stars that this story truly shines. When I researched the book I found out that Evelyn Lozada is a reality television star who participated in a season of Basketball Wives, and that’s when my experience clicked for me. Instead of wondering why The Wrong Mr. Darcy wasn’t lining up with Pride and Prejudice, I should have been allowing myself to explore a world I was completely unfamiliar with. By stepping into the role of the other authorial audience, the audience who bought the book because of its author, I was able to discover a completely different reading experience.
What I found was an engaging story about corruption and power in the sports industry. Though I still found flaws with the narrative, I also found myself empathizing with Hara’s struggles against misogyny, and intrigued by the mystery that was slowly unraveling. In a way, the fact that I was not the ideal audience made the mystery of the story more engaging; not only did I have to figure out what was going on with Bingley and O’Donnell, I also had to piece together the context that many basketball fans already came with.
There are also a great deal of details in the narration that, as a woman, I could identify with. Hara is taken less seriously in the industry because of gender. She constantly dresses down so fellow sports reporters will respect her, disgusted with the idea of being a “jersey chaser,” only in the industry to marry a basketball player. “She’d read the stories. She knew what other women had gone through. And still went through, both in the locker room and in the abusive world of social media, from verbal harassment to physical attacks. Which explained why there weren’t many skirts in a sea of gray suits and khakis” (Lozada and Lörincz, 75).
By the end of the story, despite my earlier misgivings, I was completely invested in the narrative. By letting go of my preconceptions, I was able to step into the role that the narration wanted me to play, and I was able to fully enjoy the story. Ironically, it was my prejudice towards this style of book that blocked me from doing so in the beginning. Perhaps in the future I should take a lesson from the original Mr. Darcy, and not be so quick to judge.
All You Read is Love 
One thing I’d like to mention is how I interpreted the narrative audience for The Wrong Mr. Darcy. According to Rabinowitz, the narrative audience is who the reader becomes by pretending to be whoever the narrator is addressing. When I try to envision who Hara and Derek would be addressing, I believe that person would be a close friend, likely a female. My assumption is due to the misogyny that Hara faces throughout the narrative. We’re clearly meant to be sympathetic, but in a way it seems like we’re meant to suffer in solidarity. Being a male I cannot understand what it feels like to encounter misogyny, but being a gay man I’ve encountered similar discriminations in the past that made it easy for me to sympathize with Hara. I think the narratee is someone who is meant to know what is right and what is wrong. We judge O’Donnell as evil based on his comments about Naomi having a miscarriage and the oversexualized characterization identified through the semic code. It’s clear that the narratee would not feel sympathetic towards such a horrible man, but we also aren’t meant to think in terms of black and white, because Hara’s father himself is a convict.
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