Pride

Ibi Zoboi

Young Adult Contemporary Romance, Retelling

Hardcover, 304 Pages

Publisher: Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins

Release Date: September 18, 2018

Overall Rating: 4/5

Zuri Benitez has pride. Brooklyn pride, family pride, and pride in her Afro-Latino roots. But pride might not be enough to save her rapidly gentrifying neighborhood from becoming unrecognizable.

When the wealthy Darcy family moves in across the street, Zuri wants nothing to do with their two teenage sons, even as her older sister, Janae, starts to fall for the charming Ainsley. She especially can’t stand the judgmental and arrogant Darius. Yet as Zuri and Darius are forced to find common ground, their initial dislike shifts into an unexpected understanding.

But with four wild sisters pulling her in different directions, cute boy Warren vying for her attention, and college applications hovering on the horizon, Zuri fights to find her place in Bushwick’s changing landscape, or lose it all.

I’ll be honest with you I haven’t read Pride and Prejudice (gasp, I know) I have the book but when I started it, I just couldn’t get into. I have watched the movie and read a few retellings. I love seeing authors or people in general talking something they love and turning it into their own thing while paying respect to the original work. Ibi Zoboi did just that, yes while this book was a retelling of a classic story it was fresh and stood on its own. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a retelling of Pride and Prejudice like this, one that I could relate to, one that touched on what it meant to be black girl in New York City.

Okay so let’s get down to it, I’ve had my eye on this book for months and I was not disappointed, though if I’m being honest I didn’t think this would be a bad book at all. It was well written, well-paced, relatable and just good. Zuri, (huge fan of the name) is smart, stubborn, passionate, family orientated, and extremely judgmental. She had a plan for her life, work hard and go to a good college. I loved that Zuri was excited to spend the summer with her older sister Janae, who just came home from her first year at college. That spoke to me because I do pretty much everything with my siblings, and when the twins went away to college it was weird not to have them around.

My one biggest problem with Zuri was how judgmental she was. It honestly was maddening how she judged Darius and his family solely based off the fact that they had money. She judged them before she had even seen them, and in her head, she knew she was absolutely right about them. Though if I’m being truthful I can’t tell if Zuri was that bad or if the reason I’m so hard on her is because I relate to Darius so much. I’m not rich but I definitely know how it feels to not fit in to that box of what people think it means to black. Darius as a character spoke to me because all my life I’ve done things in a way that was different from what other black people around have done and had people questioning if I was truly black.

Now this is not to say Darius is a perfect character because he too is judgey as hell. If both Zuri and Darius got over themselves, they might have been friends from the beginning. One of my favorite parts of the book was how Zuri felt about her neighborhood. She was worried about people moving in and gentrifying the neighborhood. Sometimes people only see an area they think is “ghetto” or “hood” or that needs to fixed but what they don’t see that these neighborhoods have a culture and life all their own. It showed that neighborhoods are more than the buildings and landscaping, neighborhoods are people and personalities. I might seem like I’m reading too much into it but it’s something I can relate to and it made me happy to see these things reflected in a book.

               

I recommend this book to any and every one, it was fun book, a quick read and a reminder that sometimes people need to let go of their pride. You do not have to be a person of color to enjoy this book. Please do yourself a favor and get this book when it comes out, I promise you won’t be disappointed.