Most Ardently: A Pride & Prejudice Remix Review
By Nic Daniels
TW: Transphobia, use of dead names, misgendering, sucidal ideation
Hello, audacious readers!
June is coming in hot, but I hope you’re beating the heat with this month’s read. Last month, we revisited the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series with the fifth installment, Before We Say Goodbye by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. This month, we’re exploring love and compromise in Most Ardently: A Pride & Prejudice Remix by Gabe Cole Novoa.
It’s London in 1813 and in a time where simply spending unsupervised time with a stranger is a scandal, society is treacherous to navigate. No one knows this better than Oliver Bennet. To the world, he is “Elizabeth” and his goals in life should be to marry well, have as many children as possible and always be a lady: polite, affable and discreet—if not invisible.
However, Oliver isn’t going to accept society’s demands so easily. Instead of sewing and pining for the soonest available husband, Oliver reads, rejects proposals, and goes out as his true self as often as possible with the help of his beloved sister, Jane, and best friend, Charlotte. Still, society can only be ignored for so long. Soon, Oliver will have to make the choice of embracing who he is fully or living a lie for the rest of his days.
In many ways, this story makes a lot more sense to me as an LGBTQ story than as a standard cis romance. While I like many aspects of the original Pride & Prejudice, as I’ve gotten older, some of the story started to feel shallow to me. I kept finding myself reflecting on Elizabeth and Darcy’s romance, wondering if they truly knew each other or simply found a few moments of mutual understanding. This isn’t the fault of Jane Austen as there was only so much a man and woman at their status would interact. However, it didn’t change my question of why they fell in love. So, having this story explore each of the characters in public and private gave their relationship the depth I’ve been craving for the last few years.
Another aspect about this book that I learned to respect is the number of times it is stated that Oliver is uncomfortable in his body, specifically with his chest for obvious reasons). Usually, I get annoyed when insecurity is mentioned by a character multiple times, but mainly because it is an insecurity. Here, it’s much deeper than that. It’s a constant reminder of all he endures because his body does not match who he is. It really emphasized the ever-present awareness of this and matches his longing to always be himself.
That being said, the biggest drive behind this story, both Oliver’s acceptance of himself and the romance, is the constant battle of compromise. So much of Oliver’s life felt inevitable with very few choices to deviate. Yet, this never stopped Oliver from rejects it, knowing he couldn’t live without being able to express his true. It was him—all of him—or nothing. This is probably the best thing about his character.
Similar to the original Elizabeth, he is uncompromising, even though he fully understood the possible consequences of never accepting what society demanded of him. He was willing to accept it, not because he knew it would work out in the end but because it didn’t matter if it did. He was willing to live for himself. It truly shows you that its okay if something is unacceptable for your life because it is yours, first and foremost. This story also teaches you that sometimes you are only a cis white man’s sense of audacity away from getting you what you want in life.
I hope you enjoyed Most Ardently. I'll be sharing all my thoughts and feelings on the upcoming IG live with founder, Jessica Wise. Feel free to comment your thoughts below and, until next time, don’t forget to read audaciously!
