Book Review- Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star by Heather Lynn Rigaud

Title: Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star

 Author: Heather Lynn Rigaud

Series:  N/A

Published:  2011 by Sourcebooks

Length:424 pages

Warnings: Profanity, drugs, many graphic sex scenes 16+

Source: Library

Summary : Darcy is as hot as he is talented. Fast music, powerful beats, and wild reputations, on and off stage, have made virtuso guitarist Fitzwilliam Darcy’s band into Rock’s newest bad boys. But they’ve lost their latest opening act, and their red-hot summer tour is on the fast track to disaster. Now Darcy and bandmates Charles Bingley and Richard Fitzwilliam are about to meet their match.   But she’s about to rock his world. Enter Liz Bennet, fiercely independent star of girl band Long Borne Suffering. Elizabeth, her sister Jane and friend Charlotte Lucas have talent to spare and jump at the opening band spot. Elizabeth is sure that she’s seen the worst the music industry has to offer/ But as the days and nights heat up, it becomes clear that everyone is in for a summer to remember.

Review: It’s a modern re-do of Pride and Prejudice. Having not enjoyed the original by Jane Austen and quite enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith, it was interesting to see how it would be taken here. Shove the semi-well-known characters out of English Aristocracy and into the modern day rock world and it could be amazing. But it didn’t turn out how it could have done.

The romance, like in the original, was terrible.  How Darcy went from being arrogant and unlikeable to the hottest thing on earth in Elizabeth’s eyes, I will never know. Jane and  Charles’ and Charlotte’s and Richard’s relationships went too fast for my liking with little background.

The sex scenes weren't done very well, and either shouldn't have been done at all or someone mis-tagged it as Young Adult. This book is not Young Adult. However, it doesn't venture into Erotica either, as the sex scenes were boring blow-by-blow accounts that gave me mental images that I really didn't need. My views on including sex in a book, you either do it well and market it as erotica, or if you're going for YA, don't include the sex at all. This did neither. I know we were warned by the tagline, but by the fact it said on Goodreads it was YA and I trust Goodreads and it didn't say erotica and... Oh well.   And the general frequency of them... *reaches for mental bleach  knowing it will never be strong enough*

It had a promising start. It introduced Slurry, the boy band with Darcy and Richard and Charles, by way of a transcript of a video, and I got a good idea of the set up and the  circumstances surrounding it. And it was going quite well for a little while. It fell apart at the first sex scene, about 80 pages in. Too quick for any romance to develop.

The characters all seemed quite flat to me, and I didn't care for any of them really. Darcy was rude and arrogant, and the way that Jane was messed around by Charles was really horrible. Apart from Alex, a fairly minor character. He was quite nice.

As I said, the concept was very good and quite fitting if you thought about it. The plot picked up towards the end with a little story about someone being in trouble with the police and of course there's the whole thing with George Wickham underneath it. The bands, Slurry and Long Borne Suffering, were both well imagined and somewhat interesting. 

Overall:  Strength 2 tea to something that could have worked but didn’t.

Links: Goodreads |