I felt estranged and distant from Jane Austen on her 250th birthday this December. Rather than dragging the muslin of a Regency period dress along the idyllic streets of Bath, I was sketching Python code on a whiteboard. On a study break, I came across an online Penguin Random House quiz: “Who is Your Perfect Match?” I pored over each question to ensure utmost truthfulness. The stakes were high. At the end, I even succumbed to inputting my email, subscribing to a bi-weekly newsletter if it meant finding out the answer to the only question that really mattered.
I was pleased to read that my soulmate is Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, the man of piquant wit and bookish conversation from Pride and Prejudice. Apparently, I want a relationship built on intellectual equality and mutual admiration. I think about the hours-long debates I have had in my relationship about whether Don Quixote was “the first novel,” if the newest Frankenstein adaptation is faithful to the source text, and whether the latter novel fits more squarely into the Romantic or the Gothic tradition. Either I found my own Mr. Darcy, or we’ve both taken one too many English classes.
When I was offered an ARC copy of Most Ardently Yours (with a July 7 release date), I eagerly began reading. Freya Sampson promised to bring Darcy alive, and she delivered—literally. The tall, caustic hero somehow exits the binding of Austen’s celebrated 1813 novel and enters 2026, where cars replace carriages, tequila shots at an engagement party replace opulent balls at Netherfield, and Darcy’s income of ten thousand pounds per year is suddenly less impressive.
Zoe Knight works at a literary-themed café by day and rendezvouses with her book boyfriends by night, scarred from a vile break-up with “dick lit” writer Crispin Carter and dispirited about her authorial dreams. Then, she steals an aged copy of Pride and Prejudice from moody bookseller Nick Baskerville’s shop. It is not much later that a befuddled Regency gentleman appears at her café.
Zoe and Fitzwilliam Darcy (or just Will) grow closer as days pass. If he can get behind the infernal transportation system (the tube), he honestly doesn’t mind Love Island or RuPaul’s Drag Race. When they stay at a hotel for a weekend getaway—you guessed it, forced-proximity trope lovers—only one room is ready, and it has “only one sodding bed.” But can real-life Darcy live up to the myth-making figure on the page despite the obtrusive temporal barrier?
As Darcy spends more time in our chaotic era, Zoe realizes that the stakes are much higher than she initially thought, and the unwieldy character-conjuring magic scheme is laden with complications: she could be fundamentally distorting the fabric of Pride and Prejudice itself. What about Elizabeth? she worries. Will is slowly fading, Austen’s deftly-woven plot with him. You’ve never heard of Emily Brontë’s Heatherwick Hall, Nick claims, because the story disappeared when its hero left the pages for too long. Imagine: a mass public forgetting of Pride and Prejudice! As Elizabeth cries when hearing of Darcy’s (albeit untrue) injustice to Wickham, How abominable! The story’s second half is even more absorbing, as Zoe’s attempts to return Darcy to his story trigger a series of disturbed events that involve more enchanted dancing between the world and the page.
In one scene, Zoe and Nick discuss how the romance genre has evolved to prioritize self-rescue and self-love. Indeed, beyond Zoe’s happy ending, her growth comes principally from the resurrection of her passion to write. If she can shed her erroneous prejudices like the heroine of her favorite novel, the world—and her heart—might just open up.
Despite its zany contrivance, Most Ardently Yours is a true joy to read for bibliophiles, Janeites, and Regency wonks everywhere. Playing with a classic is a tall task, bound to disappoint, and yet Sampson approaches Pride and Prejudice with tact, respect, and invention. With the appropriate amount of nods to Matthew McFayden’s hand flex and Colin Firth’s wet shirt (if you know, you know), Sampson carves her own story, focused on what Austen’s magnetic love story can do for a woman today.
