Me and Mr. Darcy by Alexandra Potter

After a string of disastrous dates, Emily Albright decides she's had it with modern-day love and would much rather curl up with Pride and Prejudice and spend her time with Mr. Darcy, the dashing, honorable, and passionate hero of Jane Austen's classic. So when her best friend suggests a wild week of margaritas and men in Mexico with the girls, Emily abruptly flees to England on a guided tour of Jane Austen country instead. Far from inspiring romance, the company aboard the bus consists of a gaggle of little old ladies and one single man, Spike Hargreaves, a foul-tempered journalist writing an article on why the fictional Mr. Darcy has earned the title of Man Most Women Would Love to Date.

The last thing Emily expects to find on her excursion is a broodingly handsome man striding across a field, his damp shirt clinging to his chest. But that's exactly what happens when she comes face-to-face with none other than Mr. Darcy himself. Suddenly, every woman's fantasy becomes one woman's reality....

Well, noone will be surprised when I say..."I think I've read this book before!" It was called_____________(fill in the blank with your choice: Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones' Diary, any other adaption you like.) This one has a New York bookstore manager taking a trip with goofy grannies on a tour of Jane Austen's haunts. She meets Spike, who is a London reporter doing a story on Why is Mr. Darcy "All that and a bag of chips" (I paraphrase). She dislikes him, and he doesn't help himself by referring to her as sorta dull, and plain. (You know the scene where Mr. D and Mr. B are at the Ball and Lizzy overhears them talking about her? Yea, I knew you did.) AAAnyway, we've seen it done more times than we can count. Ms. Potter does it ok. She's not the best, and I'm sure there are worse. There is a paranormal visitation by the "real" Mr. Darcy, and he is kinda annoying. The secondary characters are charming, and Mr. Wikham turns out to be an elderly bus driver. I'm not mad that I spent time reading this, but I'm also not in a hurry to go out and get Ms. Potters other titles. I read many scathing reviews about this book, before reading it myself, so my expectations were low. Fortunately, I liked it a little better than they did, but that is probably because I expected to loathe it. I was pleasantly suprised. This book fulfills my Chick Lit requirement for the Read Around the Genres challenge.