Just as You Are

Kellogg debuts with a cute but somewhat gimmicky lesbian retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day New York City. Liz Baker and her three roommates all work for The Nether Fields, a queer magazine on the verge of shutting down—until it’s bought by two wealthy Smith College graduates, Bailey Cox and Daria Fitzgerald. From there, Kellogg sticks to Austen’s script to the letter: Liz and Daria loathe each other until they gradually prove each other’s initial assumptions wrong and fall in love almost without noticing. It can be frustrating to watch the characters follow their predetermined paths, especially when the plot demands that the updated characters make choices that feel unmotivated in order to fit the beats of the original. But Kellogg anticipates her own detractors: Liz, who dreams of writing a novel, makes an argument for the existence of this book in a conversation with her best friend, Jane, in which they decide that writing “fluff” can be a worthy pursuit. That’s all this sweet romance wants to be, and as pure fluff it works just fine. Agent: Jessica Alvarez, BookEnds. (Apr.)