NB: We have another lesbian romance review from Reader Tara Scott! If you want to read her previous guest reviews (and we highly recommend that you do), you can see them all here.

Tara reads a lot of lesbian romances. You can catch her regularly reviewing at The Lesbian Review and Curve Magazine and hear her talk about lesbian fiction (including romance) on her podcast Les Do Books. You can also hit her up for recommendations on Twitter (@taramdscott).

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Karin Kallmaker’s name is one of the first that will pop up without fail whenever anyone asks for a place to start reading lesbian romance. And it’s no wonder. She’s been writing them since the late 1980s and has been responsible for many a lesbian or bisexual girl realizing she’s okay just the way she is. With a backlist that has nearly 30 novels (and who even knows how many novellas and short stories), it can be hard to know which to choose first. Just Like That isn’t the first I read by her, but it’s a great place to begin, especially if you love Pride and Prejudice as much as I do.

Just Like That opens with Syrah Ardani hanging out and skinny dipping with her best friend, Jane Lucas, before Syrah’s shift in the tasting room of her family’s winery. News has spread that Missy Bingley, a wealthy lesbian, has bought the old Netherfield place and it isn’t long before Jane declares herself ready to hang up her player ways for the sweet and single Missy.

After four years in France, Syrah is trying to learn everything she needs to know take over Ardani Vineyards from her aging father and make the quality wine they’re known for. She’s shocked and dismayed to learn that some of her father’s less than stellar decisions has landed the business in receivership. It doesn’t help matters that the corporate turnaround specialist who shows up to try to whip their books into shape is Missy’s friend Toni Blanchard, who just the night before saw Syrah make a drunken mess of herself at a local dance. Syrah doesn’t trust Toni and recognizes what her father doesn’t—that Toni is only there to make sure the vineyard’s creditors get a return on their investment.

After a bad breakup with her latest girlfriend, Mira Wickham, Toni is ready to get the hell out of New York, making it a great time to tackle that vineyard issue in California. If she’s lucky, it’ll be close to her best friend, Missy, so she can unwind while dealing with the same mismanagement issues that are the downfall of business after business. Syrah is exactly the irresponsible, entitled type of person she expects to see when dealing with a receivership case, until it turns out that she’s not. But Toni doesn’t mix business with pleasure, so it doesn’t matter how good a person Syrah is, or how gorgeous her eyes are.

So, yes! Karin Kallmaker rewrote Pride and Prejudice as a lesbian romance and it’s brilliant. Like so many, many people, I’m a huge fan of Pride and Prejudice and have been for more years than I’d prefer to admit. I love seeing it adapted well or finding a fresh new take on it, and get frustrated when I see yet another version that takes the original text and just weaves in extra scenes that don’t work all that well because no one can actually write like Jane Austen. For example, check out how it opens:

“Everybody knows that a single woman with good money is in want of a wife.” Jane waded out of the pond and stood dripping on the old blanket they’d tossed over the soft, early spring grass.

The outrageous statement succeeded in banishing Syrah’s drowsiness. “You? Wife material?”

Jane shook water out of her hair. “I figure if a woman’s making steady green and she’s in her forties, never been engaged, maybe even still a virgin, then she needs a wife.”

“You mean she needs you.” Syrah plucked a grape from the fist-sized cluster on the blanket next to her.

“Same thing. Are those good?” Jane peered dubiously at the bright green fruit, then picked one for herself.

Syrah bit the bottom from the grape she’d chosen and managed to keep a smile on her face. “I think so.”

Ever trusting, Jane popped the grape into her mouth. Syrah allowed the laugh she’d been holding back to escape her lips, then clapped her hands to her throat, trying to soothe her own outraged glands.

“You lying sack of potting soil—it’s sour!” Jane made a threatening gesture with her arm that Syrah laughingly avoided.

“Yes, I know. And it’s good, don’t you think?”

That iconic opening line is adapted to take into account the fact that the romantic relationships are between women in this book. It also immediately establishes that Jane is almost too sweet and Syrah is just as much a firecracker as Lizzie is in Pride and Prejudice.

Just Like That is right up there with The Lizzie Bennet Diaries for me because, rather than trying to keep it as true to the original as possible, Kallmaker writes it in a way that makes much more sense for now. Syrah doesn’t have four sisters and doesn’t need them. Toni doesn’t have a sister either, and so the Wickham plot line is adjusted in a way that fits better. Enough of the right characters and story beats are included so that it works as an adaptation, or possibly even a creative translation, and in a way that’s much better than trying to stay 100% faithful to the original.

I especially loved how she handled the iconic first “I love you” scene (and let’s be honest—I’m not spoiling anything because we all remember how Lizzie takes Darcy down after his bullshit admission of his feelings for her):

“I love you.”

Syrah nearly laughed, the idea was so absurd. “How can that possibly be true?”

“I don’t know.” Toni stepped closer. “I can’t get you out of my thoughts. I’ve never met anyone like you. I don’t know why, and I know I shouldn’t, but I love you and even though I tell myself it makes no sense, and I am behaving like a crazy woman, the truth is still there. I love you.”

“Is this a ‘pity the country girl’ moment? What are you trying to tell me?”

Toni frowned. “I didn’t think my declaration of love could be construed as anything but just that.”

Syrah felt a fury take hold of her as all her fear and worry were sucked into an anger so intense her voice shook. “You stand there and you dare to tell me you love me? That even though it’s crazy, and you know you shouldn’t, you love me anyway? Against your better judgment? What kind of love is that?”

One thing I noticed about Just Like That (and this is true for both Collins’s and Darcy’s dialogue in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries too), is that the characters sometimes speak in a way that feels a little more formal than I’d normally expect in a contemporary romance. This worked for me, however, because it helps lend the feel of Pride and Prejudice without actually including the same words, especially for those iconic moments.

Just Like That is a sweet, sexy, and funny read. It’s hard to say whether it’s Karin Kallmaker’s best, not only because I haven’t read them all yet, but because I’ve found them to be so very different from each other and I’ve enjoyed many of them immensely. Also, it’s hard for me to be objective about this book because I went into it knowing how much I like the author and its source material. If you’re at all into reinterpretations of classic literature or have been wondering what Karin Kallmaker’s writing is like, I highly recommend Just Like That.