The modern world is catching up to Elizabeth Bennet in the best Contemporary novels out
How to Lose the Lottery by Jay McKenzie (HarperCollins £16.99, 416pp)
How To Lose The Lottery is available now
When Edie and her husband Ron win the lottery jackpot, everything changes.
Edie has doubts about their dreams becoming instant reality, but Ron and their son Colin shout her down.
Colin moved back in when he divorced and he and his father bond over new cars and luxuries. Edie’s friends and neighbours are either avoiding her or making pointed comments about how rich and different from them she now is.
Feeling isolated, it’s obvious that money is not the answer.
The chapters alternate between before the win when life was tough and after it, when we see a new Edie gradually emerge.
A mystery is also unravelled as Edie’s traumatic backstory is revealed.
Beware the danger of scooping the jackpot
After Darcy by Joanna Nadin (Bedford Square £9.99, 320pp)
After Darcy is available now
I hurtled through this contemporary sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice, which imagines the kind of things the Bennet sisters might be dealing with if they were in their 40s now.
Mrs Bennet is keen to see her daughters settled before she and her husband die.
The story starts on the two-year anniversary of Darcy and Bingley dying in a car crash on the M1. Lizzy is grieving and also struggling to parent their three-year-old twins alone.
Youngest sister Lydia is living a chaotic life, drinking too much, taking drugs and sleeping around, but she vows to stay sober for a year when challenged by her family.
It’s just as well because this is a busy year for the Bennet sisters. Brilliant.
Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (Picador £18.99, 448pp)
Laure and Erica meet on the steps of the Sacre-Coeur in Paris in 1978. Both are students and each is immediately intrigued and infatuated by the other.
Erica is enjoying a few months abroad before starting at university in Norfolk. Laure is studying for a PhD but partying too hard and having an affair with a married woman.
Their meet-cute heralds much more than just a summer of love, however, because their complicated relationship ends up spanning decades, until 2013.
Erica marries a man and Laure ends up with a woman.
But whatever else might be going on in their lives, these two remain drawn to each other. Beautifully written and especially good on longing, identity and how messy life can be. Erica and Laure are likeable protagonists. Emotional and addictive.