I'm a sucker for Jane Austen retellings, and I can tell from reading this that LaZebnik loves Jane Austen. She gets the Emma story. So why just the two and a half stars? Because if you choose to set Emma amongst rich teenagers in LA, you invite comparisons to Clueless, and this wasn't as compelling. There's a fine line between making the Emma character loveably clueless and just plain bratty, and that line is fuzzy at times here. Plus it just doesn't make sense that George would graduate from Harvard and spend months tutoring SAT prep before getting a job. Cute at times, and it actually made me want to read her other Jane Austen-inspired books, but this one isn't getting a second read.