This book was slow to start for me. I found it interesting and enjoyed it while I was reading it, but I didn’t exactly need to pick it up or anything, and I kept getting distracted by cheesy romance novels I checked out from the library instead. I should have just been patient. At around 25% (the time she commits her second murder), I was hooked, and at about halfway through when new characters enter the picture, I was so into it I practically read […]
If Charlotte Bronte and Al Swearengen Had a Child, It Might Be This Jane
It’s hard not to like a book that starts with a quote from Jane Eyre and a murder. Though Jane Steele, a novel by Lyndsay Faye, didn’t rock my world as much as I had hoped, I did have a good time reading it and I definitely recommend it both if you are a fan of the original Bronte novel or even if you aren’t. It took me a bit to warm up to this Jane—partly because I couldn’t figure out how seriously to take […]
I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance
I wasn’t sure if I was really enjoying this novel until about halfway through, when I realized I didn’t want to stop reading it until it was over. And then when it WAS over, I almost started reading it all over again. That’s the second book this year that has brought about this reaction. The first was Uprooted, and honestly, I’m happy enough to experience that feeling just once a year, so I feel sort of selfish for getting to enjoy it twice. Anyway! On […]
“When we tell truth, often we are callous; when we tell lies, often we are kind”
Spoiler warning! There will be some mild plot spoilers for the early sections of Jane Steele in this review. I’m going to try to keep things vague, but it’s difficult to write about without revealing some details. Even if those in today’s world who never read Jane Eyre (they exist, I’ve met several of them), still tend to know the gist of the story (it is after all, 200 years old by now). Poor, down-trodden and plain Jane has an awful childhood, goes to the […]