A haunted retelling of Jane Eyre with ghosts, ghost-hunters, and a Brontë sister trying to capture it all with her pen.
The writing trifecta of Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows will be coming out with the much anticipated My Salty Mary novel in August 2024. In preparation for this, I read all three of the Lady Janies books and the first two Mary series books. Across five book reviews, I will share my thoughts on these wonderful, unique, sarcastic, YA historical fantasy series.
I was on a quest last year to read one “classic” book per month, and one of the first ones on my list was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I had never fully read the book, but was somewhat familiar with the story plot, and while I was pleasantly surprised by certain, clever turns of phrase, I really did not enjoy the novel. I understand how sacrilegious that is to say! But I could not get over the creepy age gap, the employee/employer power dynamic, the erratic temperament of Mr. Rochester, and the way that Jane justified all of this in her head. It was a classic case of my modern mentality influencing how I interpreted a past work and the lives that the characters led, but since I am no longer in high school, I do not have to hold my reads to the standard of their historic place and historic time. I can want more!
All of my main gripes were addressed in Hand et al.’s magical YA retelling, My Plain Jane. While living out her Dickensian childhood at school, Jane Eyre discovers she can talk with ghosts. When her good friend, Helen, dies, she sticks around in the afterlife to pop up in ghost form and give opinionated comments on Jane’s decisions—which Jane soon realizes, the others cannot see or hear. While she is teaching at the school, the precocious Charlotte Brontë, people-watcher extraordinaire and aspiring author, befriends Jane and tries to get to the bottom of her socially odd ways. Additionally, a member of England’s preeminent ghost-hunting society, Alexander Blackwood, investigates a nearby haunting, resulting in the expulsion of the ghost. Jane is determined to leave the area to save Helen from being banished, and thus accepts a position at Thornfield Hall. Alexander thinks there is more to Jane than meets the eye and is thus determined to find her and enlist her to help in the organization. And Charlotte wishes to prove to Alexander that she is worthy of joining the organization by solving the mystery that is Jane Eyre. What could go wrong?
The whole book reads as an old-timey, better-organized version of Ghostbusters. Jane’s story line was my favorite, mostly because Helen’s commentary was what I was thinking while reading the original Jane Eyre. Charlotte’s story line feels a bit like if an episode of Scooby Doo, in regards to the silliness of her crime-solving solutions, was mixed with the sass and want to prove herself found in the Enola Holmes series (books or movies). Alexander Blackwood’s story line was my least favorite, but he did have a great arc for his character development. I don’t want to spoil anything too major in terms of what parts of this book are the same/different from the source material, but suffice it to say that the payoff found in the scenes related to Jane and Rochester’s marriage is worth the wait.
As part of Hand et al.’s series, the stylistic choice of sassy, modern jokes explained by the narrators pervades the novel, but there is an additional level of comedic commentary in how the narrators reference and make fun of the source material. If you have not read the original book, some of the jokes may go over your head, so be warned. Another fun read, with better characters and faster pacing, in my opinion—a 4.5/5 for me, as this was my favorite of the five novels Hand et al. have put out to date.
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