Review: Jane F---ing Eyre

Jane F---ing Eyre
by J.K. Really
Humor/Mashup
Amazon  /  Goodreads

Plot Summary:

"You can trust and believe I had the childhood from hell. When my spoiled-ass cousins weren't cracking me upside the head with leather-bound novels, I was getting locked in the family murder room by my bitchface Aunt. Just the fact we even had a murder room should tell you something about the next level kind of bullshit I endured."

Jane F---ing Eyre is the Victorian gothic romance Jane Eyre, retold by a heroine who's ready to get real. While Charlotte Bronte's classic has spawned dozens of film iterations, it's never been updated, probably because Mr. Rochester's little tricks wouldn't fly with any woman navigating the dating scene today. Re-telling this iconic piece of literature as a mashup of the original verbatim dialogue and what Jane's thinking with her Victorian filter off, allows fans to experience the romance, the horror, and the passive-aggressive jabs of Ms. Fairfax again as though for the first time... but with all the boring parts cut out.

Review:

You know that strangled, eruptive laugh that comes out sometimes when you are surprised into laughing at something?  Well that happened to me a lot with this novella.  As a huge fan of the original, I wasn't expecting to be so delighted and entertained by this retelling.  I always thought Jane had a lot of restrained sass in her in the original novel, and it's wonderful to get all that sass unrestrained in this book.  To the extent that I wanted to high-five this real talking Jane multiple times!

What really impressed me too with this novel, was how spoken dialogue, as they were said in the original novel, was repeated in this book, but the real story is told through Jane's irreverent internal commentary.  And both worked together so well!  Profane and saucy comments followed logically from what Jane actually says - given that she has to hold back from really speaking her mind.  This book does a great job of mashing up the original novel with this extremely cheeky Jane.

The last fourth of the novella is a little rushed, and I would have wanted to read more of Jane's thoughts on St. John, but perhaps there's only so many times Jane can inwardly curse out someone.  If you are sensitive to bad language then this isn't for you, but for a fun, modern and hilarious interpretation of Jane's story, you should definitely give this a read!  And now I'm going to have trouble not seeing Mrs. Fairfax as a hater.

And in the author's note at the end, it says she's working on a version of Pride and Prejudice!