A review by poisoned_icecream
Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
I liked this retelling of Jane Eyre. Jane Steele is definitely an interesting character. It is as gothic and dark as the original, but of course there are differences, the most obvious being the fact that in this book Jane is a serial killer. All the parts where she kills terrible men brought me a lot of joy. The romance between Jane Steele and Charles Thornfield bored me though. It would have been better if there was no Charles and instead she ends up with her childhood friend Rebecca Clarke, or she could have ended up with both of them, but whatever this is still a fine book. Also seeing "females" and "males" used as nouns really irritated me, and I also got tired of seeing of seeing non-English words being written in italics. Despite its flaws I would still recommend this to readers who like Jane Eyre and gothic novels.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings