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Jan 03, 2011

Elizabeth rated it:

I think I might have liked it...

...but I think I might have loved Jane Eyre and the residual feeling for Charlotte Brontë's Jane may have everything to do with why I liked this Jane. She wasn't an amazing character, here, she was rather bland, with mousy tendencies and an ability to bond with children. She was shy and had been unloved and now she was discovering herself. Her empowerment didn't involve bikini-wax so extra points to her (and her author). It's for those Eyre lovers who wa More...

36 comments like (54 people liked it)

Sep 27, 2010

Anne rated it:

What if . . .?

Jane Eyre got her job at Discriminating Nannies, Inc.

And Mr. Rochester drove a fast car on a hairpin turn.

And they both ran into each other, of course, then floated on plastic rafts in the pool, flirted at rehearsals for his world rock band tour, and, oh yes, endured all the angst and self-doubt, jealousy and drama of the original tale.

Well, then you would have Jane—April Linder’s sparkling new novel of impossible love, tragic deceit, More...

4 comments like (16 people liked it)

May 11, 2011

aubrey rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

4 comments like (17 people liked it)

Sep 01, 2010

Holly rated it:

Sitting in the lobby of Discriminating Nannies, Inc, Jane Moore never felt more different. She’d arrived in a suit jacket and pencil skirt from Goodwill and low heels. She wasn’t reading the latest issue of Instyle or People magazine or listening to her IPod. She wasn’t wearing trendy skinny jeans or ballet flats. Jane felt like an impostor. After her parents died leaving her nothing, she was forced to drop out of renown mostly female Sarah Lawrence university. Her sister ignores her; her broth More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 22, 2010

Marija rated it:

I’m truly sorry, but I must say this: If you love Jane Eyre as much as I do, do not read this book. I can honestly say that had I not read Jane Eyre before reading this, this book would have destroyed Brontë’s novel for me—this coming from a girl who’s known the story of Jane Eyre since she was four years old (from watching the Timothy Dalton and Orson Welles film adaptations, finally reading it for the first time at age eleven), and has been in love with it ever since. After finishing Lindner’s More...

2 comments like (12 people liked it)

Mar 23, 2011

Allison rated it:

You know how you love a classic? Not many, just a few that hit you in the gut and heart so hard that you can't breath? That's how I feel about Bronte's "Jane Eyre." It is my favorite!

I approached "Jane" by April Lindner with some trepidation and inside-my-head warnings to the author and narrator: DON'T disappoint me. DON'T stink. DON'T be cheesy. DO be delightful and creative and please tickle me a bit. Well, I can honestly say that Lindner's "Jane" More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 23, 2011

Mocha ღ Latte rated it:

More of my reviews at A Cupcake and a Latte:YA Reads, Reviews & More!

What if Jane Eyre fell in love a rock star?

The way I see it there are two ways you can approach Jane by April Lindner. You can approach the novel completely ignorant to the premise of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre or you could approach it with a complete knowing of it's characters, premise and events. I approached it with much knowing of Bronte's wonderful Jane Eyre and unfortunately, in this case, it als More...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 02, 2011

Nina rated it:

this book is amazing! it's sort of ur typical love story. But there are some twists and turns along the way. Jane Moore is the person trying to get through collage on what savings her parents gave her,wich wasn't much. So she decides to get a job. she meets up with this woman named lucia. Lucia asks Jane all sorts of questions and looks at her rsumee. Jane has dropped out of collage because she needs money to pay for it, and she barely has enough to pay for one semester. On Jane's resumee it say More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Aug 04, 2011

Chelsey rated it:

I loved this book. Loved it more than any book since Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly. I devoured it and was sad when it was over. But why?

Well, it is a revision of Jane Eyre, which I adore, and it does a better job with the portion of Jane Eyre I hate (her time after leaving Rochester) but there was something more to it.

The characters are incredibly compelling. Jane makes sense. Her reasons for staying in the shadows and for falling so quickly in love with Rothburn make sense-- a child who had More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 21, 2010

Precious rated it:

See full review here.

Jane has been through a lot. She had a family that held little love for her, had siblings who simply did not care and even hurt her and had a mom who tried to turn her into a carbon copy of her sister, Jenna. It was all very depressing. It saddened me and I wanted to be in the actual story to slap her siblings to reality. Jane is very considerate of her siblings despite what they did. Logic over emotions – that was her guide in life. Despite what she has been throu More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 21, 2011

Nafiza rated it:

Let me start by saying that I love Jane Eyre. There’s something so effortless about the way Bronte weaves her stories that even if I may not like the plot, I will invariably read her book for the strength of the prose alone. The mastery of the words, the beauty of the sentences – all these things that has the literature buff in me swooning.

I won’t say that Jane Eyre is timeless. I mean, yes, the themes explored in Jane Eyre are timeless but the actual events? No, not so much. At leas More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2011

Nan rated it:

My friend Angie gave this book a glowing review, and her review convinced me to buy the book.

Lindner does not try to hide that this is a modern retelling of Jane Eyre. As a rule, I don't mind retellings, and I've even taught a classes that I called "Literary Sequels, Prequels, and Revisions." When I approached this book, I tried to bring the same mindset that I applied to Gordon Korman's Jake Reinvented, a modernized The Great Gatsby. I can't help but think that Korman's More...

8 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2011

Julie rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 28, 2011

Hope rated it:

I have to admit I am a big fan of Jane Eyre book and when I first discovered this book I had to have it. I could not wait to start reading it. Now that I have finished it, I am quite disappointed the book was not what I expected it to be. I wanted this book to be good so bad, but it was not. I am sorry to say but it was just very poor version of trying to recreate a modern version of Jane Eyre.

Jane, is a nineteen year old university student who has to drop out because she can n More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 07, 2011

Kate rated it:

It seems to me that the people who hate this book, love the original Jane Eyre; though I've heard a few exceptions to this. Having never read the original, I really liked this book. It definitely has flaws. Like the title character... ugggh. It's actually possible that I dislike her more than any literary character I've read lately. Yet somehow I still really liked the book. Well, I had a lot of trouble putting it down anyways, which I guess means I really liked it. It was very entertaining, and More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 18, 2011

Luu rated it:

V tomto názore sa určite rozídem s 90% ostatných čitateľov, ale mne sa to vážne páčilo.

Páčilo sa mi, že sa to kŕčovite nedrží knihy. Celé to bolo veľmi voľné. Príbeh pôvodnú knihu nekopíruje, len sa inšpiruje v základnej osnove, veľa vecí vyhadzuje, nejaké pridáva. Charakter Jany je takisto iný, modernejší. Myslím si, že veľa ľuďom bude prekážať práve to.

Páčilo sa mi niekoľko alternácií - napríklad Janina spomienka, ako ju raz krutý brat zatvoril do skrine /Červená izba/ More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 21, 2012

Emily rated it:

Terrible, just embarrassingly awful. I threw in the towel after 162 pages of hoping things would improve.

I truly thought that this one had potential to be maybe not life-changing, but at least thoroughly entertaining. I loved the idea of it. Sadly, Jane has no Jane in her, and Rathburn comes off as a creep, and not a very intelligent one. HOW can it be possible to so thoroughly screw up a story that is adapted nearly scene for scene? If Charlotte Bronte weren't already dead, I'm sure More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 19, 2012

Bitten By Books rated it:

My Review:
This book is a modern retelling of Jane Eyre. And is about a 19 year old girl Jane Moore. She just recently lost her parents, and she's trying to deal with their death while also trying to stay in school. So while she struggling with that, her sister is giving her a hard time. Like for one thing- Jane's sister doesn't want anything to do with Jane, what's so ever. Her brother disappear with no word of where he is... and finely her parents died and left her with no money and no wh More...

0 comments like

Jan 27, 2012

Mara rated it:

This will be the first review I have written on a book that I have not finished. But I won't finish it - I don't need to. I dislike modern-set stories, but I was willing to try this one out because it was a contemporary version of the famous novel "Jane Eyre", which I enjoyed. I was curious to see what April Lindner would do with it.

Four words: I was not impressed. While Jane Moore herself is, for the most part, a likable character and fairly close to Jane Eyre, Nico Rathburn More...

0 comments like

Jan 26, 2012

Emilie rated it:

Eh.
So, this is pretty much a blow-by-blow modern version of Jane Eyre--like, even some of the conversations are the same--but it just doesn't have the appeal of the original, somehow. It's just a little less believable, a little less fleshed-out, and since anyone who's read Jane Eyre will know exactly how everything turns out, there's not much temptation to keep reading. But I did finish it, so I guess it's at least compelling enough to get through once.
There were some weird, unfinishe More...

0 comments like

Jan 06, 2012

Shweta's Book Journal rated it:

On principle I never compare classics to their retellings. Not that I am all sentimental about them but I feel classics are better left un criticized. They were of a different time period written by people who lived in a very different society with very different ideologies. It’s not just hard to compare,in truth it’s not in our capacity to compare. This one time I would like to make an exception and compare them.

April Linder’s Jane is so true to the original yet soooo good in it’s More...

0 comments like

Jan 06, 2012

Misty rated it:

A few days ago when I came up with the idea of LOVE WEEK I knew it wouldn’t be complete without a dip into classic literature. Unfortunately… after almost 2 years of writing this blog I have learned that most people have very little tolerance for “older works.” I’m not sure what it is, the vocabulary, the structure; hell… it could be the chapter upon chapter of meaningless description, the only thing I am certain of is that more people have read Twilight than books like Pride and Prejudice or Wu More...

0 comments like

Dec 25, 2011

Myla rated it:

I actually liked reading this book. It was engaging and I felt no major hate towards the story. I was thrilled when finding a Jane Eyre retelling since when I had never seen nor read any books based on my favorite classic love story. When I first saw this novel at my local library, I was practically screaming. I had such high expectations for this book and I think that it managed to get around that expectation level. However, as I was reading the book I couldn't stop comparing it with the origin More...

0 comments like

Dec 19, 2011

Jessie rated it:

Charlotte Bronte’s protagonist is brought into the twenty-first century in this entertaining retelling of the literary classic Jane Eyre. Lindner’s Mr. Rochester character is notably a rock star, adding a dimension of glamour and glitz into this gothic tale. Lindner’s novel does away with the cumbersome three-volume format of the nineteenth century. Gone are the first hundred pages about Jane’s childhood. These are instead dispersed throughout the novel in flashbacks as Lindner deems necessa More...

0 comments like

Dec 01, 2011

Loring rated it:

This is another "period" piece gone contemporary. The author is a professor of English and offers courses of English female authors: Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre), Jane Austin.

This title, "Jane" is a contemporary version of Charlotte Brontë 's "Jane Eyre". Set somewhere back East, the story tells of an low self esteemed, recently orphaned, had to droop out of college eighteen year old. Her oldest brother has taken her share of an inheritance, and her ol More...

0 comments like

Nov 21, 2011

Kate rated it:

Fundamentally, I don't know why this was marketed as a young adult book. It's not a young adult book. Jane may have been 19, but she was written like a 19 year old 160 years ago. And the Mr. Rathburn (why change his name? I don't get it) never really has an age stated, but we have to assume late twenties at the least. I had very different expectations for this book based on the marketing. And really, I was hoping for more than just a retelling. For me, the book was almost exactly the same but wi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 22, 2011

Taylor rated it:

Wow, when I first picked up this book I knew I would absolutely read it since I'm such a Charlotte Bronte fan but I predicted I would hate it because...the premise just doesn't seem like it would transfer over to a modern day story. If you've never read Jane Eyre, this book might seem strange to you, let me recap the storyline of Jane Eyre *SPOILERS* Jane is an unhappy child who grew up in an orphanage and finally gets her independence by becoming the nanny to a rich man's daughter. Jane is you More...

0 comments like

Nov 08, 2011

Jillian rated it:

Jane by April Lindner tells the story of nineteen-year-old Jane Moore. Her parents were recently killed in a car accident, and Jane finds herself unable to pay for her college tuition. When the dorms close at the end of the semester, Jane will be broke, and homeless, unless she thinks quickly. Jane uses her common sense and pure professionalism to land a job with a nanny agency. Her homely appearance and general disinterest in pop culture allows her a chance at a job that other young women w More...

3 comments like

Oct 30, 2011

Claudia rated it:

Every woman who's read the Bronte sisters' classics sees herself as Cathy or Jane. I am, and always will be, Jane. I can remember being captivated by her boldness and independence, her sense of self, even when it keeps her from what she wants. I loved her stiff spine.

Well, this IS my Jane. Jane Moore is the nanny to the child of a rock star...Instead of evil cousins, Jane's own siblings are cold and selfish, and we even have the 'locking Jane away for a day' scene...I missed the scen More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Oct 29, 2011

Shell rated it:

I got this book with a rather hopefull heart; I generally love new twists on old tales. And plus, it was less than ten dollars for more than 300 pages, which is really rare now-a-days. However, I was sadly dissappointed by this book. I love Jane Eyre. I just love it! It's just such a rich, complex, beautiful tale, about so many more issues than just love. But I feel like this modern take just drained it of all its unique, interesting aspects and left it only a shell of a story, just another yuck More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)