Jane by April Lindner

Jane, by April Lindner, is a modern retelling of Jane Eyre. I kind of expected to swear off reading Jane Eyre spin offs after reading this book, but actually it was really good! It was a surprisingly believable modern telling of possibly my favorite story of all time.

In this telling, Jane is a girl whose parents die in a car accident during her first year of college and their will left the family house and money to her brother and sister. Jane is left with nothing and is forced to quit school and take up a nanny job for the famous Nico Rathburn, a legendary rock star who has a 5 year old daughter named Maddy. Jane and Nico fall in love and almost get married, until Jane learns the truth about Nico's first wife, a schizophrenic living in his attic. Jane runs away without any money or resources and finds Diana, who offers to let her sleep on her couch. Jane stays with Diana along with her sister and brother and works at the local soup kitchen. In this version Diana, Maria, and River are not her long-lost cousins, they just turn out to be nice people who take her in.

I like how the story was told; since it was modernized I felt like I could relate to Jane in a different way from before. Like when she left Rathburn/Rochester, I started to think about what I would do in that situation: no money, no friends, no place to sleep at night, no family, no support whatsoever. And I was reminded of how incredibly lucky I am and how blessed I have been in my life to have had a wonderful, loving, and supportive family, to have gotten an education that enabled me to get a job, and to always have had a roof over my head and food to eat. I can't imagine going through life the way Jane did without any love or support.

Anyway, fun book, not entirely original but definitely an enjoyable read, especially for any Jane Eyre fans!

3.5 out of 5 stars

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

Well it's been almost a month since my last post, which tells you that this book was a little intense because I have definitely been working on it since I finished my last book. I was recommended this book by my lovely sister in law Allison! This was definitely not a book that I could read in a couple of days, evidenced by my taking nearly 4 weeks to complete it.

A general summary: Daughter of Fortune is about a girl named Eliza who grows up in Valparaiso, Chile and falls in love with a poor boy named Joaquin Andieta, who goes off to California during the Gold Rush. Eliza leaves her family and follows her lover to California with the help of a Chinese doctor friend Tao Chi'en.

I began this story with the knowledge that it was a love story about a girl who follows her lover to California during the Gold Rush. While it does follow this girl's story eventually, there are many other characters who are thoroughly developed that, at first, I had difficulty getting interested in. I kept expecting to jump right in to Eliza's story and had a hard time adjusting to Allende's slow and thorough style. Once I figured out that I needed to be patient and just take the book one chapter at a time I grew to really enjoy her methodical storytelling. I remember mentioning to Chris when I first started reading that I thought this had the potential to be a great book because it was taking the time to develop characters and weave a complex and beautiful story. Upon completion I think I can say that this is a mostly great book; it's definitely very good. I had a couple minor issues with the ending, but I'm rarely completely satisfied when good books end.

I gained some interesting and somewhat difficult insights into my home state of California, particularly San Francisco. San Francisco was founded during the Gold Rush, which consisted of people immigrating from all over the world with the primary purpose of getting rich quick. Once in CA, greed, violence, and racial hatred prevailed. It became a state of people looking for a new beginning, which is all fine and good, but I think that the new beginnings based off a frenzy to find gold negatively impacted the state as a whole for generations to come. The kind of people attracted to what California had to offer during the Gold Rush were under the illusion that they could become rich without working hard. They were obsessed with money and traditional humanity was lost. I think that the Gold Rush set the stage for modern California, which I love because it was my home, but it has some serious problems. It was interesting for me to read about my home state and gain a greater understanding of it's history, giving me insight into it's present.

I definitely would recommend this story to all, with the advice to be patient because all of the characters and side stories throughout the book connect wonderfully and beautifully in the end.

4 out of 5 stars