Always Jane

TEST

Always Jane is about the daughter of a chauffeur who suddenly finds herself at the center of a love tangle.  It’s a spirited, modern spin on the Audrey Hepburn classic Sabrina.

The sons of a rock music producer, himbo Eddie Sarafin and his more level-headed, brooding brother Fen have been vaguely aware of Jane  Marlow since they were kids  Jane has always stood tantalizingly close to Fen and Eddie‘s inner circle, but has never been admitted all the way in, even now that she’s grown to a lovely eighteen-year-old – to the point where everyone believes she actually is the daughter of a record producer – instead of the daughter of the chauffeur who drives the record producer around.  Reuniting at Condor Lake, the site of a famous annual music festival, the Marlows prepare to work (Jane will be on pet care duty as well as PA-ing for one of the artists, called Velvet) and the Sarafins prepare to play.  It’s the sweet (but dumb) Eddie whom Jane has always crushed on,  but now she’s looking at brooding Fen in a new way.  But Fen has had a sudden reversal of fortune, been kicked out of their father’s good graces and now must scuffle for dimes at a vinyl record store. Fen thinks Jane is rich, but that’s not why he yearns for her.

But this year will be different for Jane.  She’s going to reinvent herself, this summer – and she’ll  have to pick between the Sarafin boys and figure out which of them has always seen the woman she is and not the chauffer’s daughter she was.

Always, Jane combines romance with serious topics like class division and drug addiction.  It’s very Jenn Bennett, in that the characters feel three-dimensional and the sensation, taste and memory of summer is richly captured within her lovely, nimble prose.  The rock and roll world is carefully created, with all of its positives and excesses.

I liked Jane as a protagonist and Fen and Eddie are two different prongs of the author’s typical type of lead guy character – the brooding, romantic artiste and the large, floppy, puppy dog. I liked the intensely romantic nature of Fen and Jane’s bond, but enjoyed best of all Jane’s complicated connection to Velvet.

And yet while Bennett usually innovates in her books, here, her usual themes stagnate.  She’s written a lot of outsider perspective stories about the poor and middle class looking in on the so-called upper classes, at which point the protagonists realize their antagonists have clay heels, but here nothing sings quite as sharply as it has in her many other wonderful books.  Her character analysis remains flawless, but I wanted, needed, just a little more.

But Always Jane is a darn good book – excellent for older teens or those in their mid-teens who have a sense of the realistic but still like to dream.

Buy it at Amazon or your local independent retailer

Visit our Amazon Storefront

Reviewed by Lisa Fernandes

Grade: B+

Book Type: Young Adult

Sensuality: Kisses

Review Date: 03/04/22

Publication Date: 03/2022

Review Tags: 

Recent Comments …

  1. excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.

Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier

guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments