Sass Reads: A Breath of Eyre

While this is book is officially in the category of Young Adult novels (and I'm a bit beyond the age of a "young adult", I enjoyed A Breath of Eyre, by Eve Marie Mont, very much.  When I read the blurb about the book's premise on Amazon (I read this on my Kindle), two things stood out.  

One: the book's protagonist finds herself inexplicably transported into the world, indeed into the very character, of Jane Eyre.  Jane Eyre, a marvelously gothic romance novel, was my favorite book as a teenager, when I rode the emotional ups and downs with the outcast Jane as went from being the poor, unwelcome orphan in both her aunt's home and then the boarding school.  Resigned to her life, Jane finds herself in the employ of the mysteriously commanding and handsome Mr. Rochester.  

Two:  Jane, plain, simple, unaffected, resolute, was a good bit of escapist drama for me as a teen.  I have mentioned before that my home did not exactly put the 'fun' in dysfunctional.  I often escaped to my basement bedroom, slipping under the covers to lose myself in an author's world.  So, for me, the premise of A Breath of Eyre was wholly magnetic.

Emma Townsend is the protagonist caught between her own modern troubled teen life in Boston and the life of Jane Eyre in England.  She mourns the loss of her mother, despairs about her unsettled relationship with her father, and longs for romance.  As a scholarship student at a boarding school, she stays below the radar to avoid the stinging verbal assaults of her nemesis, Elise.  Late one evening, she helps the horses at the school's barn escape a fire, but is knocked down and out in the process, bringing on a mysterious chain of events that lands her at Thornfield Hall with a strangely familiar cast of characters.  The experience of traveling between the two settings helps her to make her decision about where she belongs.

In addition to being a great premise and a riveting story, it's extremely well-written.  Ms. Mont never dumbs down the vocabulary for her teenaged characters and is able to shift believably into the more formal stilted language of the eighteenth century when the story changes setting.

What's even more fun?  There's a sequel coming and Emma will find herself strongly involved in The Scarlet Letter and the world of The Phantom of the Opera.  More faves!

Give it a read.  I recommend!

Love,

Sass