I started Jana Goes Wild and then decided I needed to go back and read Kamila Knows Best, a book I own, but hadn’t read. Reading the two back to back was a great decision. Kamila Knows Best is a retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma, with Jana and Anil in the Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill roles. Jana Goes Wild, set some 5 years later, is the resolution of their story. If you haven’t read Kamila yet, you don’t absolutely need to, but you should anyway. While it isn’t an Austen retelling, Jana Goes Wild does continue the exploration of expectations and appearances started in Kamila.
Towards the end of Kamila, Kamila and Jana realize they were pitted against each other as kids with each being told they should be more like the other. By setting Jana five years later, Heron gives Jana and Kamila’s friendship time to solidify, and for the rage at Anil calm down. Well, everyone’s rage but Jana’s – she is still angry. Despite that, Jana and Anil have settled into co-parenting their daughter, Imani. Jana avoids seeing Anil, and keeps most of their conversations digital, but she is also grateful her daughter has a father who loves her and works hard to be a good parent. In the intervening years, Anil has rebuilt his friendship with Rohan and Kamila enough that he is invited to be a groomsman.
Jana Goes Wild edges up to the romance/women’s fic boundary but stays on the romance side, keeping Jana’s primary focus on her relationship with Anil as her feelings move from anger to love. While Jana and Kamila were able to set aside that expectations that pitted them against each other, Jana still has to contend with other people’s expectations of her both as an unwed mother and as an introvert. Jana still feels the repercussions from the scandal around her two week romance with Anil. When she finally gets to yell at him about it, it feels cathartic. Anil is so clearly in love with her, but he really needs to learn the lesson about keeping secrets from Jana.
The thorniest relationship for Jana though is with her mother. Her mother is both a huge part of her support network, but also keeps Jana stuck feeling shame about choosing not to marry Anil before Imani was born. They are able to work through some key elements in a lovely scene. Farah Heron very kindly put the recipe for Jana’s mother’s samosa in the back of the book. I made them and they are delicious.
A big chunk of the book is set in Tanzania where Kamila and Rohan are holding their wedding. Over a couple of weeks the wedding party tours several resorts providing a lovely backdrop for the story. By coincidence, a friend of mine and her partner were vacationing in Tanzania at a couple of the same resorts, so I got to see pictures and hear stories. I will now always believe that my friends were in the fictional wedding party.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Forever (Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.
