Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Reader, I murdered him. And him. And him. Him too. But they were all bad.

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

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(He) was felled by a strangely skillful blow-as if I had studied the act, when in fact I had simply decided that he should stop being alive. – Jane Steele Stop me if you have heard this one. A girl in mid-1800’s England is orphaned at a young age and sent to a cruel school for young women to learn to be a governess. She later becomes a governess for the ward of a rugged and brooding man, falls in love, flees when the love […]

Jane Murder

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

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I picked up Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye based on the review by @faintingviolet. And also Jane Eyre is one of my very favorite books. The eponymous Jane of Jane Steele is headstrong and willful, convinced she knows herself and her capabilities to her very core. She knows these things about herself because from a very young age, she has been told few things but those things she is told, she is told with great certainty. Jane’s moral certainty leads her to commit murder and […]

“And in a way I have always thought that words are alive a little, for they can whisper sweet nothings and roar dragon flame with equal efficiency.”

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

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I am a big fan of Lyndsay Faye, but I couldn’t really pick up her 2016 work Jane Steele until now because I had not read Jane Eyre until late last year. While I’m sure you could read Jane Steele without reading Jane Eyre, I don’t know if you’d really see all that Faye is accomplishing in this work if you did. For that reason alone, I’m glad I waited. I love a quality retelling and Faye is absolutely delivering on that front. Jane Steele […]

Just as good as everyone said it would be.

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This book was slow to start for me. I found it interesting and enjoyed it while I was reading it, but I didn’t exactly need to pick it up or anything, and I kept getting distracted by cheesy romance novels I checked out from the library instead. I should have just been patient. At around 25% (the time she commits her second murder), I was hooked, and at about halfway through when new characters enter the picture, I was so into it I practically read […]

If Charlotte Bronte and Al Swearengen Had a Child, It Might Be This Jane

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It’s hard not to like a book that starts with a quote from Jane Eyre and a murder.  Though Jane Steele, a novel by Lyndsay Faye, didn’t rock my world as much as I had hoped, I did have a good time reading it and I definitely recommend it both if you are a fan of the original Bronte novel or even if you aren’t. It took me a bit to warm up to this Jane—partly because I couldn’t figure out how seriously to take […]

I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance

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I wasn’t sure if I was really enjoying this novel until about halfway through, when I realized I didn’t want to stop reading it until it was over. And then when it WAS over, I almost started reading it all over again. That’s the second book this year that has brought about this reaction. The first was Uprooted, and honestly, I’m happy enough to experience that feeling just once a year, so I feel sort of selfish for getting to enjoy it twice. Anyway! On […]



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