Jane, Unlimited
Ratings14
Average rating3.1
15
Ratings14
Average rating3.1
**If you could change your story, would you?**
Jane has lived a mostly ordinary life, raised by her recently deceased aunt Magnolia, whom she counted on to turn life into an adventure. Without Aunt Magnolia, Jane is directionless. Then an old acquaintance, the glamorous and capricious Karin Thrash, blows back into Jane's life and invites her to a gala at the Thrashes' extravagant island mansion called Tu Reviens. Jane remembers her aunt telling her: "If anyone ever invites you to go to Tu Reviens, promise me that you'll go."
What Jane doesn't know is that at Tu Reviens her story will change; the house will offer her five choices that could ultimately determine the course of her newly untethered life. But every choice comes with a price. She might fall in love, she might lose her life, she might come face-to-face with herself. At Tu Reviens, anything is possible.
**Read *Jane, Unlimited* and see why *The New York Times* has raved, "Some authors can tell a good story; some can write well. Cashore is one of the rare novelists who do both."**
This description comes from the publisher.
Reviews with the most likes.
This was me re-reading for like, the thousandth time (probably tenth read-through) so I could make note of all the lines that I adored.
I picked it up because I absolutely loved her Graceling-books. However, I was slightly disappointed by this one. I just couldn't really connect to the story or some of the characters. There are some interesting aspects to the worlds she tried to create, but overall not a book I would recommend or reread (which I have done with the Graceling-series).
Apparently, this book started out as a choose-your-own-adventure and it grieves me that it didn't stay that way, because that could have been awesomely revolutionary. Instead we get something that is neither fish nor fowl, a book that keeps changing its mind about what it wants to be, a kludge-like story full of disparate pieces that never fit together. In short its a clunky, inelegant, headache-inducing experiment that's trying so damned hard to cram everything in, its annoying. I think the mantra, “Less is More” would have served this tale very, very well.
I won this advance reading copy through Goodreads so thank you to the publisher and I'm sorry I didn't like it more.
In the author's note at the end, Cashore mentions that this was originally conceived and written as a Choose Your Own Adventure book. It probably should have stayed that way. This format did not work for me at all. There are a lot of positive qualities in the story and the writing, but for the last 2/3 of the book, I was too bored and annoyed to appreciate them. Hence why it took me 3 months to slog through all 440 pages.
I will certainly pick up Cashore's future projects, but this one was, quite simply, a mess.
