To be honest, this isn't an easy review for me to write. I'm still a bit undecided about this book, feeling divided inside.
I was about 11 or 12 years old when I first encountered Jane Eyre. I was sitting on the cold floor in front of the small upstairs TV on Christmas Eve. I was so engrossed in the movie ( it was the adaptation with Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt), I didn't even hear my mother calling to come downstairs and open the Christmas presents. As soon as the holidays were over I went to the library to get the book. I've read it several times since, falling in love with it all over again every time I start reading the first sentence. It was a few years back, another chance encounter with another Jane Eyre Tv-adaptation. This time in the middle of the Night, watching the one with Toby Stephens and Ruth Wilson. The next day I ordered the book, in English, I'd only read in in German before that.
As you probably understand by now is that I really love the original. I was very excited when I heard about Jane, someone was finally taking on Jane Eyre and give it a modern setting.
So, with all that said, I'm really sorry to say that I didn't like Jane. I was really disappointed. For me it lacked the heart and the spirit of the original and all that was left was the lifeless body of it. Don't get me wrong. Jane isn't a bad book. It is very well written, has some great ideas and the original idea is executed really well. But it didn't engage me, I wasn't lost in the world of Jane. I probably would have liked this book if I hadn't read the original Jane Eyre so many times. I probably would have given it four stars instead of two. There are a few parts in it that are unrealistic and don't feel right but that's what happens when you take a book from the past and set it in the present.
So, bottom line is, read it if you haven't read the original Jane Eyre, don't if you have.
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