This was better than I expected. The prose is especially lush, but less… dramatic, let’s say, then something I didn’t get on with, like Wuthering Heights. Jane herself I found quite likeable though, even if it’s a bit Not Like Other Girls, particularly around her supposed attractiveness, or unattractiveness, depending on the character mentioning it. Her values and a conflict around them is directly woven into the plot, and I guess though if you summarized what all happened, it wouldn’t feel like much happened, but it felt, aside from a section near the end, like it had great flow and was very engaging.

Aside from a huge contrivance three quarters in, I was picking up what it was dropping down. It is such a huge, not to mention unnecessary one, however, that it really did knock my enjoyment down. It followed the kind of too-long, more boring section, after a fun little twist (of which, there were a surprising few!). Jane becomes more and more endearing to me, as does her problematic love interest, to some degree. The characters are more complex than expected from a rather straight forward conflict test plot.

All around solid. I didn’t find the romantic aspects that odd either. Modern romance is just as problematic, if not more so, since here there are actual reasons for it, and in many modern ones, there just isn’t a single explanation at all, and it’s normalized.