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My Plain Jane (The Lady Janies #2) by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows
Genre: Young Adult Fiction (Historical Fantasy Romance)Date Published: June 26, 2018
Publisher: HarperCollins
You may think you know the story. After a miserable childhood, penniless orphan Jane Eyre embarks on a new life as a governess at Thornfield Hall. There, she meets one dark, brooding Mr. Rochester. Despite their significant age gap (!) and his uneven temper (!!), they fall in love—and, Reader, she marries him. (!!!)
Or does she?
Prepare for an adventure of Gothic proportions, in which all is not as it seems, a certain gentleman is hiding more than skeletons in his closets, and one orphan Jane Eyre, aspiring author Charlotte Brontë, and supernatural investigator Alexander Blackwood are about to be drawn together on the most epic ghost hunt this side of Wuthering Heights.
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My Plain Jane is the second book in the Lady Janies series by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows. This was an alternate version of Jane Eyre… or should I say, This is how it really happened? I loved the idea of the first book taking actual history and twisting it, so I wasn’t sure if I would like this just as much being based on a fictional book, but it ended up being a lot of fun. It took real life characters and mixed them up with fictional folks. Very clever! I think I still enjoyed the first one a smidge more, but this one kept me entertained with its fun characters!
You may think you know the story.
Oh, heard that one, have you? Well, we say again: you may think you know the story. By all accounts it’s a good one: a penniless, orphaned young woman becomes a governess in a wealthy household, catches the eye of the rich and stern master, and (sigh) falls deeply in love. It’s all very passionate and swoonworthy, but before they can be married, a—gasp!—terrible treachery is revealed. Then there’s fire and despair, some aimless wandering, starvation, a little bit of gaslighting, but in the end, the romance works out. The girl (Miss Eyre) gets the guy (Mr. Rochester). They live happily ever after. Which means (sigh) everybody’s happy, right?
Um… no. We have a different tale to tell. (Don’t we always?) And what we’re about to reveal is more than a simple reimagining of one of literature’s most beloved novels. This version, dear reader, is true. There really was a girl. (Two girls, actually.) There was, indeed, a terrible treachery and a great fire. But throw out pretty much everything else you know about the story. This isn’t going to be like any classic romance you’ve ever read.
It all started, if we’re going to go way, way back, in 1788 with King George III. The king had always been able to see ghosts. Sometimes he even had amusing conversations with long-deceased courtiers and unfairly beheaded queens who were floating about the palace grounds.
Then disaster struck. One particular day the king was without his spectacles. As he was walking in the garden, a mischievous ghost rattled the branches of a nearby tree and said, in its most stately voice, “Hey, look at me! I’m the King of Prussia!”
George, who had been expecting a visit from the King of Prussia, immediately bowed and exclaimed, “I am most pleased to meet you, Your Highness!” and tried to shake the tree’s hand.
From that moment on, George was referred to as “Mad King George,” a title he greatly resented. So George assembled a team made up of every kind of person he thought could help him be rid of these irksome ghosts: priests who specialized in exorcisms, doctors with some knowledge of the occult, philosophers, scientists, fortune-tellers, and anybody, in general, who dabbled in the supernatural.
And that’s how the Royal Society for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits was established.
In the years that followed, the Society, as it came to be called, functioned as a prominent and well-respected part of English life. If there was something strange in your neighborhood, you could, um, write the Society a letter, and they would promptly send an agent to take care of it.
Fast-forward right past the reign of George IV, to William IV ascending England’s throne. William was practical. He didn’t believe in ghosts. He considered the Society to be nothing more than a collection of odious charlatans who had been pulling the wool over the eyes of his poor disturbed predecessors for many years. Plus it was a terrible drain on the taxpayers’ dime (er, shilling). So almost as soon as he was officially crowned king, William cut the Society out of the royal budget. This led to his infamous falling-out and subsequent feud with Sir Arthur Wellesley, aka the Duke of Wellington, aka the leader and Lord President of the RWS Society, which was now underfunded and under-respected.
This brings us to the real start of our story: northern England, 1834, and the aforementioned penniless, orphaned girl. And a writer. And a boy with a vendetta.
Let’s start with the girl.
Her name was Jane.
Oh, heard that one, have you? Well, we say again: you may think you know the story. By all accounts it’s a good one: a penniless, orphaned young woman becomes a governess in a wealthy household, catches the eye of the rich and stern master, and (sigh) falls deeply in love. It’s all very passionate and swoonworthy, but before they can be married, a—gasp!—terrible treachery is revealed. Then there’s fire and despair, some aimless wandering, starvation, a little bit of gaslighting, but in the end, the romance works out. The girl (Miss Eyre) gets the guy (Mr. Rochester). They live happily ever after. Which means (sigh) everybody’s happy, right?
Um… no. We have a different tale to tell. (Don’t we always?) And what we’re about to reveal is more than a simple reimagining of one of literature’s most beloved novels. This version, dear reader, is true. There really was a girl. (Two girls, actually.) There was, indeed, a terrible treachery and a great fire. But throw out pretty much everything else you know about the story. This isn’t going to be like any classic romance you’ve ever read.
It all started, if we’re going to go way, way back, in 1788 with King George III. The king had always been able to see ghosts. Sometimes he even had amusing conversations with long-deceased courtiers and unfairly beheaded queens who were floating about the palace grounds.
Then disaster struck. One particular day the king was without his spectacles. As he was walking in the garden, a mischievous ghost rattled the branches of a nearby tree and said, in its most stately voice, “Hey, look at me! I’m the King of Prussia!”
George, who had been expecting a visit from the King of Prussia, immediately bowed and exclaimed, “I am most pleased to meet you, Your Highness!” and tried to shake the tree’s hand.
From that moment on, George was referred to as “Mad King George,” a title he greatly resented. So George assembled a team made up of every kind of person he thought could help him be rid of these irksome ghosts: priests who specialized in exorcisms, doctors with some knowledge of the occult, philosophers, scientists, fortune-tellers, and anybody, in general, who dabbled in the supernatural.
And that’s how the Royal Society for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits was established.
In the years that followed, the Society, as it came to be called, functioned as a prominent and well-respected part of English life. If there was something strange in your neighborhood, you could, um, write the Society a letter, and they would promptly send an agent to take care of it.
Fast-forward right past the reign of George IV, to William IV ascending England’s throne. William was practical. He didn’t believe in ghosts. He considered the Society to be nothing more than a collection of odious charlatans who had been pulling the wool over the eyes of his poor disturbed predecessors for many years. Plus it was a terrible drain on the taxpayers’ dime (er, shilling). So almost as soon as he was officially crowned king, William cut the Society out of the royal budget. This led to his infamous falling-out and subsequent feud with Sir Arthur Wellesley, aka the Duke of Wellington, aka the leader and Lord President of the RWS Society, which was now underfunded and under-respected.
This brings us to the real start of our story: northern England, 1834, and the aforementioned penniless, orphaned girl. And a writer. And a boy with a vendetta.
Let’s start with the girl.
Her name was Jane.
Have you read the first book?
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We're the authors of the young adult novels MY LADY JANE, MY PLAIN JANE, MY CALAMITY JANE, MY CONTRARY MARY, MY IMAGINARY MARY, and MY SALTY MARY.
Our group is made up of Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand, and Jodi Meadows—all authors of our own separate young adult books. We met on a group book tour back in 2012, became fast friends, and initially came up with idea for the Lady Janies books as a way for us to be able to spend more time hanging out and traveling together.
Between the three of us we've written thirty novels, a bunch of novellas, a handful of short stories, and a couple of really bad poems, but we have the most fun working on our books together.
We're friends. We're writers. We're fixing history by rewriting one sad story at a time.
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