Where Is Your Bookmark? (A Peek Into Jane Steele, My Favorite Fictional School, and a Wolfish Cover)

Today I am featuring my current read, which also happens to be my September TBR List poll winner:

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

“Reader, I murdered him.” 

A sensitive orphan, Jane Steele suffers first at the hands of her spiteful aunt and predatory cousin, then at a grim school where she fights for her very life until escaping to London, leaving the corpses of her tormentors behind her. After years of hiding from the law while penning macabre “last confessions” of the recently hanged, Jane thrills at discovering an advertisement. Her aunt has died and her childhood home has a new master: Mr. Charles Thornfield, who seeks a governess.

Burning to know whether she is in fact the rightful heir, Jane takes the position incognito, and learns that Highgate House is full of marvelously strange new residents—the fascinating but caustic Mr. Thornfield, an army doctor returned from the Sikh Wars, and the gracious Sikh butler Mr. Sardar Singh, whose history with Mr. Thornfield appears far deeper and darker than they pretend. As Jane catches ominous glimpses of the pair’s violent history and falls in love with the gruffly tragic Mr. Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: can she possess him—body, soul, and secrets—without revealing her own murderous past? 

A satirical romance about identity, guilt, goodness, and the nature of lies, by a writer who Matthew Pearl calls “superstar-caliber” and whose previous works Gillian Flynn declared “spectacular,” Jane Steele is a brilliant and deeply absorbing book inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s classic Jane Eyre. [Goodreads Summary]

A weekly meme where readers share the first sentence of the book they are reading and say what they think. Hosted by the wonderful Gillion Dumas of Rose City Reader.

Of all my many murders, committed for love and for better reasons, the first was the most important. 

My thoughts: And with that, I have to know what put her on her current path. Talk about a hook!

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A weekly meme in which readers share a random sentence or two from page 56 or 56% of the book they are reading. Hosted by the wonderful Freda of Freda's Voice.

"Poor little mouse has been on a diet of water and brimstone for four entire days now, after the larder raid," Taylor explained, sounding bored.

"The new girl," Clarke's tiny voice called. "Please don't punish her, for I hardly know her name. Steele, I think, and she was very tired, as she only arrived today. Miss Lilyvale told her to say her prayers, and she . . . didn't, sir. She fell asleep." [page 56]

My thoughts: I haven't yet reached this scene, but it appears are Jane Steele has had a rough childhood. I do not care much for Taylor.


What do you think? Does this sound like book you would be interested in reading? 

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Originally hosted by Books by Proxy, Friday Face Off is now hosted by the fabulous Lynn of  Lynn’s Book Blog. Participants are asked to feature two more more covers of the same book with the week's assigned theme, and pick a favorite. 

This week the theme is a book whose cover features a wolf or wolves. 

I chose one of my favorites from Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series, Bitten. 

My eye is most drawn to the night scene with the wolf in the distance, framed by the tree and brush, a silhouette of a kind. I am less sure of the font used for the title, but I can live with it.

Which cover do you prefer? 

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Everyone has a favorite and then we also have something we dislike. Like a coin, there are two sides to every question. Each week, Carrie at The Butterfly Reads and Laura from Blue Eye Books ask participants to list what they like and don't like about that week's topic.

This week's topic is Favorite/Least Favorite Book Set in a School 

I probably should try and pick a lesser known book, but let's be honest. Most of us would go to Hogwarts if we could, even if only to walk its halls and explore the grounds. And I just love all of J.K. Rowlings characters and the world she created in the Harry Potter novels.

My least favorite is a bit tougher. There are plenty of schools I am glad I never attended, but for this selection, I went with a book I just could not get into. The Awakening by L.J. Smith, the first in the Vampire Diaries. I barely finished it. I really liked the television show, however--at least what I saw of it.

Have you read these? What would you say is your favorite book set in a school? Your least favorite?

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