I'm not actually finished the book, but I doubt I'll come back to it.

Despite my excitement when I saw, last fall, that there was a “real” version of Jane’s book, it took me a while to get around to reading it (so much to read, so little time, you know). It just so happened that I started it, finally, shortly before the episode where Jane is struggling with writer’s block after a bad review.

The plot here is almost exactly the plot of the show, although ostensibly set circa 1900. That detail is often easy to forget, as the ghostwriter seems to have done zero historical research. There’s a lot more that would be different in Victorian-era Jane’s life than just the circumstances of Mateo’s conception. Also, the names are changed, kind of ridiculously: I think readers can be trusted to know who is who, even if their name in the book doesn’t start with the same letter as their show name! The book even includes the Narrator, which is a great device in the show but it isn’t necessary and doesn’t fit here. I’d like to think Jane is a good writer, but based on this, I have to agree with her negative reviewer. It is sad, because I love Jane, and the show is so consistently clever, charming, funny, and poignant, and the book is none of those.

P.S. Even in this tale which is meant to be Jane and Michael’s idealized love story, I still like Rafael better.