My Week in Book Review: My Lady Jane

My Lady Jane by Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand, and Jodi Meadows

Edward (long live the king) is the King of England. He’s also dying, which is inconvenient, as he’s only sixteen and he’d much rather be planning for his first kiss than considering who will inherit his crown… Jane (reads too many books) is Edward’s cousin, and far more interested in books than romance. Unfortunately for Jane, Edward has arranged to marry her off to secure the line of succession. And there’s something a little odd about her intended… Gifford (call him G) is a horse. That is, he’s an Eðian (eth-y-un, for the uninitiated). Every day at dawn he becomes a noble chestnut steed—but then he wakes at dusk with a mouthful of hay. It’s all very undignified. The plot thickens as Edward, Jane, and G are drawn into a dangerous conspiracy. With the fate of the kingdom at stake, our heroes will have to engage in some conspiring of their own. But can they pull off their plan before it’s off with their heads?

Spoilers Ahead!

This book is all about voice. If you like the voice and narrative style, you will love this book. If you don’t, you probably won’t finish it. The story is told from three viewpoints, as implied above, but it is also narrated, and the narrators’ voices (they refer to themselves in the plural) are tongue in cheek, cheeky, and flat-out zany at times. They interrupt the story to insert comments about historical facts or inform the readers of what the characters should be doing. They admit upfront to changing up the history and warn you away if that’s not your thing. That ranges from Jane Grey not dying to King Edward falling for a—well, I won’t ruin it for you. There’s a splash of magic to keep the story fun and plenty of sass and romance to get you all emotionally invested.

Voice aside (and I do love the voice), I also love the relationship between Jane and G. It’s the perfect enemies-to-lovers relationship because their enmity is built on misunderstandings in believably and mutually stressful situations. A problem I have with some enemies-to-lovers relationships (including ones I’ve written), is that at least one of the characters is a douche to the other one for a not-great reason even though the other character is totally nice to them. In this book, Jane and G are both a little jerky to each other, but their reasons for it are super believable. So you know they’re going to figure it out eventually and fall for each other in the sweetest way, which they do. I won’t give everything in the book away, but my favorite moment is when Jane refuses to renounce G before Queen Mary, which means she’ll be executed alongside him . . . the writing there, how Jane won’t give up her principles and stands by G because he’s her husband even though she barely knows or likes him—it almost gave me chills.

I highly recommend this book! It’s a fun twist of history and fantasy and very unique. It also doesn't hurt that Jane is a huge bookworm, packing 50 of her favorite books for a month-long trip to the country, and I totally identify with that.