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Not particularly a Jane Eyre fan, I was reluctant to read this book fashioned closely after that story. But this version, set in Scotland in the 1950’s I liked better than the darker original. I even enjoyed it enough to consider giving it five stars, but I guess if you have to fully borrow a plot I’ll have to dock a point from that and rank it at four stars instead.

This book breathes real on it’s own and if you know nothing about Jane Eyre, you’ll enjoy it all the more. I liked Gemma, and I loved her as a governess and a nanny in the best of homeschooling traditions. There are a whole range of characters here ranging from awful to nice, but the story rings more true to me than Jane Eyre ever did. Considering we’re comparing it to an enduring classic, that is high praise!

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