Jane Steele: A Confession

This nod to Jane Eyre by Lyndsay Faye was recommended by Modern Mrs. Darcy (or her readers) for the reading challenge in the category of being "un-put-down-able" . I didn't find it so. However, it is a rollicking good read! Jane Steele is raised on tales of owning Highgate House by her beautiful, fragile, French mother. Yet she lives in the cottage on the grounds while her spiteful aunt and hateful cousin live in the manor house. They become predatory when she is left an orphan and she is shipped off to a boarding school where she has to fight for her very life. She escapes to London, leaving the corpses of her tormentors in her wake. She spends time writing "last confessions" of the recently executed, to make her way and hide from the law herself. Then she sees the advertisement; her aunt has died and the new owner of Highgate House, Mr. Charles Thornfield, is looking for a governess for his ward. Interested to know whether the manor is, indeed, hers, Jane goes undercover as a governess at a greatly changed Highgate House. For the new residents are all Sikh and lately from the wars.... She learns much about herself during her sojourn there, even as she falls in love with the tragic Mr. Thornfield.