Reviews Archives - Page 89 of 106

This book is the second in a series, please read my review of The Plain Janes.

Janes in Love picks up where The Plain Janes left off. It’s Valentine’s Day and the Main Jane, Jane Buckles, wants a date for the Ides of March ball, but is torn between two boys. One of them she likes and knows, however, he doesn’t seem to be attracted to her as much as the newcomer is. But then he is stuck doing community service because of her! It’s a difficult situation, but she has a lot to distract her – the Janes are running out of money, Theatre Jane has fallen for an actor and Polly Jane has a boyfriend.

Things get worse when most of the Janes are caught by Officer Sanchez putting one of their public art pieces together, and after another terrorist attack, Main Jane’s mother stops leaving the house. It also becomes clear that Main Jane has a secret admirer – is it one of the boys she can’t decide between, or someone else? Main Jane is now sending letters to Poland for Miroslaw, and he inspires her to apply for a grant for P.L.A.I.N. to create a community art garden. Could this save the Janes?

I didn’t like this book as much as I did The Plain Janes. The characters didn’t really develop any more, which was disappointing, and I would have liked to see more public art and less worrying about love lives. The cover and title slightly annoyed me, they made this title very much more a ‘girl’ book whereas I thought the first book would appeal to boys as well. However, it was an entertaining read and because it is a short, mini-sized graphic novel, it took 40 minutes maximum for me to get through. It is definitely worth reading if you enjoyed The Plain Jane, and you need to read the first book in order to understand and appreciate this sequel. It was nice to spend time with the Janes again and it was easier to get into the plot of this one knowing the background information already. There was also a great romantic twist at the end! It is a shame that the Minx imprint was cancelled and that the sequels the writer and artist had planned are unlikely to surface.

You can see some pages from Janes In Love (without text, so no spoilers) and from the cancelled third instalment in the series, Janes Go Summer here at the readergirlz blog.

A whole story told through notes left on a refrigerator door? Sounds difficult to do right, if right is even possible, doesn’t it? Before reading this I was very sceptical about the idea. I expected this book to be high on the novelty value and sentimentality, and when I picked it up in the library I did so because I thought the style would be interesting, if not the content.

It’s the story of the relationship between a mother and daughter before, during, and after the mother becomes seriously ill – I won’t go into more detail or I might spoil it. Surprisingly, this book doesn’t come across as gimmicky. It is an honest, and ultimately very sad (I cried! My sister cried too!) story elegantly told through the notes the mother and daughter leave each other. Although they only communicate with each other and us the readers through notes, I still got a real sense of the characters. However, the ending feels a bit too abrupt, it’s not as well paced as the rest of the book and I would have liked it to go on longer although the author does her best to draw it to a neat conclusion.

I did wonder if it would have been just as effective or more so if told in a more conventional style. On the one hand, you don’t really need to know any more about the characters for the story to work and to have its emotional impact, but on the other, there’s some stuff you just have to guess at, and sometimes the notes did seem a little unrealistic.

The biggest drawback of this book, in my opinion, not a criticism, but a drawback – is that it is very quick to read. It took me 45 minutes. It’s a good book to have in libraries, and possibly to encourage reluctant readers, but I imagine the sparseness of the text, for lack of a better description, puts off some potential readers seeing it in a shop. If I’d seen it in a shop before the library, I wouldn’t have considered buying it. It does a lot in those 45 minutes, I remember the story in surprising detail, but I’m sure most readers that pick up Life on the Refrigerator Door see that it will be a quick read straight away, and that must put them off ‘investing’ in it.

Book Review: Janes in Love, by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg

Book Review: Life on the Refrigerator Door, by Alice Kuipers

Reviews

Footer