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

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 Photo by D Sharon Pruitt

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.

The BookDepository

Don’t you just love it when

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you have a book by an author you love so you know you’ll love the book and then when you read the book you love it and keep stopping to say silly things like ‘Oh my god I love this book!’ or ‘Author-name you are a genius’. I love it. You don’t say? Yeah. I say.

Last time I had this experience I was reading The Boy Book by E. Lockhart, which obviously I was going to love as I adored The Boyfriend List. I am having it again with Nobody’s Girl by Sarra Manning. I swear she just keeps getting better and better! Every new book is just so much more detailed and powerful than the ones before, although of course those still remain brilliant and stand up to being re-read afterwards. I’m only on chapter five, but I can recognise improvement right from the start.

I always read with my ‘writing hat’ on. Some writers complain that learning the craft of writing can spoil the pleasure of reading unless you make a deliberate effort not to think like a writer whilst you’re reading just for fun. This has not been my experience so far. Some advocate reading each book twice, once as a ‘reader’, and once as a ‘writer’, but my critical faculties are always on and usually at maximum power when I’m reading a book. I think this at least partly comes from having studied cultural theory, I always say that beginning to learn theory was like discovering that I live in the Matrix. I look at everything through that lens I developed as an undergraduate.

Yes, it involves thinking a lot. Yes, I can no longer bring myself to watch crap films in which a beautiful woman falls in love with some stupid man after various tedious slapstick things have happened. But I get to experience a added level of pleasure when I read or watch something that has been done right. I also admire nice plot twists, detailed characterisation, great dialogue – oh, how I love dialogue! I see how they did that, and I love it! I get especially excited when one of the things I particularly love to see in teen fiction turns up at the start of a book, because there is almost no way that it can fail to be good with one of these things in it. I first made up this list when talking to one of my postgraduate tutors about why I love teen fiction, and I included it in the commentary for my MA portfolio. I’ve added to it since, so now along with such things as ‘intelligent, critical narrators’, and ‘teenagers with slightly-more-glamourous-than-mine lives’, I have listed ‘quirky families’ and ‘characters with hobbies’. One day I’ll have to make a post about this list.

But today I am going to type up some reviews for Body Image and Self Perception Month, and then carry on with Nobody’s Girl. I am so excited! When I have read Nobody’s Girl I will be well prepared for the Chicklish birthday event having read every book by Sarra Manning and Simmone Howell and one of Luisa Plaja’s. Unfortunately my local library does not have Della Says: OMG! by Keris Stainton and I won’t have a chance to get it before Monday, but still, this is amazing, as most of the time when I go to see authors speak I haven’t actually read any of their books!

I haven’t posted anything that wasn’t strictly a review on this blog for ages. How did I do?