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I knew I was going to love this book when upon first opening the package my daughter saw the cover and said, “Cool!” No better place to hook the reader than with the cover.
Imagine Jane Eyre’s aunt and cousins weren’t just overbearing and cruel, they were vampires as well? Imagine no more. With Sherri Browning Erwin’s new spin on the classic tale, now even today’s readers have something to look forward to.
Move over Twilight, Erwin has teamed up with the likes of none other than Charlotte Brontë to bring you the classic story of Jane Eyre, but with a modern twist. Think they didn’t have vampires back in the mid-nineteenth century? Think again.
Seemingly doomed to a life of darkness and servitude, Jane is visited one night by the ghost of her late uncle who reveals to her that she is not some helpless young lass destined to spinsterhood after all, but that she comes from a long line of vampire slayers. Enter, Jane Slayer.
Throw in a girls’ school full of orphaned zombies, a werewolf, and you’ve got nothing less than an otherwise sensible world gone mad. It’s up to Jane to bring order to this world.
My first thoughts when first picking up this book were, Good luck. Trying to live up to a master like Charlotte Brontë is a task I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. About a dozen pages or so into the book, however, I realized (without noticing it at all), “By God, Erwin’s pulled it off!” Except for the fact that there were vampires everywhere (and that her cousin kept wanting to drink her blood), I really did think I was smack dab in the middle of the 1847 classic.
So, what business does Erwin have slipping into such a big pair of shoes in the first place? For me, someone who had not read Brontë in more than 30 years (since prep school), it was like traveling back in time to the good ole days. I had forgotten how much I love the classics, like Austen, Dickens, and Brontë herself. I have Erwin to thank for bringing it all back to me.
For an old fogy like myself, revisiting such a classic is a wonderful walk down memory lane: a real no-brainer. But I’m too easy. What Erwin does by ratcheting-up the classic Brontë novel is to make it interesting for today’s readers. Jane Slayer would be a great segue for today’s younger generation into the classics themselves. Dare I say, I think this book would fit perfectly in most any high-school curriculum. Then again, that’s just one guy’s opinion.
I want to thank Sherri for a wonderfully entertaining couple of days and a most enjoyable read. Not just enjoyable, but reminiscent. Thanks, Sherri. I can’t wait to read Grave Expectations. Maybe Sherri has something new in the works. Vampire Heights? The Tenant of Werewolf Hall? Whatever it is, I’m sure it will have fangs.
