No. Just no. CBR7 Review 57.

You know how sometimes modern adaptations of our favorite classic novels turn out great, and quickly go up on the shelf alongside the original? Bridget Jones. Clueless. For Darkness Shows the Stars.

And then there are some that aren’t great, but are ok, and that’s good enough, because it makes us think about how great the original was. Death Comes to Pemberley. Emma: A Modern Retelling.

Of course, there are lots that are just lousy. But for some reason, that doesn’t stop me from reading them. Jane is one of these books.

It wasn’t good.

But I couldn’t stop reading it, mostly because I needed to know how ridiculously the second half of the book would pan out.

Jane Moore is a mousy college student, forced to drop out after her parents die, leaving her pretty much nothing. Her brother and sister were very well taken care of, but Jane was always an afterthought, and treated as such. And acted as such.

Jane was such a wet noodle.

I wanted to shake her sometimes. Yes, her mother was horrible and her brother was a monster, but that doesn’t excuse her non-existent personality. Just being socially aloof isn’t enough to show me that there’s anything else going on inside.

Jane gets a job as a nanny for a huge, famous, crazy rock star (who’s cool rock star name I can’t even remember, so let’s just call him rock star) who has custody of his French daughter, courtesy of his messed up ex wife, a French model and pop star. Of course this guy has tons of baggage: a failed first marriage due to drugs and general excess, thousands of groupies, a horrid second marriage, and now general snottiness and attitude. Oh, and a terrible temper. He’s such a good time! And he has no clue how to raise his own kid, other than to spoil her with gifts.

And somehow, beyond all things sensible, this rock star falls in love with the wet noodle. And I can’t.

Jane is so blasé. So boring, so milquetoast. Everything she says annoyed me.

Of course there are shenanigans concerning the loud noises coming from the forbidden third floor of the mansion, and of course the rock star never tells the truth about what’s going on up there. And yes, their hasty city hall marriage is interrupted for very REASONS, forcing rock star to tell precious Jane THE TRUTH about what exactly is going on up on the third floor.

Jane takes off for New Haven and is taken in immediately by the two St. John sisters, who never show me a clear motive for their kindness. I guess they are just really nice? Or something? And yes, they have a super hot brother, studying at the divinity school, who pretty much is a walking poster for aspergers. This whole section drove me batty.

One weird day, after a huge fight with aspergers brother about moving with him to Haiti, Jane goes to the movies and randomly finds herself watching a documentary about her rock star. She gets all verklempt when she finds out that he has never stopped searching for her (seriously, she never even left Connecticut. His people assigned to searching must not be very good.). The end of the movie has a weird epilogue tacked on explaining that rock star was recently critically injured when there was a fire at his house, killing his mysterious third floor resident, and burning his estate to the ground.

The fact that this information is passed on to Jane while watching a documentary in a movie theater nearly drove me to throw the book in the trash.

And yet I kept reading.

Jane and rock star meet again. She leaves the kind, supportive St. John sisters without even a word of thanks and heads back to her jerk. And everyone lives happily ever after.

This was just the worst.

The end of the book included an excerpt of the authors new book, Catherine, a modern Retelling of Wuthering Heights. I’ll pass, thanks. Although admittedly, if I started to read it, I would probably finish it. My bad.