Full review at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books 
 Re Jane is supposed to be a modern re-telling of Jane Eyre. It changes the plot considerably, but that's to be expected. Unfortunately it also loses the entire point of Jane Eyre, which is that the main character is moral and has a sense of self that anchors her. While this retelling at least remembers that Jane's self-respect is more important than romance, it has an incredibly selfish, self-centered heroine. The story is not a romance although it has some romantic elements. Angry and copious spoilers below. 
 Jane Re is a Korean American girl who has never met her parents. Her mother was Korean and her father was an American GI. Her father is thought to have abandoned her mother, and her mother died when Jane was a baby. Jane was adopted by her uncle who lives in Flushing, New York, and she works in the family store. She takes a job as a nanny for a white couple who adopted a Chinese girl (they wanted a Chinese nanny but in hiring Jane they got a Korean one instead). Husband Ed is permissive with the daughter, cranky, and anti-social. Wife Beth is working on her dissertation so she spends all her time in her office (yes, of course her office is in the attic) and she has very strict ideas about how the daughter should be raised (no sugar!). 
 Jane falls in love with Ed. This baffles me, because, like Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre, Ed is a terrible person, but unlike Rochester, Ed has no charm or charisma whatsoever. He comes across as cruel, dismissive, passive aggressive, and disrespectful towards his wife and exploitative toward Jane. He's not funny, he doesn't have endearing angst, and he's not good in bed. He's just sort of there. Jane tends to latch onto anyone she comes into contact with and Ed is no exception. He's a good cook and woodworker, which are charming skills, but that didn't make me want to date Ed. It just made me hungry and dissatisfied with my current furniture. 
 I liked this book for the cultural insights, the fact that Jane does grow up near the end, and the fact that it kept me turning the pages to find out what would happen. I don't like that Jane was a selfish, self-centered person who was completely callous towards every single person she met. The way she and Ed treated Beth made me ill - not because of their physical affair, but because when Beth isn't watching, they take Devon out to all the places Beth would disagree with and encourage her to break her mom's rules. The way Jane treated her "friend" Nina was revolting - on Nina's first night in Seoul Jane dumps her to go out with her boyfriend. The book is marketed as a retelling of Jane Eyre, but it only resembles the original in plot, not in theme. The one bone I'll throw toward it is that both versions of the story stress accountability, self-respect, and compassion. Jane Eyre has these qualities all along, but she has to develop the resources to live a happy life in a hostile world. Jane Re lacks these qualities until the very end of the story but thank goodness she gets them eventually. 
 - Carrie S.