Around here, we adore Jane the Virgin, and I’ve been loving the storyline of Jane becoming a romance author. Some of those trials and tribulations are just too real.
This is supposed to be Jane’s first novel, which is about to be published in the timeline of the show. It’s broken the fourth wall and appeared in our hands. And… guys, I tried. I really really did. But there’s a fundamental truth that what works as a storytelling technique in one medium doesn’t always work in another.
So….
There’s a lot of meta involved, and there’s a few layers we have to work through. Bear with me. There’s the Real World layer, the Jane World layer (what’s happened in the show), and the Book World layer. In Jane World, she wrote her first novel based on the love story between herself and her husband, Michael, but set it in 1900s Miami. What this means is that the book took the first two seasons of the show and rewrote it into a historical. That includes the love triangle between Jane, Michael, and Rafael (Josephine, Martin, and Rake).
Of course, the premise of Jane the Virgin is that she’s a pregnant due to an accidental artificial insemination. That’s not something that really works in the early days of the 1900s, so instead, Josephine gets drunk and sleeps with Rake, and then gets pregnant. Rake of course is smitten with Josephine, Josephine loves Martin, Martin is very perplexed by all of this… it’s messy. (I’m not really a fan of the unexpected pregnancy happening because of cheating, to be honest.)
Part of what makes this book not work is that it follows the plot of the show, which we know. And there’s 44 episodes of the show, and a LOT of plot (there’s so much plot) which is crammed into 238 pages. There are a lot of subplots that are excised, but there’s still so much happening: an international crime lord, a not-very-ex wife, family issues, a long lost father, a baby out of wedlock, and yes, a love triangle.
It’s a lot for 238 pages. A LOT. And nothing really has any space to breathe. What makes Rake interested in Josephine? No idea. What’s the real motivation behind the international crime lord? (Well, it’s an international crime lord, so…crime?)
So while a television show or a telenovella can manage with an overload of plot, this book can’t. The writing isn’t strong enough to make the characters robust enough to hold up this plot.
In discussing this book with a fellow Jane fan, she wrinkled her nose a bit and went, “We already know what this story is, since we watched the Jane-World version in the show. Why is there a book?” She does have a point, but she’s also not a romance reader. I mean, we know how our stories end. The importance is in the journey and the execution of that journey. I don’t think knowing the story was the weakness in the book, though… it does seem weird that Jane would literally use her life as the plot, rather than taking inspiration. She didn’t even file off the serial numbers; she just changed two of them.
But the biggest problem I had with the book is one of the things that makes the show great: the narrator. In the show, the Narrator has many interjections that get us started into each episode, that facilitates transitions betweens scenes, and, most importantly, is one of Jane’s biggest cheerleaders. The book takes the Narrator and makes his asides part of the text. It does NOT work. At all. Don’t tell me that Josephine is going to regret a decision, don’t tell me that I need to keep reading to find out what happens next, don’t say “Oh no!” It brings the narrative to a screeching halt, and annoys the reader.
It can annoy the reader so much that she stops reading the book.
Every time a book is made into a movie, there are changes that are made, and some of those changes are things people will be mad about. (It works in reverse, too, although the change in the home theater market effective killed the “book of the movie” industry. This makes me sad, because the novel of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is amazing.) Storytelling mediums support different kinds of stories, and trying to translate a story from one medium to the next without adjustment isn’t going to work.
I wanted to like this. I really really did. Instead, I’m annoyed and disappointed in the execution.
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I am weirdly comforted that I wasn’t the only person who read the novelization of Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.
I’m stuck on the cover. Usually, distant objects appear smaller than those in the foreground, in which case, her boobs must be painfully disproportionate.
I thought this might be a throwaway marketing gimmick like KFC’s Colonel Sanders romance, but they want a whole $10 for this, huh?
Thank you for your review, i will knock this one off my tbr. They should have gone with something less literal. She could have gotten pregnant by rake when she was in her late teens and he was already married, and now a few years later her baby daddy is suing for divorce cause his wife committed adultery and he is trying to win her back while she grew up and found religion and has been chastly courting this nice guy named Martin. Makes me think they had a tv writer ghost write this thing not a Romance author
It sounds like it has the same problems the Castle novels have. If this was the book the author seriously wrote and had published, there would be consequences in the “Real World” with the other characters. Friends and coworkers, etc would be reading this book and learning things that other characters might have wanted kept private and not made available for public consumption. (Or in the Castle books, the obvious Mary Sue author character being romantically involved with his NYPD host would have had HR knocking on her door.)
The narrator being in the book doesn’t even make sense, the characters aren’t aware of the narrator, so why would she write him?
It does seem disappointing that the book follows the show too closely instead of really trying to be Jane’s book. Mostly, I hate the cover and title which are totally off. I know the book is stuck with what the show was doing, but couldn’t someone have done more research on romance covers and titles?
I just ordered the heck out of the Robin Hood Prince of Thieves novelization (thanks PaperBackSwap) so I’m glad I read all the way through this review!
I read the exerpt that was on BuzzFeed and the look of horror that came across my face should probably be placed in the dictionary beside “existential terror”. It was…so. bad. I refuse to believe that Jane is such an awful writer and I hate, hate, HATE the cover. I realize it all ties in with the show and Adam was her big savior on this, but a weirdly styled 80s bodice ripper cover is better than a couple inside a snow globe as suggested by the pulisher? REALLY?
And this was the text they approved to be Jane’s hard-fought, heartbreaking debut novel? Does anyone involved even READ romance? This book, as it is, would never snag an actual publisher and the culmination of its life would be a self-pub for Amazon Kindle with a price point of FREE.
No. No. No.
I love “Jane” more than is reasonable and this book is a massive disappointment.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one with issues with the “Richard Castle” books — I read the first one and it read more like bad pastiche more than anything. And a definite letdown from the way it was talked up as “new/fresh” in the series.
I’m crushed that apparently Michael dies in this version, too! I have been (embarrassingly) unable to watch the episode where he dies, and I was hoping this would be a version of Jane and Michael’s love story that doesn’t end in tragedy.
What? Michael still dies? I thought the whole point of the book in Janeverse is that she wrote it to give them the happy ending that they weren’t able to have in “real” life?
In my teens, I was a huge fan of movie novelizations! I have the Robin Hood one somewhere. One of my other favorites is Terminator (for the romance, of course).
Makes me think they had a tv writer ghost write this thing not a Romance author.
They’ve been pretty open about the fact that the ghostwriter is romance author Caridad Pineiro.
That cover is seriously disturbing for so many reasons, the disproportionate breasts being just one. Are they even real people or are they shop mannequins? If he is real is she? And does she have legs? Or even a whole torso? Urgh.
Thanks, RHG, for this fantastic review of the Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves novelization. I went immediately to my library’s website, and was crushed that they don’t have it. So thanks also to Susan for mentioning PaperBackSwap. I learn so much from the comments here!
Just need to point out that when all the daytime soap operas were doing the “character is an author and we’re releasing the book IRL” they always managed to come up with a new storyline for it.
Can we get an official review of the Prince of Thieves novel? With Alan Rickman gifs? Please? I feel like that’s something I need. In the meantime, I’m off to find a copy.