I loved this vengeance story; deeply feminist and queer ( )

I'm not fond of revenge literature or movies, but when it's women getting revenge I'm a complete sucker. In Reader I Murdered Him by Betsy Cornwell we get Victorian England's answer to Lisbeth Salander. You know all the jokes about what bad taste in men the Bronte sisters had? Cornwell agrees with them and writes a sequel to Jane Eyre told from the perspective of Adele, Rochester's ward. It's just delicious. I have to admit, due to some complicated events in my life these days, I'm enjoying more simplistic fare, and Cornwell is simply - well, what? I don't want to say thrilling, it's not that powerful, but it's a little thrilling, a little titillating, a little like eating a perfect brownie. Just yum. ( )

I want to keep this review of Betsy Cornwell's Reader, I Murdered Him brief. Let me just say that Reader, I Murdered him is a surprising and delightful, if at times disturbing, piece of feminist vigilante revenge fiction set in Victorian England and featuring Adele: the ward of Mr. Rochester for whom Jane Eyre was hired as a governess in the novel Jane Eyre. Cornwell's version of Adele is precocious and unflinching, starkly aware of the inequities between the sexes. To see Jane Eyre retold through Adele's eyes is powerful, and Adele grows into her own power as she moves away from Rochester and Eyre and into life among a boarding school community of other young women, all very conscious of the way success or failure on the marriage market will determine the conditions of the remainder of their lives. With Adele speaking truths everyone recognizes and no one wants to talk about, these young women begin finding ways to create lives they might once have thought impossible.

If you've read Eyre, Reader, I Murdered him will offer you a valuable companion to the perspectives and realities played out by Jane and Rochester. Even if you haven't read Eyre, you'll be able to appreciate the reversal of power Adele seeks to create.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher; the opinions are my own. ( )

The Publisher Says: In this daring tale of female agency and revenge from a New York Times bestselling author, a girl becomes a teenage vigilante who roams Victorian England using her privilege and power to punish her friends' abusive suitors and keep other young women safe.

Adèle grew up in the shadows—first watching from backstage at her mother's Parisian dance halls, then wandering around the gloomy, haunted rooms of her father's manor. When she's finally sent away to boarding school in London, she's happy to enter the brightly lit world of society girls and their wealthy suitors.

Yet there are shadows there, too. Many of the men that try to charm Adele's new friends do so with dark intentions. After a violent assault, she turns to a roguish young con woman for help. Together, they become vigilantes meting out justice. But can Adèle save herself from the same fate as those she protects?

With a queer romance at its heart, this lush historical thriller offers readers an irresistible mix of vengeance and empowerment.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:

“Why do you think, when women tell the stories of their lives, they end with marriage? It is not a happily ever after, chérie, only the end of happiness?”

In its bitter essence, Jane Eyre is a terrible, horrifying account of a cruel and controlling man's determined efforts to get the twisted things he most desired from the women he surrounded himself with. They had little choice in the matter. He exerted a charm, I'm told, in his "masterful" handling of them. I don't see it, myownself...Bertha or Jane, makes little difference, he was an archetypal narcissist in pursuit of minions.

I honestly forgot Adèle's existence in the original. Not a single scintilla of memory creased my cranium about her...how typical...and thus, when I got this book, I was in essence introduced to her for the first time. Her story is very affecting. I think it's a great shame that Adèle came into my awareness as a victim. Yes, she uses her victimhood to achieve something good as the Villainess, righter of wrongs and leveler of abusers. But there's a passage where her treatment of a loving soul, and her response to a shocking and disgusting betrayal, that just...rang so hollow to me. Her drive was always mitigated by her fears, as whose is not?, but her behavior is hard for me to mentally count as redemptive.

The resolution of the story is condign. It didn't hit the wrong notes so much as it simply played them too fast, too loud, and failed thus to distract me from my edge of unbelief. It's a fine book to give to your feminist granddaughter or romantically challenged niece. ( )