Park's debut is a contemporary retelling of Charlotte Brontė's Jane Eyre with a Korean American twist. It is the early 2000s in Flushing, Queens, where Jane Re works in her uncle's grocery store after failing to attain a high-powered finance job in the post-dot-com era. Jane, a half-American/half-Korean orphan, doesn't exactly fit in with the residents of the Korean neighborhood where she's lived all her life, and the people around her never fail to point out this fact. Downtrodden from her grocery gig and her uncle's routine emotional abuse, Jane is tempted into an au pair position taking care of English professors Beth and Ed's adopted Chinese child. Introduced to organic foods and 19th-century literature, Jane is both the focus of Beth's feminist lectures and Ed's male gaze. Just as Jane strikes up an affair with Ed, a family death takes her back to Korea, where she begins to wonder if Ed is really the one. VERDICT This brightly written and engrossing read takes Jane Eyre and turns it into a lesson about self-acceptance. It will appeal to readers who enjoy modern retellings of classic literature, as well as fans of Jean Kwok and Ha Jin.-Mara Dabrishus, Ursuline Coll. Lib., Pepper Pike, OH © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
