The Flight of Gemma Hardy

Last night I stayed up WAY too late in order to finish reading The Flight of Gemma Hardy.  It is a sort of retelling of Jane Eyre.  I reserved it from the library after my sister discovered it in the library newspaper and I immediately reserved it, since I love Jane Eyre, now nearly 3 months later I have read it.  The book pretty much follows the basic out line of Jane Eyre but it took out the part of Jane Eyre I never cared about, in one word: Bertha. 

While it is a longer book it was easy to read for the most part.  The last couple chapters are set in Iceland and reading the Icelandic names was difficult.  I pretty much considered them character k or character b.  The love story is still there but I felt it lacked some of the passion that is expressed in Jane Eyre.  The two characters do love each other very much but because of the age difference they don't seem as willing to express it.  The characters all have different names but it is fairly easy to figure out who matches up to a Jane Eyre character. 

The story is set in the late 1950s to late 1960s and it divided into several different parts, which I am sure if you read the book slower would break up the book nicely.  The main character Gemma (Jane) is a pretty good character.  She is not near as religious as Jane and has a stronger will.  The Mr. Rochester of the book is Mr. Hugh Sinclair and while he was a pretty good character I still prefer the original.  Mr. Sinclair sometimes doubts himself a bit much for my taste but I do like that he does not play with Gemma's emotions for very long.  Spoiler Alert (well sort of, honestly you should already know the story of Jane Eyre): The ending I kind of liked because in this day of books having a epilouge where we find out every last detail on the character's life it was kind of nice not to know everything that may happen. 

All in all I would consider it a good book to read if you are a Jane Eyre fan or even if you only kind of like Jane Eyre.