Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

(Note this was the first review I ever wrote, so please excuse the mess!)

You can find it on goodreads here.

Jane, Unlimited is a story about a girl who's grieving her aunt and how much decisions change our realities. It was originally written as a choose your own adventure-type novel, but changed into a 3rd person story where the mc makes a decision about 50 or so pages in that splits the story into different parts, all in different genres, and all linking together in different ways.

Before her death, Jane's aunt makes her promise that if she ever received an invitation to Tu Reviens, the private island her english tutor's family owns, she would go. And one day, it happens. Jane is approached at work by Kiran (the tutor) who stumbles in, in all of her well-intentioned-but-just-really-not-understanding-how-money-works-for-other-people glory and invites her. At Tu Reviens she meets Ivy, a girl who's grown up with Kiran but working in the house (kinda? sorry if i'm wrong abt this), a really cute dog, some interesting people, some frustrating people, and people that fall into both of those categories.

What I liked most about this book is the interconnectedness of it all. This is a book that would be super easy to write off as too far out there or too difficult to follow, but the way it's written made that impossible for me. This book has some of the bits and pieces of a victorian novel and a sci-fi novel (and horror and fantasy and all the different genres this author employs), but it's also not your overdone trope, it's not anything you can dismiss.

This book is full of little things that make it amazing, it doesn't just survive off the idea it's founded on. I loved how proud Jane was of her jellyfish tattoo, I loved that she had relatable moments where she thought about sexuality, and had a really cute romance with Ivy, and I loved that she dressed head to toe like the different sea creatures her aunt used to photograph, and she essentially adopted by a dog within five seconds of being at Tu Reviens. (Or he adopted her.)

Spoiler alert, but my favorite scene was probably when she's in the sci-fi parallel universe, and she meets a different version of herself. The other Jane rolls up her sleeve to show a comet streaked on her arm, where the jellyfish is on Jane's arm. The comet is also a reminder of Aunt Magnolia, the other Jane explains.

This book is a reminder (for me, at least) that it's okay to look back. It's okay to wonder who we could be if not for our situations, our doubts, and our decisions. It's okay to be curious, and it's okay to feel nostalgia and grow from it.