The Death of Jane Lawerence Review
JILLIAN WILLIAMS | OCTOBER 29, 2021 | ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
With a gothic manor, mysterious husband, and supernatural twist, “The Death of Jane Lawrence” was a book with so much potential. Written by Caitlin Starling, this stand-alone novel released on Oct. 5 had an eerie atmosphere and an occult plot perfect for the Halloween season. However, despite so much being promised, it fell through.
Marketed as a gothic horror, the book follows Jane Shoringfield, an accountant in an alternate version of Victorian England, desperate to find a husband. She hastily marries doctor Augustine Lawrence, a peculiar man who warns her that she is never to visit his home, Lindridge Hall. Unsurprisingly, when she is forced to spend the night there, chaos ensues.
Starting off, this book was very compelling. Starling uses vivid descriptions, describing grotesque and disturbing scenes within Dr. Lawrence’s surgery, leaving readers disgusted, on edge, and in anticipation of the rest of the story. The exposition was interesting and mysterious, with Jane meeting Mr. Lawrence and proceeding to negotiate a marriage of convenience.
As the book continued, the story started to drag. At 368 pages long, the novel could have greatly benefited from faster pacing. Many events and descriptions were repetitive and pointless. Likewise, as time went on, I felt the plot got a little lost. Instead of the haunting of the manor being the main conflict like the book set it up to be, the plot changes direction completely. Jane spends all of the time trying to solve problems she created for herself.
With most of the story revolving around Jane trying to amend her own mistakes, she is an annoying main character to follow. She continually makes poor decisions and I spent the entire book in a state of frustration as I read about Jane ruining her life with superficial motivations. I felt the way all the characters spoke and acted was very unrealistic.
The element of magic in this book also hampered the story. “The Death of Jane Lawrence” is set in an alternate reality of Earth resembling post-war England. This allowed the author to draw on an alternate history, providing Jane’s backstory. However, I found the fantasy setting added nothing to the story, and would even say that it detracted from the plot and horror of the novel. There was also an additional element of magic added, which fueled the action throughout the book. Even so, I found magic was sometimes used as a crutch, filling in pieces of the plot where there was none. As such, the magic system and its limits were not well defined.
“The Death of Jane Lawrence” featured impressive writing and offered an interesting conversation on the nature of reality and the possibility of magic. However, the plot and characters fell short, with both being both surface-level and unrealistic. Overall, this book did not meet expectations.