YA Retelling Review: Within These Wicked Walls

Summary: I thought this was a perfect retelling, keeping the heart of the original while making the story feel fresh and modern.

This YA retelling of Jane Eyre focuses on Andromeda, a young woman kicked out of her training to be a debtera or exorcist. As a result, she has no choice but to take a particularly dangerous assignment, cleansing a home for a wealthy, reclusive man. Unfortunately, by the time she realizes how difficult a job she’s taken on, she may have fallen too hard for employer to leave him to survive the curse alone.

I’ve not been reading YA much lately, but I recently read a bunch of Jane Eyre retellings and I couldn’t pass up this interesting new take on the story. I’m happy to report that this was good enough that I’m wondering if I should get back to reading YA more often. Having expected misty moors, the hot desert setting of the first scene was a fun surprise. The world building wasn’t especially detailed, but it was interesting and completely different from the original.

This book was the perfect balance of old and new for a retelling. It kept the core of Jane’s relationship with Rochester. The two banter in a way that they each find challenging and stimulating. Andromeda finds it unlikely that Rochester could like her more than a beautiful woman of his own class. Rochester has a bunch of baggage, but it’s updated to make the story feel more modern and to make his actions feel more forgivable. Jane’s relationship with her aunt is replaced by Andromeda’s relationship with the debtera who raised her. Their relationship is challenging in similar ways to Jane’s relationship with her aunt, but is actually much better fleshed out. These relationships were a real highlight of the book, reflecting their origins and improving on them. The plot was really good too, completely its own thing but still including creative callbacks to key moments in the original.

My favorite thing about this book was how well it updated the source material. I think I would have enjoyed it as a story in its own right if it weren’t a retelling. The relationships are well developed. The world building is interesting and unique. The plot was a little predictable (including non-Jane Eyre inspired moments!), but it was still exciting to see how it played out. However, the success of this book as a retelling is what made it something special for me. It was exactly what I look for in a retelling – keeping the core, making the characters more modern and better developed, and full of fun references to the original.

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