4.05/5 Joyful Reads With Joy, the Stellar bookstagram which mentioned Eric Nguyen’s Things Lost to the Water, also first brought Jessica Anya Blau’s Mary Jane, to my attention. Having read Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & the Six earlier this summer, I thought Mary Jane would be a fantastic entry for Maryland for the Across the USA Stellar Reading Challenge (SRC).
“In 1970s Baltimore, fourteen-year-old Mary Jane loves cooking with her mother, singing in her church choir, and enjoying her family’s subscription to the Broadway Show Tunes of the Month record club. Shy, quiet, and bookish, she’s glad when she lands a summer job as a nanny for the daughter of a local doctor. A respectable job, Mary Jane’s mother says. In a respectable house… The house may look respectable on the outside, but inside it’s a literal and figurative mess: clutter on every surface, IMPEACHMENT: Now More Than Ever bumper stickers on the doors, cereal and takeout for dinner. And even more troublesome (were Mary Jane’s mother to know, which she does not): The doctor is a psychiatrist who has cleared his summer for one important job—helping a famous rock star dry out. A week after Mary Jane starts, the rock star and his movie star wife move in.”
I enjoyed reading this book with my ears. In fact, I strongly encourage readers to do the same just for the singing. Echoing Joyful Reads, I enjoyed the parts featuring Mary Jane and Izzy. I liked seeing 1970s Baltimore, too, and felt this was perfect for this SRC. It was cool seeing the characters come together and really grow — not just eponymous Mary Jane and Izzy but the adults, too! While Mary Jane is a bildungsroman for sure, I felt this book fits most comfortably in Adult Fiction but that’s probably my only caveat.
Quotes come from book flaps/cover and are featured on color blocks.
Starry Night Elf 