Review: Ironskin by Tina Connolly

Ironskin by Tina Connolly

304 Pages

Release Date: October 2nd, 2012

Publisher: Tor Books

Genre: YA, Steampunk 

Rating: 2 STARS 

Goodreads Summary:

Jane Eliot wears an iron mask. 

It’s the only way to contain the fey curse that scars her cheek. The Great War is five years gone, but its scattered victims remain—the ironskin. 

When a carefully worded listing appears for a governess to assist with a "delicate situation"—a child born during the Great War—Jane is certain the child is fey-cursed, and that she can help. 

Teaching the unruly Dorie to suppress her curse is hard enough; she certainly didn’t expect to fall for the girl’s father, the enigmatic artist Edward Rochart. But her blossoming crush is stifled by her own scars, and by his parade of women. Ugly women, who enter his closed studio...and come out as beautiful as the fey. 

Jane knows Rochart cannot love her, just as she knows that she must wear iron for the rest of her life. But what if neither of these things is true? Step by step Jane unlocks the secrets of her new life—and discovers just how far she will go to become whole again.         

I had very high expectations from this book, especially because all the steampunk kind of books that I've recently read have been quite good and I've never read Jane Eyre or any retellings of it before so I wanted to see how this would turn out. The beginning started out nicely and did have me intrigued, but then as I kept reading on, I just got reaally bored with it. There was so much detail that didn't need to be there and the main character got on my nerves at times. However the aspect I really enjoyed about this book was the setting and the era it took place in. All the glamour women wanted and the way life was for both the rich and the cursed ones was brilliantly shown. 

       

The romance was meh. There yet not quite. I'm not a fan of romance with the age difference , its just super weird reading about for me. Some I can take *cough* Vampire Academy *cough*. But this one, I wasn't connected with the love interest, which in this book was Edward or Mr. Rochart, like I usually am. He kinda disappeared along the book and didn't make much of an impression on me. I mean he was the one that called for a governess to help Dorie yet he was never really there to support her and his feelings and the way he was written coul'dve been put together better. 

       

The other supporting, additional characters were an added plus and I enjoyed getting to know them. And the added fey interest and problems was nice. It's a pretty short book and I think if there was more development with the characters and plot, it wouldn't seem so rushed but boring. However, those you who like retelling, then I totally would recommend like this book especially with the fey, steampunk twist to it.