Book Review | Jane’s Team by Janie Marie

Jane’s Team
By: Janie Marie

Genre: Mature YA/NA
Trope: Reverse Harem
Publisher: Indie
Publication Date: April 2nd, 2020

Blurb:

When you’re in love with your best friend, life is complicated.

When he’s also your stepbrother, it’s a nightmare.

Jane’s apparently a magnet for chaos.

Because now she’s agreed to tutor her stepbrother’s enemy, and that sexy bad boy might have a thing for her. She might also love that a tingle surrounds her soul whenever he’s close.

Throw his two brothers into the mix, dangerous rivals looking to destroy every one of them, and parents controlling her love life. It’s safe to say she’s wandered into the apocalypse.

At least being torn between four hot guys isn’t the end of the world.

Just kidding. It totally is.

But they’ll all realize something.

Jane’s the ruler of her life. No one else.

Long live the queen . . . and her kings.

Before I start this review let me state a few facts about Jane’s Team… If you are not a fan of Reverse Harem romances where the woman is the main focus and she has a group of infatuated men surrounding her and doing all sorts of kinky shit to her, you are not going to like this novel. If you are opposed to high school romances with loads of scorching sexy time scenes, you are not going to like this novel.

Jane’s Team by Janie Marie is a MATURE YA/NA novel. I’m fairly new to the Reverse Harem trope, So far I’m on the fence about whether I like this trope or not. I love the jealousy aspect, but I like a little realism to my romances and this trope tends to make the story lack something that I haven’t quite figured out yet.

This novel jumps back and forth between Jane, Ryder, David, Luc, and Tercero’s point of view. But mostly throughout the novel we are given Jane’s point of view. This is one main element I loved about this novel. I loved being inside the guys’ heads and getting their viewpoints, feeling their jealousy and their rage was exactly how I would imagine this type of trope turning out, especially given the fact that Jane’s two leading men (Ryder and David) are complete enemies.

Throughout the novel a bond starts to take place between the men.. no not a kinky bond…. but a brotherhood. They set their jealousy aside and they play the role they are given. David is Jane’s sun and her heart. Ryder is her moon and her soul. In a weird way the bond between the three is touching and tugged at my heartstrings.

And then you add in Luc (older brother to Ryder) and Tercero (younger brother to Ryder) and it’s a complete cluster mess of kink and WTF moments…… Luc brought the dark and mystery to the relationship and Tercero brought the emotion to the table… I loved how Tercero was with Jane, let’s talk about this latin lover. The way he spoke to her and the way he was with her made him one of my favorite characters in this novel… To be honest, I really wanted more one on one moments between these two.

Luc was an annoyance to me, I wanted to uncover more of this man… I wanted to see what makes him tic, why he’s so controlling, and why he has this darkness surrounding around him. I wanted and needed more and because of this I couldn’t connect with his character. He was just a kinky bastard hitching along for the ride.

This is such a confusing novel to digest and write a review for. On one hand I really enjoyed this novel. I mean, a person doesn’t just sit there reading a novel for two days straight rueing the moments she has to put her kindle down so she can go to the restroom, cook dinner, and adult. But then on the other hand I was annoyed by a few aspects. First of all, I would have been a tad bit more comfortable if these ‘High schoolers’ were in college. Often at times I like to put myself in the characters shoes and I think what would happen if I would have been in these situations when I was a kid or a teenager. I’m telling you what, if my man would have talked to my daddy the way Ryder talked to Jane’s stepdad…. There would be trouble and my man wouldn’t be my man anymore. The disrespect really unhinged me. I didn’t like the fact that the stepdad was painted in a bad light for half of this novel, he was just watching out for his daughter. He was doing what a father figure needs to do and protect her at all costs. I mean any normal father figure would freak the hell out over his daughter dating four guys at once. Shoot, I was scared to bring one guy home to meet my daddy…. you don’t mess with a papa bear… that’s for damn sure.

A lot of this story was a bit too far fetched for my liking. But I do have to say, I am intrigued by epilogue number two. It was interesting when all was said and done to realize this story was an alternate universe to her Gods & Monsters series. I think this is what intrigued me the most! I’m definitely going to have to check this series

Overall, This novel was an okay read. There were moments I loved and moments that made me cringe. The sexy time scenes were scorching hot and the characters were, for the most part, loveable. Jane’s Team is an extremely long read though, so make sure you have time to read this one because once you start you aren’t going to want to stop. Janie Marie has a way with words. She captured my attention from the beginning. I just needed a little bit more from Luc and bit less drama.