Jane Doe: A Novel (A Jane Doe Thriller)

by Victoria Helen Stone

An Amazon Charts bestseller.

A double life with a single purpose: revenge.

Jane’s days at a Midwest insurance company are perfectly ordinary. She blends in well, unremarkably pretty in her floral-print dresses and extra efficient at her low-level job. She’s just the kind of woman middle manager Steven Hepsworth likes—meek, insecure, and willing to defer to a man. No one has any idea who Jane really is. Least of all Steven.

But plain Jane is hiding something. And Steven’s bringing out the worst in her.

Nothing can distract Jane from going straight for his heart: allowing herself to be seduced into Steven’s bed, to insinuate herself into his career and his family, and to expose all his dirty secrets. It’s time for Jane to dig out everything that matters to Steven. So she can take it all away.

Just as he did to her.

• ISBN10: 1503900894
• ISBN13: 9781503900899
• Publish Date: 1 August 2018
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Amazon Publishing
• Imprint: Lake Union Publishing
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 268
• Language: English

Reviews

[Linda]

Jane Doe is an incredibly smart, chilling and well-planned psychological thriller. It's my first foray into Stone's off-romance stories, and I absolutely loved it!
Jane is on a mission, and she will do anything to make it a success. And she's very good at getting what she wants - only she ends up with even more than she wants, which was extremely satisfying.

Kind of a watered down version of [b:The Female of the Species|25812109|The Female of the Species|Mindy McGinnis|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1455917180s/25812109.jpg|45668311]. The writing was decent and the suspense was good - there were some pretty good quotes in there about sexuality and gender and life but something was missing to take it to the next level. Jane was interesting. She was strong and fierce and flawed and somewhat messed up but she had her own code of morals that was admirable. The humour was funny - Jane was highly amusing. It was fun to watch her screw with Steven. He clearly deserved it. On the other hand the whole story was building up to this amazing revenge plot and it just fell apart. The ending was funny (I liked the neatly tied up revenge) but the story had built up to a very different conclusion. I felt like I was anticipating something much gorier and got a milder censored plot. A good beach read. Solid three stars. 3.5 for the first three quarters of the book, losing half a star for the ending.

[jamiereadthis]

“This book is for J. and anyone else who needs it.”

So says the dedication, and I’m not that “J.,” but that only means there are at least two of us out there.

I was completely unprepared for how much I needed this book. There’s the church stuff, which is accurate, and cathartic, and redeeming. And there’s Steven. I’ve known one too many guys cast in that mold and yet I was still shocked by how strongly I reacted to his machinations. Revenge is not usually something I’m into. I was into it here.

But what I was most unprepared for was Jane herself. I swear, 90% of her thoughts are thoughts I’ve had. That doesn’t happen with me in books. I’ve caught glimmers of myself in characters before, an aspect here or there, but this might be the closest depiction of what’s inside my head. I read books for Jane’s reasons. I’m great at small talk for Jane’s reasons. I’ve felt broken for Jane’s reasons. I’ve thought, if not said: “But you’re going to want a real girl.” It grew downright spooky; I’d have a thought, and a couple lines later, there it was on the page. Thank goodness I have a warm, loving family, or the other 10% of her thoughts would be mine too.

So, Jane. I love her. And Luke! This book needed Luke, and that ending, and Luke is the best.

There is hope.

“I don’t understand babies, but this is like the touching end of a TV season, and I understand that.”