This is an absolutely delightful book. It is fully of Lansdale's usual quirky humor, but then it slaps you across the face with a beautifully heartfelt ending. The ending, however, is earned by everything that comes before it. Definite thumbs up for this reader.

I actually was approved for an ARC of this book before its release, but it unfortunately got lost in my backlog of review books. My apologies to Netgalley and the publisher!

Joe Lansdale can’t tell a tale without it being entertaining as hell (yay rhymes!), and <i>Jane Goes North</i> is no different. Jane is a young woman who’s down on her luck, recently lost her job, and determined to go north to her sister’s wedding. Along the way she’ll run into several colorful characters and find herself in some crazy situations.

I find Lansdale does travel novels well—the skill he brought to books like <i>Edge of Dark Water</i> and <i>The Thicket</i> is present here, albeit I feel this book was a bit too short so that magic was perhaps stunted a bit, hence my taking off a star. Still, this is a memorable and FUN story with a surprising ending that leaves the reader on a positive note.

I have always been fond of road trip stories, and I love the work of Joe R. Lansdale, so I was really looking forward to this. And it did not disappoint.

This book is hilarious, with some of Lansdale’s best high-quality similes and metaphors that made me laugh out loud several times each chapter. The characters of Jane and Henry are written so well that I feel like I know them and went on this trip with them. I wish there had been more of Cheryle, her character is a hoot.

The best part of this book is the ending, which I should have seen coming but didn’t, and it was surprisingly heartwarming.

JANE GOES NORTH is a wonderfully fun book and I highly recommend it. It’s a quick and easy read.

Jane Goes North is Joe R. Lansdale at the top of his game. Released 31st March 2020 by Subterranean Press, it's 232 pages and available in a special edition hardcover, audio, and ebook formats.

Full disclosure, I've been a screaming Lansdale fangirl for decades - I still have the first Hap & Leonard book I bought, circa 1990 or so. That being said, there's something about his facility with the juxtaposition of raw/crude language, violence, and humor that really works for me. This one was in much the same vein with 3 completely disparate characters, well written and (in true Lansdale form) completely over the top.

This is a high-octane estrogen fueled road trip with titular character Jane going to visit family (from whom she's mostly estranged) and hopefully find herself along the way. It's violent, the language is extremely rough, there's sexual content, it's irreverent and, frankly, shockingly crusty, and delightful. It's definitely capable of making readers forget about the sh*tstorm that is our daily existence the last few months.

Pure escapist fantasy. Genuinely funny in places and full of action. Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

JANE GOES NORTH by author Joe R. Lansdale is a novel about Jane, a young woman who has had a life that doesn’t include much in the way of accomplishments or success, and after an error at work resulting in the loss of her job, she has to evaluate what has led to her current existence in a trailer park without funds or options; at the same time she receives an invitation to her younger sister’s wedding that comes as somewhat of a surprise since of her sisters that she doesn’t get along with this one is the one she’s had the worst relationship with.

Since she’s pretty sure the invitation is a mistake or formality, she commits to making the trip to the wedding and long distance trip there even though she’s broke and without transportation.

Jane seems to be striking out on finding someone to travel with until she meets up with a character named Henry, who after an initial meeting that ends with Jane leaving in a hurry after it all goes south, finally decides to make the trip with the unusual woman named Henry in spite of her reservations.

Can Jane make it all the way to the wedding with her erratic travel partner, and if so will it have been worth it seeing as her sisters aren’t likely to give her a warm welcome if she does make it?

Jane is an interesting character who seems to be spinning her wheels going nowhere at the start of the story, and with the experiences suffered on the trip with her traveling partner she seems to find out who she really is, and what is important in life.

Joe R. Lansdale is one of my favorite authors, and I’ve not read a book by him that I didn’t like with this one being no exception, read it and enjoy Jane’s crazy road trip with her traveling companion, you won’t regret it!

4 stars.

Published by Subterranean Press on March 30, 2020

In these troubled times, we take joy where we can find it. I always find it when I read Joe Lansdale. When he isn’t scaring the crap out of me in a horror novel, he’s making me laugh out loud, a reaction that few authors can consistently provoke. Jane Goes North is a perfect respite from gloomy reality.

Jane is in her thirties, living alone in Texas. She was recently fired from her job in a laundry. She was nearly arrested after a night of drinking, when a backseat dalliance with a preacher in a church parking lot sent her sprinting naked into the woods to avoid inquisitive police officers. That’s how her life goes.

Jane has been invited to the wedding of her snooty sister near Boston. She’s not sure she wants to go, but spite motivates her to make the trip. Her car, on the other hand, is certain it doesn’t want to move another mile. A ride sharing notice on a bulletin board brings her to Henrietta, a tough old lady who calls herself Henry. She has one working eye and a car that runs. Henry is going to Boston for a medical appointment, but since she has a tendency to collide with things she can’t see, Jane insists on driving. The two women instantly dislike each other but bond over the course of the novel.

The road trip turns into an adventure that includes an improbable kidnapping. The women are pretty much unfazed by their ordeal because random crap happens in life and they’ve gotten used to it. The trip becomes more pleasant after they meet a washed-up country singer who uses her two hit singles as fuel for a career playing music at dives filled with drunken audiences.

The three women are loaded with personality — they’re sort of like Thelma and Louise with an extra friend — but collateral characters add to the humor with conversations that spin off in amusing tangents. My favorite is a desk clerk’s discussion of roaches that get stuck in toasters (“I call them Roach Toasties”).

Jane Goes North offers at least one laugh per page, often two or three. Here’s Jane talking to her sisters: “You wouldn’t be interesting, none of you, if you had propellers up your asses and could fly around the room with them.” An East Texas summer is “so damn hot during the day a lizard needed a straw hat.”

Jane is changed in a positive way by her road trip. Henry faces a change in Boston that the reader won’t expect. The ending is warm and heartening, reminding us that friendships, however unlikely they might be, are just what we need in difficult times. So, for that matter, is Joe Lansdale.

RECOMMENDED

4.5 stars

Usually I'm the one giving a book that has five star reviews all over the place a bad review. I don't know what's going on with this books reviews but I loved the heck out of it.
Y'all wrong read this one.


You have Jane, who just lost her job at the dry cleaners because of leaving some ketchup packets in some pockets. (Stupid picky people) She gets an invitation to her snooty sister's wedding up north. She decides she will attend just to piss them off. I totally like her at this point.
The thing is...her car is a junker. So she finds Henrietta aka Henry who wants to go up North to get her glass eye fixed. Henry sorta lost her driver's license but she can still drive....
"Police said I shouldn't be drinking while driving, but I had only a couple of beers. And a shot or two. I forget exactly. But I wasn't drunk. I've always had trouble with curbs and such."

Totally understandable.

They take off.
Then what happens is kinda a cross between a Thelma and Louise and Stephanie Plum/Lula adventure.
That just happens to involve a female country singer, slave trafficking and a big man on a motorized scooter.


This book was completely delicious and was exactly what I needed.

Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review.

Not really sure that this book was the right choice for me. With the craziness of our world right now, I thought this book would be a good fit for me to just forget.
The humor felt forced and way over the top. I found my mind wandering off as I read on and it was hard to bring myself back to continue reading.
I’m sure there are readers out there that enjoy this type of book and the cheesy humor...just not a book I could fully immerse myself in.
With that said, I did read the complete book though it wasn’t easy.
Thank you to NetGallery, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read and give my honest review about this book.

I received a free advance copy of this for review from NetGalley.

And I thought Thelma & Louise had a bad road trip…

Despite recently losing her job and being low on cash, Jane is determined to attend her estranged sister’s wedding so she goes looking for someone headed north that she can catch a ride with. Unfortunately the only candidate she finds is a surly one-eyed woman named Henry who doesn’t seem like the kind of person you want as a traveling companion for a long car ride.

With no other options, Jane and Henry set off but have one misadventure after another involving a weird assortment of oddballs like an unusual thief, a washed up country & western singer on her last tour, and redneck slavers. Will Jane be able to make it in time for the wedding? And what kind of gift she should buy?

Joe Lansdale has written several types of novels over the years ranging from horror to westerns to crime novels. This feels like something different, and I mean that in the best possible way. There are similarities to his other writings like the Hap & Leonard series in the style and characters, but things take a turn in the second half of the book. What starts off as a goofy romp with some rednecks turns into a pretty moving character story by the end.

That mainly comes from what we learn about Jane along the way. At the start Jane seems like just an aimless women in her mid-thirties with a string of failed relationships and dead end jobs behind her, and she has absolutely no idea what to do next. One thing compounding her problems is that Jane has got a stubborn streak that compels her to resist listening to anyone, especially when they’re right.

Jane also lacks basic planning skills and is extremely limited in her thinking. For example, since she had a bad bus ride in school years ago she refuses to take a bus to the wedding because she assumes every bus trip would be just as bad. It's also not very endearing that the main reason for Jane wants to go to her sister’s wedding is because she realized that nobody really wanted her there so this is all for spite at a time when she has far bigger problems like trying to make sure she keeps a roof over head.

In short, Jane seemed like the kind of moron who consistently always does the wrong thing but never understands why her life is so crappy. However, despite seeming like exactly the kind of person I've been actively avoiding for most of my life, I came to like Jane quite a bit. Through all her trials and tribulations we learn that Jane is essentially a good-hearted and honest person who can be tough as hell when need be.

Lansdale pulled off a two-part trick here in the way that Jane realizes some important things about herself, and then he also subtly shifted my perspective of her until I realized that I had been thinking of Jane as just a stereotypical red state rube because of her circumstances rather than as a complex person whose opportunities were so limited to begin with that a few bad choices left her with increasingly shitty options. It's a similar situation with Henry who comes across as unpleasant and stubborn in her own way, but she also has a story to tell.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think it’s Lansdale’s best book since The Bottoms.

"Jane has lost her job at the laundry due to a ketchup package she forgot to remove from an expensive item, and her prospects look dim. To top off matters, her younger sister, who lives up north, and who Jane has problems with, is getting married and has mailed her an invitation that Jane believes was sent due to her sister not expecting her to be able to come. A long bout of sibling rivalry makes Jane all the more determined to go, even if her car has gone to hell. To make the journey, Jane forms an uncomfortable alliance with a grumpy, one-eyed, weight-lifting lady named Henry, who may or may not abandon her along the way, and has plans to see a doctor Henry claims can renew her sight. Add past memories of a sexual dalliance with a drunk preacher in the back lot of the church across from her house, an infamous naked run along a creek bank, failed marriages, including an ex-husband that has a bit of goat ardor, and with a shoe full of money, Jane and Henry hit the road. They meet up with modern slavers, panty snatchers, disabled thieves with a sense of grandeur, a country singer named Cheryl who is on the downhill slide, and a quest for the world's greatest toaster that can toast four slices of bread all at once, or in sequence, and has a clock on it. It's one incredible quest consisting of rides in cow trailers, a stolen car, and a convertible, a pirate outfit for children, and what will become a unique friendship."

Who doesn't want a little Joe R. Landsdale right now?

Jane is 30-years old, twice divorced and unemployed with nothing much going her way. She doesn't even have a dog! Knowing that the invitation to her younger sister's wedding was more courtesy than actual invitation she decides, out of spite, that she might as well make the trip up North to the wedding. When her car breaks down 5-miles into the trip it looks like it's all over... Nope. Not even close.

Entering into a ride share arrangement with an abrasive, freakishly strong, one-eyed woman Jane embarks on a road trip from Hell involving nitwits, misfits, malcontents, kidnappers, thieves and even a pirate (kinda, sorta). Witty, funny, full of absurd situations. Jane Goes North is not your average crime fiction novel.

This is a lesser effort by Joe R. Lansdale. Now, a minor Lansdale is still better than about 75% of the stuff out there, but it's not quite up to His Ownself's full-tilt boogie mojo storytelling. There's something missing... A certain cohesiveness to the madness. It's almost like several short stories have been doctored to fit together.

If you're a big fan of Joe R Lansdale then you're buying this book regardless and we both know it. If you're new to the author just know that Jane Goes North is not one of his strongest stories. It's not bad, it's just not up to expectations.

3.5 stars

Contains adult language, adult situations and some violence.

***Thanks to NetGalley, Subterranean Press, and Joe His Ownself for providing me with a free digital copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Jane Goes North is an easy to read book filled with Lansdale's typically squirrelly cast of characters. Lansdale always brings out my inner voice' s Easy Texas accent, no other author actually makes the voice in my head sound different. Overall, a fun read, not sure my library will be purchasing this one, though.

a great adventure with characters that have nothing in common except heading north. typical Lansdale romp on this one, loved it.

Jane Goes North by Joe R. Lansdale- I've read several of Lansdale's Country-Noir Hap N' Leonard stories, and those about the demon hunting Elvis along with Ned The Seal- all entertaining to some extent, but this story is not pulpy or horrifying enough to hold my attention. Jane, a dim slow learner, who's life is rapidly passing her by, has been invited to her younger sister's wedding and is determined to go. She hitches a ride with Henry(short for Henrietta), who lifts weights and throws cookies. So it's a road trip for the clueless. Some hard-core fans of Lansdale's stories might enjoy this outlandish outing but I got quickly bored- enough said.

An odd novel with multi-layered chats in the vein of Hap and Leonard but much less happens in this than in the H&L series. I I didn't come to care about these two as I do H&L but still a great one for fans of Lansdale's writing style very surprising ending
Thank you netgalley and the for for this arc