Inside the Acquisition Board Room: Associate Editor Suzanne Evans on Leah and Kate Rooper’s Jane Unwrapped

Dear Reader:

Fact: Jane’s a teen scientist who wants nothing more than to stay in her room and study while preparing to go to Cambridge. Before she can go, she’s forced out for one day of being a kid. One day is all it takes, and before it’s over, she drowns.

Fact: Dead Jane wakes up in the Egyptian underworld and comes face to face with Anubis. In a playful fantasy steeped with well-researched mythology, Jane is thrust back in time to ancient Egypt.

Hypothesis: Maybe someone will enjoy nerdy Jane’s adventure as much as I did.

Experiment: Share Jane with the world.

Leah and Kate Rooper found me on Twitter during a Manuscript Wish List event and shot me a modest query in February 2015. I try to review manuscripts in the order I receive them, reading chapter one of each and then going back for the ones I’m interested in. But Jane Unwrapped broke my pattern and broke it hard. Once I started the first chapter, I just couldn’t stop reading.

I’ve always been fascinated by mythology of all kinds. Something about the human psychology mixed in with the fantasy just gets me. Finding a well-written, captivating romance I can work on that brings together my love of myths with my love of books? Well, that’s paradise. Leah and Kate have incorporated a deep knowledge of Egyptian mythology into their book, giving it an educated feel while keeping the characters organic to the story.

And of course, my love for Jane was brought full circle by the absolute joy the Rooper sisters are to work with—they are sweet, intelligent, hard-working…you can’t go wrong! And their fun personalities really shine in their prose, coming together to form the hilariously geeky Jane whose humor I relate to more than just a little bit.

Open your mind and let Jane touch your heart the way I did, and I know you’ll fall in love along the way.

Sincerely,

Suzanne Evans
Associate Editor | Entangled Publishing
Twitter: @SMAEvans