Great nostalgic book that defines a time period long gone. The characters and plot were captivating. I extremely enjoyed reading this book and I highly recommend it

I've been dying to read Mary Jane so when NetGalley and pubs approved I said YES! This book was so full of life. I turned late after page reading this a d didn't want it to end. Mary Jane's character was.so real. It seriously felt like I was stepping back in time.
The writing wow Jessica Blau really did an awesome job writing this one.

A coming of age story set in the 70's.
Mary Jane has strict Christian parents and is looking to find her path in life. To help find her path she becomes a nanny for a couple where the husband is a psychiatrist. A rock star trying to get clean and his wife also move in with the couple and Mary Jane.
I really can't say I liked any of the characters. There wasn't much development in any of them.
This book has been compared to another book that I couldn't put down that also took place in the 70's. It fell short for me.
Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

This novel and I seem to have crossed wires somehow, because I am almost certain the author intends for me to love the young protagonist, Mary Jane, and the four people she gets mixed up with when she comes of age in the 70's in Baltimore. There are a few period details but I didn't get an immersive sense of place and time.

The four who sweep Mary Jane into their family circle are the Cones, ineffectual psychologist Richard and his weird wife Bonnie (for whose little girl, Izzy, Mary Jane becomes the nanny), and an addict rock star Jimmy and his wife Sheba, who come to live with the Cones so that Jimmy can get therapy from Richard.

Rejecting all four of these adults as remotely likeable, I certainly am not supposed to like Mary Jane's racist, hard-ass, Christian (*gasp*) parents, and yet Mary Jane's mother is the only person throughout the book who says anything remotely true or sensical.

The novel makes clear that both Izzy and Mary Jane are being mistreated. What is the reader supposed to do with this information? Perhaps the message is that if your parents are Ozzie and Harriet, any old worldly experiences from any old worldly people will expand your horizons, even if they have zero character and are blatantly taking advantage of you.

Mary Jane is the only functioning adult in the house where she is the nanny, and this is supposed to be a wonderful growth opportunity for her? Maybe I grew up too sheltered myself, but I don't see it. Mary Jane's mother has taught her a number of practical life skills which are admired by her "new family" including cooking, cleaning, and keeping a small child out of danger. Some of Jimmy's dealings with Mary Jane are creepy bordering on grooming/abuse, the adults all disclose far too much information to a teenaged girl, and Richard is not her psychologist and so for him to have "group therapy" with her is blatantly unethical and also, given the subject matter, also creepy.

There is considerable dark foreshadowing that is going to happen to Mary Jane, Izzy, or both, but when the Bad Thing Happens it is a big nothingburger. Izzy is afraid of a "witch," for one thing. I was sure this was going to turn out to be Izzy's mother. Mary Jane does get to sing around the house with the rock star and his wife, so there is some music in the book, which is a redeeming quality.

The author could have pulled the novel together at the end with some exposition by young Mary Jane determining what she will accept and reject going forward. This would have given me one character, the protagonist, to admire in some way. She might say, for example, "I want to get married and have one child but I do not want a husband like Jimmy and I will not be a mother like Bonnie. I will be a mother very much like my own mother but not a racist." Mary Jane herself could have declared that all of the adults around her are severely lacking and that she wants to be different from all of them in specific ways.

Mary Jane believes at the end that her horizons have been expanded and that she has more of a sense of self, but the author does not put any meat on those bones.

I've seen buzz comparing "Mary Jane" to the film "Almost Famous," in which William Miller bridges two worlds between home (with an uptight mother) and the world of rock-and-roll. Had William done the groupies' laundry plus cheerily signed up for every other kind of grunt work available without ever objecting once, and had Mary Jane been embarking on an actual career path, there might be some valid comparison between the two plots.