Rowan Coleman

Great authors are have amazing insights into human nature. They need to understand the motivations behind the actions, reactions, and feelings of their characters. So it's not a far stretch to imagine our favorite authors as detectives and investigators as Bella Ellis does with Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte in The Vanished Bride, the first novel of the Bronte Sisters Mystery series.

Governess Mattie French discovers blood leaking out of her mistress' room one early morning in 1845. Her show more mistress has vanished but the quantity of blood can only mean murder. Brother Branwell brings this ghastly news to Haworth and Charlotte and Emily realize that their school friend Mattie is the one who discovered her mistress missing. They resolve to walk across the moor to Chester Grange and comfort their friend and perhaps to discover the truth of what happened to Elizabeth Chester. Knowing that Mrs. Chester left behind a child and a young stepchild and that Mr. Chester was not a good man, the three sisters are determined to become lady detectors and solve this troubling case.

Ellis, a play on Emily Bronte's own pen name--Ellis Bell, who is actually novelist Rowan Coleman, takes readers on a fun, cozy mystery ride with the three amateur sleuth and as yet unpublished novelist sisters. The atmosphere often veers toward the gothic and there are common Victorian plot contrivances like gypsies and the supernatural contained here. There are seeds of the sisters' future novels scattered throughout the mystery as well. The sisters have a delightful bickering and bantering way with each other and they are all drawn with curious and lively minds. There is a real sense of them pushing against the strictures placed on women in their time both in their own choices and in their sympathy for the missing Mrs. Chester. Occasionally though, they discuss the lot of women in terms that feel anachronistic. Their observational skills suit them well in detecting. The plotting of the mystery is consistent and the denouement is unexpected but well drawn. Fans of the Brontes who don't mind a little creative license will certainly enjoy this entertaining historical mystery. show less

The Girl at the Window is what I call a wow book. It's simply stunning from the very beginning to the very end, all 440 pages of it. Not a short book, by any means, but in my opinion not one word is surplus to requirements.

The story is very much set around Ponden Hall on the Yorkshire moors and it most definitely is a character in its own right. When Trudy returns to her childhood home after losing her husband, Abe, it feels like the right thing to do. It's so much more than just a house. show more She takes her 8 year old son, Will, with her and it's the first time he's met his grandmother due to an estrangement between her and Trudy.

Ponden Hall is where Emily Brontë is thought to have got her inspiration for Wuthering Heights and where she spent some time before her untimely death. Already it's a magical place. Add in Rowan Coleman's storytelling skills and it's even more exquisite.

There's so much going on in this book and yet it never felt overcrowded. There's the obvious grief that Trudy and Will are suffering. There's the difficult mother/daughter relationship where they have to learn to live together again after so many years. Then there's Trudy's discovery in the house of items that could change history, along with the Brontë connection and the story of another Ponden Hall resident, Agnes. It's all wonderfully atmospheric and full of those lovely little details that I love. There's much going through records, searching through boxes, delving into archives, exploring dusty stacks for something long hidden. It captivated me and I just didn't want to leave this fascinating story alone for a minute.

Added to this is the ghostly element at the hall. Over the years, ghosts have made their home at the hall too. I'm not a believer in ghosts and yet I totally believed in them in this story. Coleman hits exactly the right tone of plausibility.

The writing is sublime, the plotline is inspired and imaginative, I felt empathy with the characters and of course, there's the setting. The beautiful and bleak Yorkshire moors of Wuthering Heights come back to life in The Girl at the Window. I thought it was a completely gorgeous read and one that will probably find its way onto my books of the year list. show less

Girl Power was alive and well in 1845 and the Brontë sisters were amateur sleuths. No, this is not an alternate universe you have stumbled into but the plot of The Vanished Bride by Bella Ellis. However, whilst there is no evidence the sisters were ever detectives, I think it’s clear that they were trailblazers in a time when women were expected to keep quiet and behave themselves and I thought the author did a brilliant job of bringing to life the feisty threesome.

When Charlotte, Emily show more and Anne hear about an incident at a house not far away from them their interest is piqued when they realise it’s where Charlotte’s old friend, Matilda French, lives and works as governess to the two children of the house. It transpires that Elizabeth Chester, the lady of the house, has disappeared from her bedchamber and from the amount of blood left behind it doesn’t look good for her. The sisters decide to investigate and see if they can find out what on earth has happened.

Each chapter follows the story from a different sister’s point of view, although always in the third person. I loved how this really helped to bring each one to life and highlighted their individual strengths and weaknesses. Emily, for instance, is portrayed as a fearless woman, one who would think nothing of breaking into a house to spy on the owner. Charlotte is more reserved but also kinder and less direct, whilst Anne uses her friendly nature to encourage people to talk to her. I also liked the fact that their brother, Branwell, is so well-portrayed in this story. His problems with ladies, drink and opiates are well known and he comes across as rather feckless but also incredibly likeable.

I confess I was a little worried about this book. I did wonder if it would work having the Brontës as detectives or whether it would be a little bit on the naff side. I can tell you that it works beautifully and I absolutely adored following them as they dug into the lives of the Chesters. Bella Ellis has written a fantastic piece of fiction, cleverly weaving her clearly extensive knowledge of the family into the narrative. I thought it was wonderful and I can see this being the first of several investigations for Charlotte, Emily and Anne (and maybe Branwell too). show less

This lovely story is centered around a nurse, Stella, working in a London area hospice for mostly terminal patients, and the emotional ups and downs in her own life as well as the lives of her patients and their families. Interspersed throughout the book are letters that hospice patients have asked Stella to write for them and deliver to their loved ones after they die. The letters are touching and funny and help illustrate the theme that “[y]ou fight till your last breath for the people show more that you love, and your dreams, the future that you want. And you can fight for your past too, because it’s not too late to know how much it mattered . . . "

In addition to the focus on Stella and her husband Vincent, who is suffering from severe PTSD after having served in Afghanistan, we also get to know two other couples: Hope, who has Cystic Fibrosis, and her upbeat, loyal BFF Ben; and Hugh, a historian who curates a Victorian collection of mementos mori (artistic or symbolic reminders of the dead), and his new next-door neighbor, single-mom Sarah and her very funny and endearing ten-year-old son.

Through the letters and the characters, we hear different takes on mortality and on making sense of your life. All of these people have been through both good and bad times, but as Sarah says to Hugh:

“I’ve been through crap too, you know. I’ve cried my guts up, more than once. It’s not easy, being in this world. Picking yourself up, getting yourself together, time after time, only for some bastard to whack you back down. But what else can you do, right? If you keep getting up, sooner or later something or someone is going to show the reason why it’s worth keeping on trying.”

The story keeps coming back to the importance of relationships in keeping people going. “We are all made of stars,” one patient writes:

“You and I and all of life, we were all born out of the death of a star, millions of billions of years ago. A star that lived long and then, before its death, burnt at its brightest, its fiercest, an enflaming supernova. But when it died, it did not cease to exist. Instead, everything it is made of becomes part of the universe once again, and everything that is part of the universe becomes us.

So do not miss me, because I do not die. I transform into the wind in the tops of the trees, the wave on the ocean, the pebbles under your foot, the dust on your bookshelves, the midnight sky.

Wherever you look, I will be there.”

The thoughts of these characters, and their struggles for meaning and love will stay in your thoughts and your hearts.

Evaluation: This is not a depressing novel, in spite of the themes and setting. On the contrary, it is quite uplifting and inspirational. Coleman is often compared to Jojo Moyes and I think it is a valid comparison, although Moyes moves me to tears much more than Coleman. This story is well worth reading. show less