Romancing Miss Bronte: O Rly?
Romancing Miss Brontë by Juliet Gael
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I received this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers giveaway. I initially thought that this book would be about a love affair involving one of the Bronte sisters, but in fact, it read much like a novelized biography of Charlotte. This, however, made the book all the more appealing to me. I have not read a biography of any of the Brontes, so I am not sure how much research is behind this book (since it was an ARC, the Author's notes are not included - I would be interested to read these), but it read as though the author was very knowledgeable about the time period and the people of the day.
I do feel that the title was a bit misleading, as the romance that occurs in the book is one-sided and limited to the latter third of the book - almost an afterthought. Perhaps this is because after her heart is broken, love, for Charlotte, is also an afterthought. The plot is engaging, the characters complex and diverse, and the writing solid. The pages flew by. I do wish that there had been more about the other two sisters - they faded into the background a bit, but the relationship between Charlotte and her father and her brother were more strongly developed.
The life of Miss Bronte is quite tragic, but the book does not become maudlin. If anything, the author might be criticized of being too matter-of-fact about illness and death through most of the book - but one also might argue that at the time, these things were much more prevalent than today, and the subject was handled well enough in the end that I was quite moved.
I thought Charlotte stood out as a very real-feeling and well-developed character with a strong sense of independence that conflicted with her sense of duty. The author evoked a sense of an alternate time period without becoming overbearing or ponderous, and I was engaged in the story from start to finish - there was no time that I thought that the story lagged. I do think that the book can do with a bit of "tightening" as there were some typographical errors and a few places where a sentence seemed "stuck in" to force foreshadowing.
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