Review: 'Empress of All Seasons' by Emiko Jean

You know when you have a book waiting for you and yet somehow you don't read it for ages?! I hate it when that happens and yet iI have no one to blame for it but myself. This happened to me once again with Empress of All Seasons, Emiko Jean's stunning YA Fantasy novel. Competitions, empresses, and supernatural monsters and spirits. What more could I have asked for? Thanks to HMH Books for Young Readers and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 08/11/2018
Publisher: HMH Book for Young Readers

In a palace of illusions, nothing is what it seems.

Each generation, a competition is held to find the next empress of Honoku. The rules are simple. Survive the palace’s enchanted seasonal rooms. Conquer Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Marry the prince. All are eligible to compete—all except yōkai, supernatural monsters and spirits whom the human emperor is determined to enslave and destroy. Mari has spent a lifetime training to become empress. Winning should be easy. And it would be, if she weren't hiding a dangerous secret. Mari is a yōkai with the ability to transform into a terrifying monster. If discovered, her life will be forfeit.  As she struggles to keep her true identity hidden, Mari’s fate collides with that of Taro, the prince who has no desire to inherit the imperial throne, and Akira, a half-human, half-yōkai outcast. Torn between duty and love, loyalty and betrayal, vengeance and forgiveness, the choices of Mari, Taro, and Akira will decide the fate of Honoku in this beautifully written, edge-of-your-seat YA fantasy.

I am an avid Fantasy reader, I love sinking into new worlds full of magic and mystery. However, sadly many authors settle on a medieval European world and, on occasion, provide nothing more than a weak copy of Tolkien's Middle Earth or Lewis' Narnia. So whenever I stumble across a Fantasy book that does something new, that isn't afraid to steer away from the ol' reliable and dares to bring something different to the genre, I do a happy dance. This year only two books have triggered that dance. The first was Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, a stunning African story of family and magic. The second is Empress of All Seasons, Emiko Jean's beautiful Japanese tale of love and strength. What I found fascinating is that, thinking of the two together, both are bound strongly by the theme of discrimination. In Adeyemi's novel the main character grows up afraid and ashamed of what she is, conditioned to consider herself less than. Children of Blood and Bone is a sharp and honest story about racism. Empress of All Seasons, while perhaps not quite as sharp, shows a similar picture. Jean's protagonist, Mari, has to hide who she is, a monster in the eyes of humans and a disappointment in the eyes of her own people. As Adeyemi draws from African folklore, so Jean draws from Japanese folk tales, and both make the Fantasy genre richer by their addition.

Empress of All Seasons is enchanting. From the beginning of the novel I was completely caught up in the world Emiko Jean was creating. Initially I was suspicious of the seasonal rooms and how it would work, but the mythology feels completely real and fantastical at the same time. Split between different narrators, The Empress of All Seasons manages to convey all the different consequences of a society split by those who are "right" and those who aren't. Mari is a great main character, scarred and scared but strong and determined in her own way. Struggling with her own identity and the expectations that come with it, Mari is someone you're rooting for. Similarly, Taro is more than the grumpy, sulky prince, and Akira is more than the third part of a love triangle. Although that tension is there, it is in no way the main focus and something you have to almost actively read into the text yourself.

Emiko Jean's writing in this novel is stunning. She sets her novel solidly in a medieval-esque Japan where monsters and spirits and humans roam side by side. Her writing suits itself to both the very real tension of a mother-daughter relationship and the mythical creatures and traditions that move through her world. Her descriptions of the Rooms are so vivid I could see them when I closed my eyes. Jean confidently strides into the YA genre and twists its tropes upside down. Are there three young people who may or may not be in love? Perhaps. But it's not as it seems! Is there a young woman with a destiny? Definitely. But neither her nor the reader know what to expect from it! I loved the twists of her plot and the last quarter of the novel is full of surprises.

I give this novel...

5 Universes!

I absolutely adored The Empress of All Seasons and want to read everything Emiko Jean writes. Mari is a brilliant fantasy heroine and Jean will continue to surprise you throughout her novel. I'd recommend The Empress of All Seasons to every fantasy reader looking for something new and beautiful.

Review: 'The Sister' by Louise Jensen

Ominous last words, a friendship that may not have been what it seemed, and a new friend who is suspicious. These are a few of my favourite things and The Sister employs most of them to great effect. Moving between the past and present, Jensen's The Sister sketches a portrait of a woman on the brink, trying desperately to claw her way back. Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 26/6/2018
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

"I did something terrible Grace. I hope you can forgive me..."

Grace hasn't been the same since the death of her best friend Charlie. She is haunted by Charlie's last words, and in a bid for answers, opens an old memory box of Charlie's. It soon becomes clear there was a lot she didn't know about her best friend.

When Grace starts a campaign to find Charlie's father, Anna, a girl claiming to be Charlie's sister steps forward. For Grace, finding Anna is like finding a new family, and soon Anna has made herself very comfortable in Grace and boyfriend Dan's home.

But something isn't right. Things disappear, Dan's acting strangely and Grace is sure that someone is following her. Is it all in Grace's mind? Or as she gets closer to discovering the truth about both Charlie and Anna, is Grace in terrible danger?

There was nothing she could have done to save Charlie... or was there?

At the heart of The Sister is friendship and guilt. Like many other current psychological thrillers The Sister is fascinated with the adolescence of teenage girls, the highs of friendship and the lows of betrayal. The friendship between Grace and Charlie centres the novel and is the relationship around which most of it revolves. Thinking back to my own adolescence and childhood I do remember the intensity of the smallest thing, so seeing the almost obsessive nature of the friendship and of Grace's questioning of it does make sense. Jensen does take it a step further by looking at guilt and its many different forms. We all carry some guilt around, whether it's regretting something we did or regretting something we didn't. The Sister shows this in different ways and in different relationships, between children and parents, husband and wife, friend and friend. Where is the line and what happens when it's crossed? I know there are a lot of questions here, but who doesn't love a book that asks questions?

At the beginning of The Sister we find Grace slowly trying to recover from her best friend's death, but as she tries to do so the past comes back to haunt her and her life slowly begins to fall apart again. I did enjoy much of The Sister, its twists and its turns, but whereas some things remain a mystery to Grace, I feel the reader figures some things out way quicker than she or any of the other characters do. Especially Anna was both fascinating and frustrating since she was rather untrustworthy from the beginning. Part of this is also down to the title. I mean, come on. I don't want to spell it out but surely we all know that titles like these can be major giveaways unless they're actively misleading or only suggestive. Think of Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. Rebecca is at the heart of the novel, centring the mystery, and Du Maurier wants you to be just as focused on her as her main character. In this case Jensen's title isn't as successful, unfortunately.

Louise Jensen knows how to keep the pace. When a novel switches back and forth between the present and the past, it's difficult to make sure both narratives keep a reader's attention. Jensen uses Grace's past as a way to both inform the present and confuse it. What happened? Why did it happen? And how long will the repercussions last? Grace's voice is strong throughout the novel, even if at times she isn't the most likeable of narrators. Jensen doesn't intend for her to be though, not shying away from showing that no one is perfect and everyone has their vices. In the end The Sister tries to show that forgiveness needs to happen and that this forgiveness can hide behind different and surprising corners. Despite the fact that not all of The Sister was as surprising or smooth as I would have liked, I did enjoy it and raced through it, heading towards the inevitable but juicy conclusion.

I give this novel...

3 Universes!

I enjoyed The Sister, even though it was quite obvious at times where it was going. However, there were some great scenes which offered a lot of promise so I will definitely keep my eye out for Jensen's next book.

Review: 'Spinning Silver' by Naomi Novik

A fairy tale adaptation you say? Set in a magical cousin of \Russia? Yes of course I'd love to read this, why haven't you given it to me yet?! Spinning Silver promises a lot of good things in its blurb, but I'm happy to say that what it actually has to offer is a lot better than what is promised. Novik spins a magical web, slowly ensnaring the reader until they realise they're in too deep to get out. Thanks to Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 12/07/2018
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

WILL DARK MAGIC CLAIM THEIR HOME? 

Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s too kind-hearted to collect his debts. They face poverty, until Miryem hardens her own heart and takes up his work in their village. 

Her success creates rumours she can turn silver into gold, which attract the fairy king of winter himself. He sets her an impossible challenge – and if she fails, she’ll die. Yet if she triumphs, it may mean a fate worse than death. And in her desperate efforts to succeed, Miryem unwittingly spins a web which draws in the unhappy daughter of a lord. 

Irina’s father schemes to wed her to the tsar – he will pay any price to achieve this goal. However, the dashing tsar is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of mortals and winter alike.  

Torn between deadly choices, Miryem and Irina embark on a quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power and love. 

In this fairy tale-inspired novel, Naomi Novik weaves a rich, multi-layered tapestry that is a joy to read.

The main reason I picked up Spinning Silver is because the blurb calls it 'fairy tale-inspired'. I love new, modern takes on fairy tales that explore what is at the heart of those tales and why they are still relevant to us now. Spinning Silver does this at the very start, revealing that behind the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin there is a very different truth. And so Novik sets the reader on an early path to both mistrust what is at the surface and suspect what lies underneath. It makes for a great set up to exploring the lives of her many characters, and especially the three girls at the heart of the novel, Miryem, Irina and Wanda. And this is where I need to take a moment to complain about the blurb above for this novel. The reason I included it in the review is only to be able to complain about it now. After having read the book I feel the blurb does it a major disservice. Not only does it leave out Wanda as a major character, it misses out of providing hints at the genres the book mixes together and gives no suggestion of the richness of the book itself. So as I said in my introduction above, consider the blurb only a pale reflection of the actual book. In this review I'm going to try and avoid covering too much of the plot because I loved the surprises it offered me.

As stated, at the heart of Spinning Silver are Miryem, the daughter of Jewish moneylenders, Irina, the daughter of a duke who had hoped for more, and Wanda, the daughter of a drunk and poor farmer. Part of why I was so annoyed that the blurb gave no hint of all three is because it is by bringing together their diverse stories that Novik really caught my attention. Miryem's family is poor because her father is no good at moneylending, but one day Miryem has had enough of the sly smiles, the withheld money and the comments about their Jewish heritage, and takes over from her father. Fueled by her anger, Miryem quickly makes her family's life more comfortable. Alongside this we are told of Wanda, who lives with her two brothers and father on a barren farm, "protected" only by her mother's tree. Through Miryem Wanda is given a chance at escape, understanding and maybe even the magic of letters. As Miryem's power to "change silver into gold" becomes more well-known, she draws the eyes of a people shrouded in myth and fear, catching up Irina in the turmoil as well. Irina has lived her life in the shadows, almost content at being a disappointment to her father, until he sees a chance to make her tsarina. Her elevation brings with it strength and danger, and, like Miryem and Wanda, she has to find a way to save what she loves and come into her own. Novik takes her three main characters and highlights both the differences and similarities between them. Whether it's their difference in class and ethnicity or their shared stubborn determination and quiet love for their family, Novik's Spinning Silver shows them in a gentle but honest light and I couldn't help but become engrossed in all of them.

Novik's writing is what brings Spinning Silver to life. She translates the sparse but powerful style of fairy tales into a more luscious and rich style, without losing the clarity and honesty. I loved both her descriptions of the grand  landscape and of the small moments between family members that show their love for each other. Spinning Silver moves skilfully between being loud and being quiet, being dramatic and being intimate. It means that I found myself, reading during my lunch break at work, completely lost in her world. I looked up from my Kindle an hour later and had forgotten I was at work. For the rest of the day I had Spinning Silver in my mind and I returned to reading the moment I got home. I was surprised that certain aspects of the novel worked for me. Novik moves a lot between different narrators, and not just her three main female characters. Yet each time there is a new character speaking their narration adds another layer to the story and it didn't feel like too much. In a sense the ending also came too soon and tied up all the loose story lines almost too neatly, but I guess now I'm just really looking for something to complain about. I will definitely be keeping my eyes out for more of Novik's novels.

I give this novel...

4 Universes!

I adored Spinning Silver. Once I was caught there was simply no escape. Novik weaves a beautiful tale of three interlocking stories, three girls with different paths yet similar desires, all set against a beautiful, Russian fairy tale-esque background. What more could you really ask for?

Review: ‘Watch the Girls’ by Jennifer Wolfe

A missing sister? A former teen star? A series of disappearances? A town made famous by horror movies? How has this genius combination of thrills not been combined in a book before now?! I was fascinated by Watch the Girls’ blurb straightaway, which of course led to the concern that the actual book wouldn’t live up to my expectations. But thankfully that concern was unfounded because Wolfe delivered exactly what I wanted. Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 10/07/2018

Publisher:  Grand Central Publishing

Fame and obsession collide in this darkly twisted novel from an incredible new voice in suspense. 

I've been watched all my life. I'm used to being stared at. Observed. Followed.SOMEONE IS WATCHING 

Washed up teen star Liv Hendricks quit acting after her beloved younger sister inexplicably disappeared following a Hollywood party gone wrong. Liv barely escaped with her life, and her sister was never heard from again. But all this time, someone's been waiting patiently to finish what was started...

FOUR MISSING GIRLSNow fifteen years later, broke and desperate, Liv is forced to return to the spotlight. She crowdfunds a webseries in which she'll pose as a real-life private detective--a nod to the show she starred on as a teen. When a mysterious donor challenges her to investigate a series of disappearances outside a town made famous by the horror movies filmed there, Liv has no choice but to accept.

FOLLOW THE WHITE WOLFLiv is given a cryptic first clue: Follow the white wolf. And now a darker game is about to begin. Through social media, someone is leaving breadcrumbs to follow. As Liv makes increasingly disturbing discoveries, her show explodes in popularity. A rapt internet audience is eager to watch it all--perhaps even at the cost of Liv's own life...
Filled with provocative twists and turns as the line between plot and reality blurs in this inventive tour-de-force from breakout writer Jennifer Wolfe. 

Where to begin? A lot goes on in Watch the Girls and it took me until around halfway through the book before I saw what it was that connected the different elements: family. I have said this before, but the idea of family is incredibly potent in literature. Whether it’s Anna Karenina or Coraline, authors have always found inspiration in family relationships. Our family is, in a large part, what shapes us but it is also something we have to depart from at some point to consider ourselves independent adults. You can never quite let it go, of course, and the smallest tensions can lead to major fallouts. But it can also be a fountain of endless love and support, inspiring books likeLittle Women and A Little Princess. In Watch the Girls, Wolfe shows the darker sides of family life: jealousy and fear, the desire to protect and the desire to destroy. In the end it made sense that this potent network of connections is what motivates much of the twists and turns in Watch the Girls.

Watch the Girls follows Liv (Olivia) Hendricks, once a teen star and now a struggling C-lister at best. She wants nothing to do with all the glitz and glam, but she needs money so after being fired from her latest set she crowdfunds a new enterprise: Liv solving mysteries! But her first mystery takes her straight back to her own past. AsWatch the Girls moves between Liv trying to solve the disappearance of young women, young Olivia relives her own trauma of losing her youngest sister and remembering nothing of the night. Wolfe plays interestingly with (social) media, letting the reader see the Tweets Liv gets while also looking at the influence of too much exposure at a young age. And then there are the horror movies that made the locale of the disappearances famous. Wolfe indirectly examines why we are obsessed with what horrifies us, if there is something we can learn from facing our worst fears, and where those fears come from. I loved how Wolfe used the image of the wolf in Watch the Girls. The wolf has always been a fascinating figure, a pack animal with strong loyalties yet also a hunter at night.

I had never read anything by Jennifer Wolfe before, but Watch the Girls has definitely made me a fan. Although there are a number of tropes in the book she manages to avoid it becoming cliché. Her writing feels honest, while also giving you exactly the thrills and scares that you want. There is some truly horrifying stuff in this book, but Wolfe avoids sensationalism. ‘Dead girls’ is a popular topic in modern fiction and it can at times be problematic (click here for a very interesting article on this topic), but Wolfe manages to move around this relatively well. In a sense the world’s obsession with dead or disappeared girls is central to this novel as well, asking us why we think it so important to watch girls suffer on camera or in fiction. What is it supposed to teach us? Who is it really for? In a sense this question is also posed to the reader. Why are we so fascinated with this story of girls and women suffering? Watch the Girls doesn’t give an answer to those questions, but I was glad that aside from being a fascinating thriller that had me on the edge of my seat it also gave me food for thought.

I give this novel..

 

4 Universes!

While reading Watch the Girls it chased everything else from my mind. When I wasn’t reading it I was thinking about it. I loved trying to figure out what was happening, moving with the twists and turns and rooting for Liv to overcome everything that was thrown at her.

Books in the News: Odysseus Found

I thought I'd try something new and that is not only keep up with news about literature, poetry and drama but actually share my favourite news with you as well. Whether favourite will always mean happy and positive news remains to be seen, but for now, let's get the news on the road.

The first news story I want to share with you relates to one of my favourite Classical texts: The Odyssey. After fighting in the Trojan War for 10 long years, Odysseus manages to make an enemy of the god Poseidon, delaying his return home for another 10 years. As he travels across the sea and loses his companions he encounters a menagerie of supernatural beings, whether it's the Siren, Circe and a cyclops, before finally being able to return home. The poem is believed to have been composed during the 8th century BC and to have been transmitted orally. The earliest known fragments of The Odyssey, until today, stemmed from the Christian era and were found in Egypt , where they were transcribed onto parchment. 

Yesterday, in a press release, the Greek Culture Ministery revealed 'a particularly important discovery! For the last three years Greek and German archaeologists have been tirelessly working on the Olympia site, but I doubt any of them were expecting to find the oldest fragment of The Odyssey ever uncovered and the first to be found in Greece itself. The clay slab discovered in Olympia contains 13 verses from the 14th book of The Odyssey. This book finally sees Odysseus returning to Ithaca and conversing with his friend Eumaeus, before reuniting with his wife Penelope and son Telemachus.”

The dating of the slabs is still underway, but it was found amid Roman remains and is, for now, assumed to be from roughly 300 AD. I personally think this discovery will also be of major cultural importance to Greece. Many of the most stunning architecture and sculptures are to be found in museums outside of Greece and this has, rightly, been a sore point for a long time. To find a fragment such as this, of a text so integral to the literary and cultural importance of Greece to the rest of the world, and not have it whisked away, will be very meaningful.

From a literary standpoint this is indeed a singular and important discovery as well. I have always been fascinated by the oral transmission of such classic works, how stories changed with every time they were told, slightly altered by each person who told it. It is still debated whether Homer was a single person or if he is himself as much of a myth of Ulysses is. Are the tales he told all fiction or is there a kernel of truth to them? Although the answer to that question may never be found, I am hoping we'll continue to find little pieces of literary history such as the above clay slab, allowing us to trace how out stories have moved through time.

Are you a fan of the Odyssey?

Review: 'Metamorphica' by Zachary Mason

My first introduction to myths and legends was during a holiday in Greece when I borrowed (read: stole) a book of Greek myths from my parents. Surrounded by the Greek landscape the gods and goddesses of Olympus felt as real as anything. I have been devoted to them ever since. Studying Greek and Latin in school didn't manage to defeat my love for them and here I am, still chasing down books about them. The latest is Zachary Mason's fascinating Metamorphica, based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 10/07/2018
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

A brilliant and daring novel that reimagines Ovid’s Metamorphoses 

In the tradition of his bestselling debut novel The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachary Mason’s Metamorphica transforms Ovid’s epic poem of endless transformation. It reimagines the stories of Narcissus, Pygmalion and Galatea, Midas and Atalanta, and strings them together like the stars in constellations—even Ovid becomes a story. It’s as though the ancient mythologies had been rewritten by Borges or Calvino; Metamorphica is an archipelago in which to linger for a while; it reflects a little light from the morning of the world.

Ovid's epic Metamorphoses is a classic. In 250 myths, the long poem tracks the history of the world from creation to Julius Caesar. Ovid's masterpiece has had a major influence on Western literature, from Dante to Shakespeare. His metamorphosis myths diver at times significantly from his Greek sources, yet they have become classic in their own rights. At the heart of many of his reworked myths is the idea of love, while humans come across better than the gods. The transformations in the Metamorphoses are often painful and violent, but then, isn't change always? I loved the Metamorphoses when I first read them, and still loved them when I was made to translate parts of it in school. A collection and reworking of past myths itself, it is no surprise that Ovid himself has given rise to reworkings. Up to now, I was never too bowled over by any of them, but Zachary Mason's Metamorphica is a stunner.

Rather than one connected narrative, Mason's Metamorphica casts each god and goddess as a star and tells the constellations of stories around them. I adored the star charts which started each new section dedicated to a new god or goddess, as well as the mini summaries at the beginning of each story. Rather than give anything away, these mini summaries tie the different stories together, show how each myth is somehow connected to the others. The stories vary in length, some no more than two paragraphs while others span for pages. Yet each brings a surprising new twist to what we know of the stories. Taking an almost psychoanalytical take to these stories, Mason brings out a new side to what we know. While Ovid's Metamorphoses was written entirely from a male view point, Mason frequently switches between male and female narrators, letting Clytemnaestra tell her own rage and allowing the reader to feel Narcissus' emptiness through his own words. Despite having read these stories over and over again, Metamorphica brought me something new and I absolutely devoured this collection of stories. I felt saddened when it was over, but also enriched.

Zachary Mason's writing is poetical and beautiful, both honest and fantastical. There is real grief and pain in his pages, but also beauty and joy, however fleeting. No Greek myth can be accused of having a happy ending and Mason doesn't gloss over that. There is a lot of tragedy in Metamorphica but it is of a kind of beautiful tragedy, the kind which is fated and therefore inevitable. Mason's writing matches this, laying everything on the table while maintaining the mystery of his tales. His takes on these Greek and Latin myths are sharp and to the point, not covering up the ugly truths contained in these myths but almost revelling in them. I adored how he dissected some of the stories, giving me a way to accept Circe's sudden obeisance to Odysseus, for example. Considering how much I have read about these myths I myself was almost surprised by how immediately I fell in love with Metamorphica. I am actually already in the middle of rereading it. Thank you Zachary Mason!

I give this collection...

5 Universes!

Metamorphica completely blew me away. Beautifully written and heartbreaking, Mason rewrites Ovid's Metamorphses in a way that felt both modern and ancient. I'd recommend this to anyone who has an interest in Greek and Latin myths.

Short Review: 'The Brontë Family: Passionate Literary Geniuses' by Karen Kenyon

Aah, the Brontë sisters! What geniuses they were and how miserably short their lives. And yet their few years continue to fascinate their readers. Sadly I am still far away from visiting Haworth, but it has been on my list ever since I first read Jane Eyre. As a devout Brontë fan I try to get my hands on every book written about them and the latest instalment is The Brontë Family by Karen Kenyon. Thanks to Endeavour Media and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review of this book.

Pub. Date: Endeavour Media
Publisher: 01/07/2018

The authors of such literary classics as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë were extraordinary not only because they were successful female writers in Victorian England, but also because they were sisters. 

Growing up, all three sisters’ writings were significantly influenced by each other, but perhaps most importantly by their troubled brother, Branwell. 

This fascinating account of each sister’s unconventional life, astounding talent, and tragic death draws readers into the minds of the gifted authors whose passionate tales have enthralled readers for more than a century and whose voices still resonate with modern readers.

I love the Brontë sisters. Once I discovered English literature through the brilliant Jane Austen I swiftly fell for Charlotte, Emily and Anne as well. I must admit, however, that Emily is my undoubted favourite. There is something so visceral and wild about Wuthering Heights that has, in my opinion, never been topped. But this is true of all the Brontë sisters. They were true in a way that was rare, honest almost to the point of painful and undoubtedly gifted. What fascinates me is how they penned three fascinating novels simultaneously by candle light, huddled over the kitchen table after a long day of work. The creative spirit that must have surrounded them is something I'm amazed and inspired by and it is no surprise they have continued to inspire people for years.

In The Brontë Family Karen Kenyon captures the lives of Charlotte, Emily and Anne in short chapters dedicated to some of the most powerful and some of the most tragic moments in their lives. Whether it is the first sparks of their literary genius, their hardships at school, the brilliancy of their talent, the tragedy of their ends, \Kenyon covers it all in short yet insightful chapters. Although there is not much that would be new to Brontë fans, Kenyon's The Brontë Family covers them very well. I liked how every chapter began with a quote, whether from the Brontë sisters directly or from someone close to them. Kenyon also covers Branwell's life, how he brought both pride and shame to his family before his untimely end.


I give this novel...

3 Universes!

Short and to the point, I enjoyed reading The Brontë Family. In a few chapters, Kenyon highlights some of the high and low points in the lives of the Brontës, her love for the three sisters clearly shining through. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in finding out some more about the Brontës.