Title: Always Emily

Author: Michaela MacColl

Publisher: Chronicle Books

Publishing date: April 8, 2014

Length: 282 pages

Source: Kindle (e-book)

About: Emily and Charlotte Brontë are about as opposite as two sisters can be. Charlotte is practical and cautious; Emily is headstrong and imaginative. But they do have one thing in common: a love of writing. This shared passion will lead them to be two of the first published female novelists and authors of several enduring works of classic literature. But they’re not there yet. First, they have to figure out if there is a connection between a string of local burglaries, rumors that a neighbor’s death may not have been accidental, and the appearance on the moors of a mysterious and handsome stranger. The girls have a lot of knots to untangle—before someone else gets killed.

WOW. I’m so in love with this book! (And NOT just because the main character & title are clearly awesome.)

Michaela MacColl took such a creative and well-researched fictional spin on classic authors Emily and Charlotte Bronte! I felt like I got an accurate peak inside these authors’ minds. I especially felt this and loved it getting to see how Ms. MacColl developed her characters’ personalities through true facts about the sisters by reading the author’s note at the end. Michaela MacColl did a great job of meetings the facts with the fiction.

Emily Bronte is our main character, though the book is third-person so we also get inside Charlotte’s head as well. (Though I approve of the title as opposed to ‘Always Charlotte.’ I have to be honest in saying the title was what hooked me! Whaaaat?! I’m biased! I wanted an MC with my name!) I bought this book on my Kindle when it was on sale last year, got about 37% in… and… DNF’d.

I DNF’D. WHYYYYY. If I recall correctly, at the time I’d just finished a cliff-hanging epic saga series and was a tad depressed… so don’t take it out on the book! I picked it up again on a whim (I really had no intention of reading this any time soon) and this time, it hooked me from the very beginning.

IT’S A MYSTERY! I haven’t read a straight-forward mystery in ages. I don’t want to say too much less I give it away… BUT let me just say: suspeeeeeense. I was expecting *more* of a make-believe premise but much of the plot itself was based on the true lives of Charlotte and Em! (Or Emmy, Ems, Emily-Bedemily, Em-N-Em. Etcetera, etcetera.) 🙂 (I just loved that the main character’s name was Emily alright!)

There was a bittersweet romance. I was tempted for a while there to Google who the Bronte sister ended up with… but thankfully I didn’t! It was sweet, and had a satisfying ending.

And the relationship between the sisters was captured so perfectly! The MC’s name IS Emily, but I have to say that she is much more my little sister’s personality – she is the younger sister, after all. Again, MacColl captured such a realistic and true-to-the-facts relationship between Charlotte and Emily. And it certainly was relatable, as an older sibling myself. 😉

I did have a few complaints, which is why this book gets four stars instead of five:

1: I predicted the mystery about 2/3 of the way in. Mostly after that the intrigue was a matter of how the issue was going to be resolved, and the action, which is always fun.

2: I said before that there was a small romance that I enjoyed, but it just didn’t feel realistic. A) Insta-love. Meh. Apparently the characters had a *small* history as kids but I didn’t get any of that, and everything went so fast! It was “boom, boom, BOOM – oh hey I’m kissing you now, that’s cool.” B) The romance simply didn’t have a place in this story. The character who ended up in a romance was never actually involved in a real person with that name and everything (trying not to give anything away; apologies for being vague!) when they actually lived some two hundred years ago and… I just didn’t see any purpose for it at all. I might have liked it more if I knew a bit more about the love interest (he felt like such a flat character and that was sad because he had a ton of room for a more explained back story) but… my overall feelings of that was just: “Eh. They’re alright.”

So Always Emily gets four stars! (Also, I just have to add that I now desperately want to read one of the Bronte sisters’ books, even more now!!)

 

 

 

have you read this book? what did you think? sound like something you’d be interested in? 🙂