Book Review of The Mist on Bronte Moor by Aviva Orr

From the site of Aviva Orr:

When fifteen-year-old Heather Jane Bell is diagnosed with alopecia and her hair starts falling out in clumps, she wants nothing more than to escape her home in London and disappear off the face of the earth.

Heather gets her wish when her concerned parents send her to stay with her great-aunt in West Yorkshire. But shortly after she arrives, she becomes lost on the moors and is swept through the mist back to the year 1833. There she encounters fifteen-year-old Emily Brontë and is given refuge in the Brontë Parsonage.

Unaware of her host family’s genius and future fame, Heather struggles to cope with alopecia amongst strangers in a world completely foreign to her. While Heather finds comfort and strength in her growing friendship with Emily and in the embrace of the close-knit Brontë family, her emotions are stretched to the limit when she falls for Emily’s brilliant but troubled brother, Branwell.

Will Heather return to the comforts and conveniences of the twenty-first century? Or will she choose love and remain in the harsh world of nineteenth-century Haworth?

My review:

The Mist on Bronte Moor by Aviva Orr
I enjoyed this book about a 15 year old student who has alopecia, loss of hair. Heather Jane Bell does not want to go back to school so her parents send her to live with her Great-Aunt Elspeth in West Yorkshire. Heather takes a train from London to live in her new home.
Heather is taken back in time when she enters a mist. She is "found" by Emily and taken to the Bronte home. It takes Heather awhile to find she has gone back to the 19th century to 1833. The clothing is different as well as the home which is where there is no electricity and no indoor plumbing. The Brontes take her in and give her dress and food. Mr. Bronte said he would find her family or send her to an orphanage. He has to go out of town and Heather stays in the house.
The family consists of Mr. Bronte, Branwell, Emily, Charlotte, Anne and Mr. Bronte's sister, Elizabeth. The housekeeper is Tabby, or Tabitha, as Elizabeth Bronte calls her. Emily tells Heather her sisters are buried in the churchyard and "my mother lies in the church under the stone floor". They live in the town of Haworth.
I really liked this book as it has a lot of history about the time period and the Brontes. I did not realize there was a brother called, Branwell who had a problem with lanthanum.
Read to enjoy and go back in to another time era. A good read for young people as the facts hold true such as children dying at a young age. I especially liked it when Tabby had Heather wash her own muddy clothes.
At the beginning of each chapter there is part of a poem written by E. J. Bronte.
Chapter 7:
" And first and hour of mournful musing,
And then a gush of bitter tears,
And then a dreary calm diffusing
Its deadly mist o'er joys and cares:"
Chapter 10:
"Will the day be bright or cloudy?
Sweetly has its dawn begun;
But the heaven may shake with thunder
Ere the setting of the sun"
On a personal note about loss of hair. As an adult who has lost most of her of hair on top of her head because of a thyroid condition and unhappy, I can imagine a 15 year old and how devastated she would be.
I downloaded this book from Amazon. I give it a 5 star because it held my interest. Not a very complicated book but a good read. No bad language.
You may find Aviva Orr at www.avivaorr.com
Leona Olson
www.mnleona.blogspot.com ( )