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 ( )

The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author, Felix J. Palma and Simon & Schuster to read and review. The opinions are my own.


The book has been translated from Spanish to English by Nick Caistor.

I was first interested in this book because the cover said the book would have characters such as H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, two of my favorites.

Interesting read but a little confusing at times. I actually was reading this book and put it aside then began to read again. The review is just a touch because the reader must read the book to get the real details and content of the book or "Tale(s)" as the author has said.

H. G. Wells was one of the main characters in this book. His book, The Time Machine, was all the rage in Europe.
There are three parts of this book. Part One goes into the past, Part Two goes into the future and Part Three goes way into the future as well as a lot of this section stays in the book's time period of the late 1880s.
Andrew Harrington in Part One wants to go into the past to kill Jack the Ripper before he kills his love, Marie Kelly by using the machine that took the character, George, into the future with his Time Machine which is described in the book written by Wells, The Time Machine. Andrew is suicidal and his cousin, Charles, takes Andrew to see H. G. Wells so Andrew could travel back to the past. Marie is a prostitute in the Whitechapel area in London. I did some research and find the names I checked are the women Jack the Ripper killed except the name was Mary Kelly, not Marie. This section is very descriptive in the gruesome acts of what Jack the Ripper does to the women.
Part Two of The Map of Time journeys us into the future and time travel. Gilliam Murray has developed a program that takes men and women of London area from 1896 to the year 2000 and it is called Murray's Time Travel. The passengers are transported into the fourth dimension on a tram where they find automations are trying to take over the world in a legendary battle between humans and automations. The hero is Captain Derek Shackleton and his job is to defeat the king of the automations.

Claire Haggerty has decided to go to Murray's Time Travel with her friend, Lucy, but makes plans not to return to her time period. Claire has decided that the century in which she lives is boring and she has no interest in men in her time era. She believes the future holds more for her. When the passengers are getting ready to depart, Claire hides and see Captain Shackleton without his helmet, which had hidden his face during the battle. She tells him she loves him and wants to be with him in this time period. The man in charge of the group finds Claire and tells her she must leave with the rest of the group; Derek Shackleton rushes out of sight.

The tale is interesting and there are many details of people and events. H.G. Wells and his wife, Jane, are brought into the tale closer to the end.
Part Three has a Scotland Yard detective who believes that someone from the future is committing murder in London. This section is mainly about Wells but also has Henry James and Dram Stoker. H.G.Well's book, The Invisible Man, is part of this tale.

This book is difficult to read because there are so many different occasions happening and the book seems to jump into different areas but the author still brings the tales together. It is a page tuner and so many details and people are in this book, even if only a mention. After I started the book again, I started with Part Two and went back to Part One. The "Map of Time" is described in Part Three and well worth waiting for the meaning. It pulls the book together.

Some names are Jules Verne, Dram Stoker, Henry James, German chemist who developed aspirin (Felix Hoffmann) in the late 1800s and the chemist who invented Coca Cola.
Felix J. Palma has done a remarkable job on The Map of Time. It seems like he is in London and for the readers who have been to London, it puts the reader there but in another time era.

Anyone interested in time travel will find this a good read.

I have to give this a five star plus because of all the details in the book/tales.
Leona Olson

mnleona.blogspot.com