by Katherine Reay (Author), Laura Kirman (Narrator), Thomas Nelson (Publisher)

An AUDIObook Review by Jackie Houchin

The Bronte Plot story seems long, but not in the way you want to hurry up and finish. It immerses you in a world that entices you to linger. Lucy Alling is a character you get to know gradually. She loves books, especially old ones, and her job in the antiques shop is to discover them and lovingly offer them to serious customers so they will find “forever homes.”  Her method is admittedly suspect, but seems harmless.

A young lawyer comes to the shop looking for classic books for himself and for his grandmother. Lucy and James grow close through their mutual love of books, until he discovers what she is doing and ends the relationship.

James’ grandmother, seemingly out of the blue, but there is a definite reason for it, and an affinity with Lucy, offers her an astounding proposition. Will she go to England with Helen to right an old wrong?  Lucy agrees because she has a secret desire to finally find her wayward father, whose dodgy ways she seems to have inherited. It’s a time of intense inner struggle for both women, but there is finally joyous and freeing resolution.

 The Bronte Plot is a story that begins and ends in an antiques and design shop in New York, with a good, meaty section set in and around Haworth in Yorkshire, England where the Bronte sisters were born and grew up.  The book is flavored throughout with generous mentions, quotes, and stories about the Brontes and others authors and books from that time period. It feels lush and nostalgic.

I highly recommend The Bronte Plot. It’s a joy to read, especially if you are looking for an complex but satisfying story that almost transports you to an earlier time. It’s not a “coming of age” but a coming of emotional maturity story that leaves you feeling “clean” and refreshed.  The narrator completely disappears as you sink into the story and time period.

(I will be getting the second book in the series next.)

FIVE+ stars.

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