Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

What a perfectly creepy story. This book kept me awake at night. I had to stay awake to find out what happened next! Thrilling and intriguing in equal measure. A please to read!

It's great to be in a position to recommend much more diverse books to our young people at school. Building the senior school library as a place where students actually come and find books that they want to read as opposed to books that teachers think they ought to read is an important responsibility and one we take really seriously.
Books like this are such a positive move as they will appeal to a broader set of readers than we are usually attracting. Dealing with modern issues in a clear and captivating way with a strong narrative voice and characters that the students can relate to is critical as we move forwards. This book is both an intelligent and compelling read that will hold even the most reluctant reader's attention and keep them turning the pages long into the night. It keeps the reader on their toes and ensures that you give it your full attention too. I found myself thinking about its characters and events even when I wasn't reading it and looking forward to snatching kore time with it and I hope that my students feel the same. An accessible, gripping and engrossing read that I can't recommend highly enough. Will absolutely be buying a copy for the library and heartily recommending it to both staff and students.

Rowan Coleman is one of my favourite authors thanks to her beautiful writing style and exploration of difficult and often heart-wrenching issues. This one fell a little flat to me even though it had an atmospheric setting. It was full of mystery though and kept me engaged more often than not.

The Girl at the Window is the story of Trudy who has moved back home with her young son to the place she grew up. Going home is a big deal and besides dealing with the emotional deons of her past she is also dealing with actual haunting spectres.

Okay, if I am 100% honest I am not sure if I loved this book. I feel like the story was two separate things almost willfully fused together. I am not saying the story wasn't good it was just that I didn't really feel the connect between the two of them. The historical and mythical element seemed like it could have bee the main story which is weird because it played second fiddle to the modern day tale of Trudy losing her husband. I think I wanted more of the past than the present.

I know people will love this story. Coleman never writes anything that is bad and The Girl at the Window is a good book. It is a good story. Personally, I just wanted more of the second story.

The Girl at the Window by Rowan Coleman is available now.

For more information regarding Rowan Coleman (@rowancoleman) please visit her Twitter page.

For more information regarding Ebury Press (@EburyPublishing) please visit their Twitter page.

I have to say I really struggled to connect with characters. Enjoyed the story, the mystery of it but it was little too slow burner for me.

I was sucked into this book from the start! What an enchanting story.

Trudy and her son, Will move back to her childhood home to live with her mother after her husband disappears in a plane crash.

Her childhood was full of family tales. Trudy once had an imaginary friend, Agnes Heaton was her name and she comes back to visit Will. Agnes needs help so Trudy learns about her story to bring her closure.

The house has links with Emily Bronte. Emily had heard about Agnes’ story too. Trudy finds more out about Agnes and Emily’s lives.

A magical story!

A beautiful story of love and hope. This is a sort of contemporary ghost story - in fact my friend ended up giving me her copy as she found it a little too "creepy". I didn't think it was creepy at all but rather haunting and poignant. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

A lovely, nuanced book, part romance, part gothic mystery. Rowan Coleman just gets better with every book.

Who doesn’t enjoy a spooky read set in a mysterious, old house? I have loved every single one of Rowan Coleman’s books and this is no exception. It is a story of love, loss and grief but also manages to be a page turner and I couldn’t put it down. I’m not sure how she does it but every one of her stories are unique – this one is inspired in part by her love of the Bronte sisters and is set in Haworth where the sisters lived. Highly recommended.

I know very little about the Brontes and Ponden hall! but Rowan’s book has sparked interest in it for me. The way she describes the area and her beautiful writing is just wonderful. I was worried it might be too scary for me (I am a total wimp!), but it’s more spooky than scary. A great Halloween read for the easily scared. 👻

I have read a few of Rowan Coleman’s novels so automatically bought The Girl at The Window without reading the synopsis or a review. Woven within The Girl at the Window are three stories, set mainly in the Yorkshire countryside, over different timelines. Each story tells of love and loss including a fictionalised story about Emily Bronte (I am not sure if it is all fiction, some may be fact) and Ponden Hall. This isn’t my usual genre, and it took a while to read as I lost my reading mojo some time in 2019, however what was apparent, from reading The Girl in the Window was Rowan’s love for Emily Bronte and her novel Wuthering Heights and this has whetted my appetite to learn more about the Bronte family and read Emily’s book.

Thank you to NetGalley for letting me read this book for an honest review. I apologise that my reading mojo got up and left in 2019, however, luckily i have found it again

‘The Girl at the Window’ by Rowan Coleman is a glorious mixture of ghosts, grief and the Yorkshire moors of the Brontës. With three timelines to juggle, the novel’s structure is held together by a real house, Ponden Hall, and its true links to Emily Brontë. Mixing historical fact with flights of imagination - the letters of a 17th century servant Agnes - there is a lot going on. Central are the themes of grief, the different types of love and mother/child relationships.
Trudy Heaton’s husband Abe is missing presumed dead after a plane crash in South America, so she takes their son Will to her childhood home, Ponden Hall in Yorkshire. Tru’s return is wondrous and difficult, a return to the old house and moors she loved near Haworth, home to the Brontës; but also an awkward reunion with Ma, with whom she has not spoken for 16 years. When Tru finds a loose page from a diary written by Emily Brontë, who visited the house and used its library, and some 17th century documents by an Agnes Heaton, she starts a hunt for the truth. At the same time she must renovate the almost derelict house, and help Will negotiate his new life without his father in a strange place. Will likes Ponden Hall, the Granny he has never met before, and Mab the old retriever, but he acquires an imaginary friend. Also hovering on the scene is Marcus Ellis, house restorer and Brontë addict, who arrives to assess the repairs needed and grants available to save Ponden Hall. Ma doesn’t like Marcus’s neat blue jeans, Tru finds him unsettlingly calm, and Will likes the computer games and wi-fi at Marcus’s ultra-modern home.
And all the time, Will expects his father to return and asks his mother why she stopped looking for him. As both mother and son process their grief, the losses, brutality and bereavements of other generations at Ponden Hall are uncovered. Has Tru found a story previously uncovered only by Emily Brontë, and did Emily leave an unfinished second novel hidden somewhere at Ponden Hall?
The adventure and excitement of a bookish girl, searching for real... ‘the existence of a childhood dream come true, almost like finding a snowy forest at the back of a wardrobe.’
Another immersive read on holiday for me, 4* rather than 5* because of some unbelievable elements and impracticalities which took me away from the world on the page and made me wonder... ‘but’. To avoid spoilers I can’t be more specific but they are not ghost or Brontë-related.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

Having previously enjoyed many of Rowan Coleman’s books, I was disappointed by this. The plot is quite simple but split across different timelines and narrators so the reader never really gets settled into the narrative. The ending is just awful and I felt cheated that it finished in such a lazy and badly executed plot twist, even though I realised what was coming about halfway through the book. It tries to be many things, and ends up achieving none of them.

Rowan Coleman is one of my favourite writers - I discovered her books after I fell in love with her last novel, The Summer of Impossible Things - and so I knew I’d enjoy her latest book, The Girl at the Window.

I settled into reading it on my Kindle on a transatlantic flight, and all I can say is I’m glad there were a hundred or so people around me because this book is seriously spooky. (There were some points where I almost jumped out of my seat, but then I am easily scared!).

The book centres on Ponden Hall, an old house on the Yorkshire Moors, where Trudy Heaton grew up, as did centuries of Heatons before her. When her husband dies, Trudy decides it’s time to leave London and go back to Ponden - a house with a personality, and some might even say ghosts, of its own - and brings her young son Will, with her.

The Girl at the Window is a magical, sometimes creepy, story that brings together the past and the present, the world of book collecting and Yorkshire’s famous Bronte sisters, and the ups and downs of reconnecting with estranged family. It’s different to anything I’ve read recently, so I don’t want to spoil its magic (or spookiness!) by giving away too many details, but if you do read it, just make sure you’re not home alone!

Once you pick this book up and start reading it, I defy you to be able to stop.

A ghost story telling of family, loss, relationships and love. This is writing at its most evocative and so descriptive and atmospheric. I was completely drawn in.

I cannot recommend this book enough. Please, please read it.

This is a beautiful story, even for someone like me with zero knowledge of the Brontes, it’s almost ethereal in feel and the way time transcends everything has been beautifully woven together. If it hadn’t been written by an author I liked I might not have given this a go however it was worth reading even if different in style to what I had expected.

An enthralling gothic read about love and vocation in the nineteenth century and love and vocation now, all focused on Ponden Hall, a favourite place of the Bronte sisters. Atmospheric and gripping, the story gathers pace until it is unputdownable.

Wow! Exactly the sort of novel to read on a dark, autumnal evening. A mesmerising blend of ghostly goings on, young love, murder and a fabulous nod to literary history, I was absorbed from the very first page. Gorgeous characterisations and descriptions, I loved that a central character in the story was Ponden Hall itself. Loved it.

The moors surrounding Haworth, and the imposing Ponden Hall provided the perfect setting for Rowan Coleman’s novel The Girl In The Window.

The landscape, known for its bleakness, wonderful imagery, and magic was perfectly translated onto the page and it wasn’t hard to let your imagination run wild as Coleman set her character Tru, on a journey into a past full of surprises.

Indeed Tru, was a wonderful character, full of grief, a need to protect her young son and to build bridges with her estranged Mum. I loved her for her positivity, her resilience, her innate curiosity to seek out the secrets of her home, and most of all her love for the Bronte’s.

You could also sense Coleman’s own love for the Bronte’s as it seeped through her narrative, as she opened up a window to their world and that of past generations who lived or had connections with Ponden Hall.

It was a past that Coleman seamlessly interwove into the structure of the novel, excerpts from old letters that told a story of love, of grief, of murder and tragedy and, were utterly fascinating.

The sheer delight Tru felt as she discovered old notebooks, examined old books was for me, one of the highlights. You could almost smell the mustiness, feel the fragility of the pages, and Tru’s own awe and amazement at each precious discovery.

The ghostly apparitions, and rumblings, the presence of spirits who fought for freedom gave the novel that added extra dimension, lifted it from being just another story of the Bronte’s. You could feel the chill, and the eeriness yet not the fear, as you felt somehow they were there to help, to steer Tru in the right direction.

If it was a novel of past history it was also a novel of the present, of Tru’s own story, of the love she pursued, of the family, and a house she left behind.

Reconciliation and forgiveness were strong themes, and I loved the changing relationship between mother and daughter, that Coleman portrayed beautifully, filled with emotion but also tension and unease.

You wondered how Coleman would pull all the threads together, how the past and the present would finally come together. When it did, it was with skill, filled with compassion, sorrow, but also hope for a bright future.

The Girl In The Window was wonderful, a novel that will transport you to another world, a world full of fabulous characters you will not want to leave.