BOOK REVIEW: The Vanished Bride by Bella Ellis

Yorkshire 1845

A young woman has gone missing from her home, Chester Grange, leaving no trace, save a large pool of blood in her bedroom and a slew of dark rumours about her marriage. A few miles away, the daughters of a humble parson, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte are horrified, yet intrigued.

Desperate to find out more, the sisters visit Chester Grange where they notice several unsettling details about the crime scene not least the absence of an investigation. Together the young women realise that their boundless imaginations could help solve the mystery- and that if they don’t attempt to find out what happened to Elizabeth Chester, no one else will. 

The path to the truth is not an easy one, especially in a society which believes a woman’s place to be in the home, not wandering the countryside looking for clues. But nothing will stop the sisters from discovering what happened to the vanished bride, even if they find their own lives are in great peril…

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Bella Ellis is the pseudonym for the fantastic Rowan Coleman. I love this author’s writing and I love the Bronte sisters so I knew I had to read this book. 

The Vanished Bride mixes the facts that we know about Emily, Charlotte and Anne Bronte with a little bit of artistic licence as Bella Ellis imagines the three sisters acting as amateur detectives. When they hear about Elizabeth Chester going missing from Chester Grange, they are intrigued. They know the governess there so they are able to visit and see the situation for themselves, Elizabeth Chester’s room was discovered covered in blood but there was no sign of the mistress herself. Her husband has already lost one wife in suspicious circumstances, is it just a tragic coincidence or is he involved?  

The idea of the Bronte sisters as detectives is just fantastic and makes perfect sense and therefore is entirely believable; they would be naturally inquisitive and constantly on the lookout for ideas for stories and what could be more perfect than a murder scene with no body? I was impressed with the ways in which Bella Ellis showed how the sisters were constrained by their gender; as we know they wrote under male pseudonyms and in the story they have to pretend that they are working for respectable, professional men in order to go about their investigation. This book really made me consider the amount of women who must have had so much to offer being unable to do so purely because of their gender. It was such an accomplishment of the Brontes to follow their determination and go ahead and produce and publish their work, they could easily have bowed down to society’s conventions. 

Ellis’ love of the Bronte sisters shines through and I was so impressed with the way in which she showed the individual characters of Emily, Anne and Charlotte. They can often be lumped together as though they had just one person but Ellis highlights their varied personality traits, views and interests and it is fascinating. 

I believe that The Vanished Bride is the first in a series of Bronte Mystery books that Bella Ellis intends to write, I cannot wait to see what she has the sisters involved in next!