The turmoil outside matches the secret, shared turmoil inside, and Juliet Gael has done a great job of bringing to life the Parsonage during those hectic months. It is the Charlotte with this emotional baggage that reads Emily's 'rhymes' without permission and the one who becomes the driving force behind their first literary efforts.

So rather than being told the Brussels story, it is sort of assimilated into Charlotte's character. Heger, Brussels, her letters to him, his (few) letters to her are all summed up quite briefly, though intensely, drowned as they were by Branwell's affair with a married woman and his subsequent all-absorbing despair. Juliet Gael begins her narrative with the arrival of the new Irish curate in Haworth, a Mr Nicholls, and interestingly enough allows the reader only a few glimpses into the most important - at least in literary terms - love story in Charlotte's life. And yet that is the apt title of Juliet Gael's novel in which she tells the story of the adult Charlotte Brontë with special attention to her love life, which was more intense - though at times somewhat one-sided - than meets the eye.

Old things all of them not conducive to romance in their eyes. ' Romancing Miss Brontë'? They must think, picturing old maids, huge skirts, strange hairdos, dainty teacups and the like. On sale: April 27, 2010The title of Juliet Gael's novel might sound strange to modern readers with little knowledge of the Brontës' lives. Our thanks to Ballantine Books for sending us a review copy of this novel.

Romancing Miss Brontë by Juliet Gael