#BlogTour – #BookReview of #TheGirlAtTheWindow by Rowan Coleman @rowancoleman @EburyPublishing @elliecrisp @TessHenderson1 @annecater #RandomThingsTours

I’m beyond excited to welcome you today to my stop on the blog tour for the hauntingly beautiful The Girl at the Window by the incredible Rowan Coleman. Thank you to Anne Cater for the invitation and to Ellie Crisp from Ebury Publishing for my copy of this spine tingling and atmospheric book.

About the book:

A beautiful new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Memory Book and The Summer of Impossible Things The Girl at the Window is a beautiful and captivating novel set at Ponden Hall, a centuries-old house on the Yorkshire moors and famously used as a setting for Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Known as the place where Cathy’s ghost taps on the window, Emily Bronte used to visit often with her sisters and use the extensive library there. It’s a magical place full of stories.

In The Girl at the Window, Ponden Hall is where Trudy Heaton grew up, but also where she ran away from…

Now, after the devastating loss of her husband, Trudy returns home with her young son, Will, who refuses to believe his father is dead. While Trudy tries to do her best for her son, she must also attempt to build bridges with her eccentric mother. And then there is the Hall itself: fallen into disrepair but generations of lives and loves still echo in its shadows, sometimes even reaching out to the present…

About the author:

Rowan Coleman lives with her husband and their five children in a very full house
in Hertfordshire. She juggles writing novels with raising her family. Rowan’s last novel, The Summer of Impossible Things, was selected for Zoe Ball’s ITV Book Club. Rowan has an everlasting love for the Brontes, and is a regular visitor of Ponden Hall.

http://www.rowancoleman.co.uk | @rowancoleman

My Review:

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Rowan Coleman’s books, with her previous novel The Summer of Impossible Things catapulting to the top of my most favourite reads of all time. So I’m always excited at the thought of reading a new book by her, but also a little nervous that she can’t possibly write a book as good as her last. But I needn’t have worried as The Girl at the Window, although very different to her previous work, is so mesmerising it sucks you into its pages from the very first word and refuses to let go.

How can I even begin to find the words to convey just what a special book The Girl at the Window is?

As with all of Rowan’s books, this is a book to be savoured. It’s a hauntingly beautiful, spine tingling and atmospheric read that is so deliciously creepy it sends shivers down your spine. Her words weave their magic, sending swirling tendrils of emotion to wrap around your heart, gently squeezing until you feel your heart is about to stop.

The author’s love of Ponden Hall and Emily Bronte shine through with every page, bringing them both vividly to life as Trudy uncovers more of their secrets as the book progresses. Trudy is a fascinating character who returns home to Ponden Hall with her young son, Will, after the devastating loss of her husband. Will refuses to believe that his father is dead, so Trudy hopes bringing him back to her childhood home will help him come to terms with his loss. But coming home also means she must try to build bridges with her eccentric mother, a woman who is not easy to get along with and who she has run away from in the past.

Trudy is an archivist, a job that I find fascinating as I am a keen amateur genealogist and avid collector of records and old photographs myself. I love discovering letters, records and photographs of times gone by and imagining the people in them as living, breathing, human beings, so this was an aspect of the story I became totally absorbed in.

A picture or an old letter, to me, tells a thousand different stories, so every new piece of the puzzle Trudy found captured my imagination and swept me along in the mystery of what really did happen to Agnes all those years ago. What was her connection to Emily Bronte, Trudy’s ancestors and the beautiful and atmospheric Ponden Hall? And what, if anything, does that have to do with what’s happening to Trudy in the present day?

The Girl at the Window is a ghost story full of grief, loss, love and hope, with some genuinely chilling moments to make you shiver as the echoes of the past collide with present day Ponden Hall and the people who live within its walls. It’s a hauntingly beautiful, deliciously creepy and emotionally satisfying story that I can’t recommend highly enough.

This book, people, oh this book! Rowan Coleman has done it yet again and I know this is a book I will go back to again and again. Pure, spine tingling perfection.

The Girl at the Window by Roman Coleman is available to buy now: Amazon UK

Check out what these other lovely bloggers have to say about this incredible book: