A review by daiinty
Bronte's Mistress by Finola Austin

emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

“I need them, anyone, to embrace me, touch me, so I could feel alive.” — Finola Austin 

to me the FMC of this book seems like the type of complex woman character many people have been craving. while she is not a character whose actions and attitude you would really root for, her plights are very real and you find yourself empathizing with her need for love and and purpose in life. before this i had not really been privy to this alleged affair between branwell brontë and lydia robinson. i have been a lover of the brontë sisters for quite some time, and while fictional, this book added a very interesting lens to the literary family. i found it interesting how austin holds all of the brontë sisters in the periphery of lydia’s conscious, particularly charlotte who lydia is always finding herself comparing herself to. she feigns such a disdain for these sisters, though it is apparent that her venom comes from a place of jealousy and their ability to infiltrate the spheres of men, something she herself is consistently bemoaning her inability to do. she is truly a selfish character, and we see that all the way through to the end, but does she truly get what she wants with sir scott? 

i feel the ending seemed a little rushed. it seemed implied that though sir scott was what she wanted since before her first marriage, this would not be the union she truly wanted it to be. lydia wants it all: a love match and a man who will see her living very comfortably. i think the ending would have been more impactful had that dissatisfaction with what she had gotten in the end been driven home more. i also thought that the disconnection between her and her remaining children would have bothered her more, not because she was really partial to them in any way, but because being a wife and a mother is what in her eyes did give her value in this patriarchal society. she had regained the status of wife, but had lost her children in the process and i expected her to feel some loss of her former identity as mrs. robinson through that. 

i enjoyed the prose, but overall i think the book was just okay. the most intriguing thing to unpeel were the complexities of lydia, and see how her story would unfold in the end.