This book was not published until Charlotte Brontes work had become extremely famous and successful, generally with good reason it seems. It is clearly a debut world and lacks the suspense and layers found in her later works. There is a huge amount of character description in the first half of the book, a lot of which covers characters who will seldom appear again. Once all are established and the primary setting settled in the 2nd half the book improves and becomes more of a light Sunday read. Whilst enjoyable it doesn't really pull you in. You will find characters and plot lines which appear in later books but more polished and it can be interesting if you've read her later works but it's clearly not one to start with.