Fair warning; there will be spoilers below. Proceed if you wish but you've been warned.

There's a difference between a slow burn or build and drawing something out unnecessarily and, for me, this book was the latter. I wanted to enjoy it more than I did but I'll be honest; at the last quarter of this book I was just reading to finish it so I could mark it off my list.

First, there's the fact that there is only one likeable character in this book and that's Elphine. I won't lie; I stopped feeling sorry for Harry about halfway through. Honestly, once he got his revenge on Fred that should have been it.

Everyone treated Lucia like shit for something she had no control over so no one can really blame her for befriending Harry since he actually treated her decently. Helena and Ruby were terrible sisters; Elphine was the only good one and again she was the one who died so that sucked.

Kate was all right but was very cardboard. Like, I got no real idea on her personality. she was slightly more likeable than the others and had we gotten to know more about her, I'm sure she would have ranked with Elphine. But we didn't.

That was another issue; there were at least four different narrators/PoVs but there was no discernable change in tone for them. They all read the same and that got tedious after a while as well.

And the ending was rushed and very anti-climatic on multiple levels. Like there was this big build up and then it was resolved in less than a few pages. Very disappointing.

Ultimately, this was not the Gothic novel for me because it was just too long and slow. This was after it had a rough start. I appreciate those that enjoyed it and am not trying to take anything from them but issa no for me.