I think this book suffered a bit from being read right after LaValle's Lone Women; I found that this one was just a little less interesting in what it was playing with and doing with monstrosity.
It was a very enjoyable fantasy and horror mashup and also at times I felt it was skipping from genre to genre rather than combining them and the pieces didn't always fit. (I feel like I keep having the same experiences with Alix Harrow and I suspect some of it is that I keep expecting the horror and the romance to operate slightly differently than she does and then I get confused. I think that's probably on me, but also...I mean, that's my right as a reader with a keyboard.)
I did love the citations in the wikipedia article even if my suspension of disbelief took a minute to believe in a weird 19th century children's story with which I was unfamiliar.