I wanted to give this book 3.5 stars. The description on the jacket was off. I thought Albert was going to play a much larger role than he did - in fact only making an appearance in the last 100 pages or so. But I mostly did enjoy it. I loved reading about Victoria standing up for herself, but felt like Conroy was overwritten, the mother somewhat unbelievable, and the dog featured far too much in the story. Beautiful writing and I am looking forward to the PBS version of this book!