HOLY HELL, Sarah Waters, that was a thing, wasn't it? It's pretty hard to write a review of this without spoiling things. I think the only reason I don't give this 5 stars is that it was a little longer than it needed to be. I don't think it would have suffered from a bit less around the 60% mark as it started to drag me down and I was less engaged by it than I was the first half of the book until about the last 15% (this is hard to explain without giving something away!)

I have to say, I went into this expecting a fun romp around London with some morally grey gang of thieves. Well, there were thieves, there were A LOT of morally grey (and probably just black) characters involved, and I feel like there was something about each character that made you love them and also hate them in equal measures. It was truly fascinating to see writing that was so well-balanced and didn't Mary Sue the main character(s) as triumphs of the human spirit, as it were, especially in some shitty situations like these.

I am excited to read more of Waters' work at this point. This really takes you for a ride and when you think, "Oh, well the ride is surely almost over now, how is there still so much more book to go?" Well, you certainly find out how!