by Mary Hooper

ages: 14+

First sentence: “Grace, holding on tightly to her precious burden, found the station entrance without much difficulty.”

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15-year-old Grace is in dire straights. She and her 16-year-old mentally disabled sister, Lily, have been struggling to get by since their mother died several years ago. First they lived in an orphanage, which was fine; but a year before, they were transferred to an “instruction” house, in which they were going to be trained as ladies maids and teachers. Except they were both raped in the night, and Grace became pregnant as a result.

That’s where the book begins. From there, we get evil undertakers, horrible working conditions, poverty, schemes, and heiresses, not to mention a cameo from Charles Dickens. Which is appropriate, considering how Dickensian this book is.

That last statement will get many people’s hearts a-fluttering, but for me, I just found this to be a bit flat. And a bit much. As far as suspense and mystery goes, I called the ending about halfway through the book. (I don’t like doing that, actually. It makes me annoyed when I can see the ending coming.) I wondered if the book didn’t try to bite off more than it could chew: if there were actually less going on in the plot, maybe it would have been a tighter book. As it was, it seemed disjointed and messy, even if everything did come together in the end. And while I liked Grace, I never really connected with her, or felt like she had much of a chance to grow, develop, or do much of anything. She was mostly a pawn in the larger plot; the only action she took was to defend and take care of her sister. Which is admirable, but simplistic considering everything else that was going on.

That said, Hooper did do her research: as far as history goes, this one feels spot-on.