I really wanted to like this book, but to me it was too long and the characters were not easily likeable. The author does write beautifully though, making it easy to imagine the setting, what the characters are feeling, and what is going on. Unfortunately, I just didn't like what was happening in the characters' lives or how they were handling life. Jessica was selfish and egotistical, Phyllis was disengaged, Oscar was easily manipulated and weak, and their parents were narcissists. I know this book was written to show how people were changed by the Great War, but I wish the characters had been different. And the ending was a sad way to end a book. It left me feeling unsettled.

I was pleasantly surprised by The Quick. I thought this book would be about a young man's coming-of-age in Victorian London, but it's so much more than that. There is a supernatural element that completely changes the path of the story. Lauren Owen knows how to evoke a setting, her characters are memorable, and her writing is so smooth that the pages just fly by. I had a hard time putting it down, glad that it was a long book because it just kept unfolding into unexpected plot twists, some of them completely terrifying to imagine. Lauren Owen has taken a much-written-about genre and made it new. She has also left the door open for a sequel! I highly recommend The Quick.