While the book was too long because it was written as a newspaper serial- I still found it very intriguing. Charles Dickens was the editor and you can see his influence in the work. The book was a adapted to a very successful London Play.
Dialogue was brilliant with hidden meanings and foreshadowing was excellent. If you like Victorian England- this is your book.

An intense story with incredibly unique characters, but it is FAR too long.

112th book of 2022.

Growing up, on my parents bookcase, the only things I remember seeing, in abundance, was Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, and the like. All very English. (Though, weirdly, the only memories I have of my father reading was Steinbeck, mostly East of Eden around my brother and I screaming, fighting, etc.) It's taken me this long to crack open a Wilkie Collins novel and give him a try, knowing my parents were fans of his. First of all, he is a storyteller, and some of his sentences have wonderful pacing. Several times I was pleasantly surprised by the power of some of his sentences. Like with most 19th century novels, though, this book is just too long. It stands at nearly 700 pages and just doesn't need to be. 400/500, it might have been a decent novel. It is often called the 'first' novel that that combined 'Gothic horror with psychological realism'. Its epistolary structure isn't one I usually favour but the changing narrators did give the story something and the first few hundred pages were compelling, particularly the very first one-hundred. The middle section was just a giant baggy monster and by the last few hundred, the novel lost a lot of what it had going for it in the beginning. It took me ten days to read this, some bits flew, some bits dragged. I'd like to read some more Collins, some of his shorter novels, to see how his pacing and stories are elsewhere. I like him, but this one needed some more rocket fuel.