This book was a bit more difficult to get into than [b: A Christmas Carol|5326|A Christmas Carol|Charles Dickens|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1406512317s/5326.jpg|3097440] but once I had invested enough time to understand what was going on I found myself quite distressed by the characters' distress...
Dickens at his most melodramatic. The villain is clearly The Villain, all but twirling his mustache to wed the young girl who obviously doesn't love him. There is a heroine thought to have committed a moral crime, a hero wronged, a good/saintly girl with a handicap (blindness), etc. etc. Melodrama i...