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bookish_arcadia 's review for:
The Wicked Cometh
by Laura Carlin
It’s easy to see the influences in this novel, Dickens, Wilkie Collins and Sarah Waters loom large but everything is rather flimsy. The characterisation is flat and despite all the grubby trappings of Victorian London the historical period feels like a wobbly, two-dimensional stage-set. The convoluted and coincidence-dependent plot is straight out of the Victorian melodramas but Carlin’s writing sadly lacks the strength and bravura to pull it off.