A review by msrichardsreads89
Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens

dark tense slow-paced

This is a marmite book - you either love it or hate it. Unfortunately I fell into the hate it category. It took me four tries to get into this book, and the longer I read, the more irritated I became. I went in with a bit of excitement because the premise of this book sounds fantastic: a murder and the Gordon Riots. However, the riots themselves were so boring, and all the plotting was exhausting. The villains get most of the page time, and I had no one to root for. One of the things I love about Dickens's writing is his character development, and in this book it was sorely lacking. We meet them for a bit and then go back to the villains. Then the good guys pop back up for a bit and then get tossed aside again. For as much page time as the villains get, they are also not developed well. There is no character growth, and for a character reader like myself, it was incredibly frustrating. I gave up caring around the halfway mark. After over 700 pages, I was so glad to see the back of this book. Barnaby Rudge was a major trudge. 

TL;DR: Who cares? I want these hours of my life back.