A review by wychwoodnz
Tom All-Alone's by Lynn Shepherd

3.0

I can't help feeling I would have loved this book had I already read the particular Charles Dickens/Wilkie Collins novels this pays homage too, but as they are still on my to-be-read list I can only judge it as a standalone book. The language is immersive and beautifully gritty, the plot intense, but to be honest I had a little trouble keeping track of all the secondary characters and quite often I felt like I was missing something or wasn't concentrating hard enough (which is not really what I'm looking for in my fiction reading). I do intend to reread this book at some stage and I think I'll appreciate it more the second time around as I'll be more familiar with it.