A review by emily1602
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Extremely fun page turner. Similar to Dickens for obvious reasons. Vivid characters like his, but probably spookier than anything Dickens wrote. Parts of it were comically old-fashioned (Marian's attitude toward women for instance; she can't go a sentence without reminding us that women are weak and foolish and barely capable of crossing from one end of a room to another without assistance) but other parts were quite modern (one observation I remember is Marian's that her first distrust of Percival began because he was rude to servants). Fosco was fun, Sir Percival was both intimidating and pathetic, and Walter Hartright was a sweetheart. A bit contrived at the end, but it did not make me enjoy the book any less.

At one point I was so excited because I thought Percival's secret was that he was some random guy who had stolen the real baron's identity, which would have been such an exciting scam but oh well, he was just illegitimate.