** spoiler alert ** I received this book through the Goodreads First-Reads giveaways.

I actually really quite liked this. But first, my problems: About the first half of the book, I had trouble following the story. Too many characters. Character overload I should say. How does Charles even know what he's doing half the time? Sometimes I couldn't understand his sudden logic or understanding and how he reached some of his conclusions. So for the first half of the book I found myself zoning out a bit. Also, way too much dialect. It drove me insane after a while. A little dialect is okay, but again, Shepherd went a little overboard. I also had issues at first with the use of third person present tense. I'm used to reading past tense the majority of times when I'm reading. I did get used to the tense use after a while, but at first it distracted me. I also found the unknown narrator a tad bit weird at times because he/she would reference things in the future, and it was all just very...odd. Like he/she mentions something about a modern day "geek." I kind of wanted to laugh there because it felt so odd in a Victorian era novel.

But my issues aside, once the story reached the part where the attacker, uh, attacks Charles and cuts off his finger...now that's when things started getting interesting. After his ordeal Charles really feels like a character---he has a personal motive now. Even with the second half of the book I was still getting that sense of character/information overload, but at least I felt that the plot was finally getting somewhere once Charles is attacked. And what a shocking ending too! We are given an explanation as to the title of the novel and what exactly the "Solitary House" is. Throughout the whole novel, though I did love Hester's narration, I kept thinking, "what does this have to do with anything?" But Hester's narration brilliantly comes together by the end (and I had a bit of a "Sucker Punch" nerd moment, haha! If you've seen "Sucker Punch," you'll get my conclusions with that to this novel.). Just some really great twists and turns as the novel draws to a close, plus it appears as if Shepherd plans on revisiting Charles and his uncle in a future novel.

Do the publishers really read these reviews on Goodreads? I hope they do, because I have something to say to the editor: there is a massive spelling error in this book that really threw me off. The doctor who Charles meets on about page 241 on my edition, his name is spelled "Woodcot." But then later in the novel when Charles runs back into him (page 303 to the end of the novel) the doctor's name is spelled "Woodcourt." So which is it? The editor really needs to fix that.

Anyway, I thought this was an overall good story. Despite my issues with the first half, I think it all concludes quite nicely. I really want to re-read it again now that I fully know what's going on and what characters to focus on now. Shepherd did a really great job with making me feel like I was in Victorian London. A very atmospheric novel.