Pros: Cannon gay characters ("The Bachelor" is not even subtle, Mr. Dickens), poor people who look weird and are not evil, good people who do kinda horrible things (which is pretty complex for Chuck, in my experience), hardcore ladies who actually get to be hardcore (Sally Brass 4 Ever)

Cons: he's-deformed-so-he's-evil, seriously I'm not sure what the plot or point of this book was, it rambled on SO MUCH, and most importantly, unlike previous good-yet-poor-kids-growing-up-in-adversity (See Oliver Twist or David Copperfield), Nell is a girl and therefore must [spoiler] die [/spoiler] instead of getting to grow up to be hardcore and awesome in and of herself.