A delightful penny dreadful! It was fun to see so many classics, and actual history, woven together in an homage to the era. Audrey Rose is a familiar-feeling narrator with a much-appreciated feminist perspective, like merging Irene Adler and Dr. Watson. Sadly, the flip-side of that coin, is that the story lags and gets padded out in the middle while Audrey Rose complains about corsets, tea parties, and embroidery. I know I'm over-simplifying XD. But truly, she complains so often about the restrictions on women, that I became desensitized instead of sympathetic. Sometimes she's criticizing systemic problems, but sometimes she's just annoyed at the superficial, like which color clothes are in vogue. Her "I'm not like most girls" screams off the page. And her inner monologue takes up more space than the actual details of the whodunnit. The mystery is underdeveloped; often Audrey Rose and Thomas are chasing down hunches and feelings, jumping to conclusions, or just plain falling into the right answer, instead of solving the case with any scientific precision. Which is a shame, because scientific precision is supposed to be their whole thing! For all the love and work that went into this book... it iiiis a bit of a popcorn book. A campy sci-fi thriller.