This started out strong but sadly petered out into Just Okay territory. For me, a key issue was the page count. Under 300 pages to convey the scope of centuries. Inevitably this led to a lot of summarising, a lot of telling and not enough showing. This caused the characters and their dynamics to feel a bit flat to me, which is not ideal when you're trying to explore coercive control which is all in the details. But there was no real subtlety in this book, everything was laid right out on the surface from the beginning. There was nothing to draw me in deeper, nothing to sink my teeth into, if you will.

As for positives, the prose was good! Not mindblowing, but fittingly rich and gothic. And I can see why people love this story overall. Basically all the complaints I had are the same things that make it so digestible (it was an incredibly quick and easy read). I just find that a lot of modern novels I read leave me absolutely YEARNING for subtext, even - and sometimes especially - the ones that are obviously invested in exploring an inherently complex, nuanced topic.