I received a copy of this book through a Goodreads give-away and was so excited to get to it.

The the physical book is beautiful; the cover is lovely and the illustrations throughout the book are charming and compliment the feel of the book nicely.

I think the premise of the book is great, and while the Dickensian world filled with Groundlings, Humans and other magical creatures was interesting, the overall execution of the characterization and pacing fell a little bit short for me.

My main issue being the main character, Arthur. While I felt sympathy for him, that is pretty much the only feeling which he inspired. I understand why he is so scared of everything, and that his upbringing meant that he had basically no life experience. However, Arthur barely makes any decisions on his own and mostly just does what other characters tell him to, which i found annoying as this continued to happen throughout the book.

I Also felt that some parts of the book were much longer than they needed to be, i think the first part could have been much shorter and achieved what it needed to. Maybe the point of the first section being so long was to feel the monotony of the house routine, but as a reader i just felt bored and could have done without it. Then the last fifty pages seemed to fly too quickly through everything to the resolution.