I read this a long time ago and remember liking it. It was long, but I don't remember it feeling like a chore. I may have even liked it well enough for a five, but since I've forgotten some...I may just need to re-read it, or take the easy way and watch one of the movies or series. What I most recall was the things that they found so shocking weren't really all that shocking now. When you read a Victorian romance, somehow it makes you, while you are reading, feel outrage at a man making unwelcome advances or trying to kiss a woman, but in this, because what the characters do and go through seemed to real to me, I was startled by what a scandal their actions caused around them.