I had such high expectations for this book. Everything on the cover and the description led me to believe that this was exactly what I was looking for right now. A gothic novel. Yeah....not so much. Honestly, some of the stuff that was written on the jacket cover didn't even really play out. The short chapters got old very quickly and the constant alternating between narrators every 4 pages was too much. This was mostly smoke and mirrors with no real story behind it. The best part was Benedicit's story. The author probably should have run with that.