“The Dead Secret” is a mystery story with a good blend of humour and pathos.

Although not a captivating read, I found it pleasant enough. The characters are mostly appealing.

Like most nineteenth-century novels, this one features too many adverbs and adjectives, which in the former case leads to “telling” rather than “showing”, and in the latter case leads to clunky sentences.

In short, a pretty good read, but nothing to get excited about. ( )

A mysterious hidden letter holds the secret to Rosamund's life in the mysterious Myrtle room in the North wing of the building. ( )

Very Victorian - melodramatic, hyperbolic, emotional and judgmental. It all hinges, of course, on woman being a baby machine and all the restrictions that affords - do it the right way or suffer shame, degradation and ostracization. The other linchpin is class and social position - what this lets people get away with and how most members of the lower classes accepted their lots and went to great lengths to preserve the dignity and sovereignty of the upper. Sarah is the one in the latter role and boy does she go mental with her “duty” to a dead woman. Of course if she hadn’t there wouldn’t be a story and it was a fun story if not really surprising in any way. In later works, Collins creates more memorable women characters, but in this one they’re all pretty much vehicles to serve the plot. Uncles Joseph and Andrew are the most interesting in all their quirkiness and bad temper. Not all ends perfectly well, but well enough to be called a happy ending. ( )

This book is insanely bad. Melodramatic, overwrought, moralistic, prejudiced in every possible way and just plain silly. ( )

Predictable ending and too repetitive, but somewhat interesting. ( )