This book was so good. I'm not sure what sucked me in, but the over-arcing mystery and the overlapping storylines from (at one point) four different time periods made this novel so hard for me to put down. While I didn't have the clearest impression of present-day Cassandra, younger Nell and especially Eliza were quite vivid to me. Each of the tiny little hints to the mystery kept me thinking, and I also didn't mind the inclusion of some of the fairy tales, when usually those tend to turn me off. They were appropriately allegorical, though, so they fit in all right. I did sometimes get a little confused about who knew what, but it did mean that I knew where things were going to go before the characters did. I loved that they also worked in a tie-in with Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden.