a bit disappointing.. quite meh. longer review to come! 
 -- 
 I'll try to explain it. 
 Set in New York in 1911 (an eventful year), this novel focuses on two characters, two outcasts, that are fated to meet and fall in love. Always grounded in reality, never entirely magical, the novel's surrounded by the paranormal, the fantastic, by unique creatures and dream-like locations (so when I say FATE I mean FATE.) 
 Coralie is the daughter of the Director of the Museum of Extraordinary Things. A horrible and immoral professor who preys on other people's (fantastic people: the wolfman, the butterfly girl, etc.) insecurities who also happens to be very corrupt and domineering (of course.) She daydreams about escaping the museum and living in the outside world--although her motivation is mainly that she wants to fall in love and be loved by a man (it's romantic but it's also sad, isn't it). 
 Eddie is a cynical photographer/detective who doesn't believe in anything (and certainly not his own father, of whom he's quite ashamed) until he observes the Triangle Factory Fire in which dozens of girls die (which did sadly happen) and is moved to tears for the first time. Also, photography. 
 That's just some of the things that happened, it's so hot I can't deal with doing a proper review. Damn you heat wave. 
 Anyway. The setting is wonderful: you see the darkness in New York, you see the wilderness of the Hudson river, you see the incipient decadence of Coney Island. It's also wonderful how everything feels magic and fantastic but can actually be traced to reality (everything is odd and unique, but never impossible). 
 So what is that I didn't like? Nothing further from my intentions than diminishing Alice Hoffman's writing, but. It was highly expositive, to the point that was boring and unnatural. I yearned to know more about that time and about New York at that time, but the way it was explained it was not organic. It was palpably written for a 21st century audience, the way everything was laid out so coherently, so in order, even the littlest detail, but in the middle of the action. 
 And I also don't think that its historic (and thus, realistic) quality set right with its characters, which were completely fable-like. They fell in love at first sight, the villain is 100% evil, hardened prisoners and mad hermits are moved by young love, and a man's favourite book is Jane Eyre because he identifies with the madwoman in the attic (C'MON, IT WAS 1911). My favourite novels are psychological, so I'm not a fan of uncomplicated feelings and flat characters--I do forgive them, and might even enjoy them, in fantasy novels, but here they felt silly. Sorry, but. They WERE silly. Here, I said it.