The String of Pearls The Original Tale of Sweeney Todd

Wow. Having had no prior exposure to this story aside from the 2007 Johnny Depp musical, reading this was an experience and a half. I came in expecting one thing and got something ENTIRELY different. That said, it wasn't a bad story. I did enjoy it, despite being thrown by how off different it was. Conceptually, the musical gets a lot of things right. However, it gets everything plot wise totally wrong. I really loved how Sweeney himself is described as this visually ugly and frightening man with an unearthly laugh and a mass of hair with all his tools in it. If given the opportunity, I likely would not read this again but it was worth reading once.

This first book I read from my spooky TBR is The String of Pearls but you probably know it better as Sweeney Todd. I don’t know the best way to talk about the plot of this book because the big reveal in the book is something we absolutely know going into the musical. That being said, I’ll keep it brief. If you know the movie/musical, you know what the mystery is but the rest of the book is incredibly different. The character relations are different and there’s a necklace involved and it’s sort of… boring. It’s fine. It’s an average classic to me but my experience was definitely tinged by already knowing the musical so if you’re considering reading this one but aren’t sure, just enjoy the musical.