It is considered a sensation novel because it contains themes of bigamy, murder, illegitimacy, blackmail, and impersonation.

Cytherea loves a young architect, Edward Springrove, but Miss Adclyffe's machinations, the discovery that Edward is already engaged to a woman whom he does not love, and the urgent need to support a sick brother drive Cytherea to accept the hand of Aeneas Manston, Miss Aldclyffe’s illegitimate son, whose first wife is believed to have perished in a fire; however, their marriage is almost immediately nullified when it emerges that his first wife had left the inn before it caught fire.

It emerges that Manston killed his wife in an argument after she left the inn, and had brought in the impostor to prevent his being prosecuted for murder, as the argument had been heard (but not seen) by a poacher, who suspected Manston of murder and had planned to go to the police if his wife did not turn up alive.

The publication of Desperate Remedies was Hardy's breakthrough, and the first of a long string of novels that propelled him to the forefront of Victorian letters.

However, the review in The Spectator excoriated Hardy and his work, calling the book "a desperate remedy for an emaciated purse" and that the unknown author had "prostituted his powers to the purposes of idle prying into the way of wickedness.