Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Tipping the Velvet

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

15 reviews

helen777's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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thesarahshay's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

I came to this book because I'm queer, romantic, and love British music hall history, so I'm pretty much the target audience. I found myself slogging through it thinking that surely, the main character would have grown on me by the end. But I have rarely encountered a main character I could sympathize with less. If you're annoyed with Nancy after the first (first!) time she burns her whole life down, just walk away. I finished the book with a bad taste in my mouth, feeling like Sarah Waters either hates lesbians, or based all the characters in the book on her exes she resents most.

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ranbara's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

oh.. this is the book of all time. to be a tom from whitstable in 1888..

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juliastern__'s review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny lighthearted sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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flowersforfroggo's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

All cards on the table, I picked up this book purely because it was on a list of must read spicy sapphic novels and, as the true smut goblin I am, I wanted a fix.

Tipping the Velvet is a genuinely good read and I was hooked and along for the ride from the moment Nan was sitting in her little corner booth in the theatre longing for Kitty to throw the flower to her.

I devoured this book, annotating along the way, and while I happily tagged many a page blue for spicy scenes, by the time I read the final line the whole book was filled with rainbow sticky strips to mark bits and pieces of writing that sung beautifully.

Sarah Waters has such a way of capturing the excitement of first love and the first flickers of desire and we see these moments of sapphic love play out so vividly on the page. So much so, that there is an element of cringe early in the book with Nan expressing her inner thoughts about Kitty that took me right back to being sixteen, when everything was bright and new and just a little spiky. Fellow smut goblins will rejoice at the tasty sex scenes scattered through the book. Not overly explicit, but delicious enough to keep things interesting.

Overall, Nan does not have an easy life and she comes across as selfish and careless with those she loves, but I still rooted for her every step of the way and I loved to see her identity evolve. She is so alone in her world, even surrounded by the other characters and what struck me was that she is constantly being given an identity to perform for others. Nan’s relationships in the book are all in one way or another controlling and it made me sad to see that she doesn’t ever really get the space to settle into herself and be seen.

“Oh! I feel like I’ve been repeating other people’s speeches all my life. Now when I want to make a speech of my own, I find I hardly know how.”

Girl, tell me about it.

It’s only towards the end of the book that she finds her fit and realises there are other girls like her who present the same way. We can’t be who we don’t see. It’s rare to want more from a book but I would have loved to have followed her journey of self expression and gender identity a little more.

Nan is not a perfect character and it is certainly not a perfect love story but it is gritty, messy and so very enjoyable. Tipping the Velvet is absolutely worth the random pick up and has earned its place on the spicy sapphic list. Would read again.

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tiernanhunter's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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foreveristhesweetestcon's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Tipping the Velvet certainly started out great. I was immediately impressed by the marked and beautiful prose Waters wrote with. It was the kind of writing that made you pause and marvel and want to live in the author’s thoughts forever. The novel also began with a very compelling romance as well as adequate pacing—I fell almost as much as in love with Kitty as Nan did (little did I know, there would be so much more to the novel).

It’s one of those books that you need to be interested in the subject matter to fully enjoy and appreciate, however. Nan King’s 1890s London greatly paralleled the Prohibition-Era New York that I wrote my APUSH research paper about, so I was certainly intrigued by all the music halls, the cross-dressing, the toms and mary-annes. And you can tell Waters had done her research. However, between the drastic plot changes and sometimes dragging scenes of unlikeable characters, there were quite a few times when Waters lost my attention. That being said, the gorgeous prose and Nan’s multidimensional development were reason enough for me to finish the novel.

And I am glad I kept going. I was often rewarded by reappearances of important characters—Florence and Kitty, of course, but also Zena, Diana, Billy-Boy (though I would have also loved to catch a glimpse of Mrs. Milde and Gracie again). I did not love the ending (I think I had issues with the pacing—too slow in the middle, too rushed at the end), but Nan’s development into a much more honest, hardened, and loyal individual was incredibly worthwhile.

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