Take a photo of a barcode or cover
swingmeout 's review for:
The Paying Guests
by Sarah Waters
Sarah Waters is such a wonderful storyteller. The build up is deliciously slow and when I got to about one third in, it became nearly impossible to put it down. First an awkward friendship, then a slowly blossoming forbidden romance which rapidly turns into a tense murder case, where you actually find yourself rooting for the guilty party.
I've previously only read Tipping the Velvet, and in comparison this feels like a much more serious novel, not just because of the murder and the consequent trial, but also the post-war setting and how heavily everything is influenced by that. Perhaps because of that rawness, it also feels more real than Tipping the Velvet, which was like an entertaining (and fairly dirty) Westend show on page, with melodrama and what felt like unrealistic and fanciful scenarios.
I've previously only read Tipping the Velvet, and in comparison this feels like a much more serious novel, not just because of the murder and the consequent trial, but also the post-war setting and how heavily everything is influenced by that. Perhaps because of that rawness, it also feels more real than Tipping the Velvet, which was like an entertaining (and fairly dirty) Westend show on page, with melodrama and what felt like unrealistic and fanciful scenarios.