A review by andipants
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

3.0

I'm a bit conflicted on this one. On the one hand, I absolutely loved the setting, the worldbuilding, the attention to detail — that was all wonderful. The relationships among the characters were messy and complex, although several of the characters themselves didn't actually seem to get much development or growth. And here we get to my main complaint: nothing happened. Events took place, yes, but it was hard to identify any kind of story arc, character growth, or any real point to the story. This was exacerbated by the reverse-chronological sequence: nothing gets any kind of closure. We see things that have been alluded to in prior sections, but none of them are any kind of surprise; it's a slow reveal of...nothing terribly unexpected, really, given the setup. It was wonderful to revel in the setting, and some of the individual scenes were affecting, but overall, it mainly left me with a lingering sense of "so what?"