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The "volcanically sexy" (USA Today) bestseller about a widow and her daughter who take a young couple into their home in 1920s London.

It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned; the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa--a large, silent house now bereft of brothers, husband, and even servants--life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs. Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.

With the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the "clerk class," the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. Little do the Wrays know just how profoundly their new tenants will alter the course of Frances's life--or, as passions mount and frustration gathers, how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be.

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize three times, Sarah Waters has earned a reputation as one of our greatest writers of historical fiction.

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592 pages

Average rating: 6.35

34 RATINGS

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2 REVIEWS

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Community Reviews

Anonymous
Jul 05, 2024
4/10 stars
Tedious.
amontulli
May 31, 2024
6/10 stars
Depending on which review you read, some will say this book is too slow and bloated, others will say it is Sarah Water's signature as the master of the slow build and therefore, perfect. I couldn't decide. At points, in the first 200 pages, I was wondering if/when something would actually happen to make my investment worth it. And at others I wanted to completely quit.

Taking a few days to let the dust settle, I look back and appreciate this book more. The setting, in a post war London, was dismal/depressing and amplified or complicated all that the characters were going through.

The love connection and scenes were perfect and honest.

The second half seemed to spend too much time on a trial for me.

But at the very end, it all made sense.

And then I thought I loved it. But I only gave it 3 stars.

Make sense? Exactly.

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