3.5 stars

Here’s the thing: I really really enjoy Sarah Waters. I love her characters, her relationships have so much chemistry it’s ridiculous, I love the way she weaves in social commentary on the particular historic period she’s writing about.... but she desperately needs a harsher editor in my opinion.
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The Paying Guests would have been a 4.5 or even 5 star read for me, had it been 150-200 pages shorter, and I had the same issue with The Little Stranger. The story is chugging along at the perfect pace but then all of a sudden it just unravels, it loses its tightness and a character will ponder the same problem for ten pages. Then something minuscule will happen and they need to take that into consideration for another fifteen pages. It gets a little wearying!
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This definitely happened with the ending of this one, it could have been wrapped up a lot quicker and a lot neater, I wasn’t sure what to make of the final part. But having said all that, I still totally recommend this one for historical fiction fans, especially if you’re interested in lesbian representation in the 1920s - because who isn’t?
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I’ll still be making my way through the other three Waters books, I’m interested to see whether she’s more concise in any of those.