Absolutely brilliant * Sunday Times *
Another wild ride of a novel . . . magnetic storytelling * Observer *
A page-turning melodrama and a fascinating portrait of London on the verge of great change * Guardian *
This novel magnificently confirms Sarah Waters's status as an unsurpassed fictional recorder of vanished eras and hidden lives * Sunday Times, Fiction Book of the Year *
I raced through it, breathing fast and when I had finished had to reread parts of the wonderful early chapters. I don't like historical novels but this is the exception. I shall let a few months go by and then read it all over again with, I'm sure, undiminished pleasure * Guardian *
You know you are in the hands of a skilful, confident writer when you read a Sarah Waters book. She slowly reels you in. She weaves plots and themes that creep up and entangle you while you are innocently following her characters. They go about their shadowy business and by the time you raise your head from the page to take a breath, you're hooked * Telegraph *
The Paying Guests demonstrates the writerly qualities for which Waters is esteemed, proving as 'fantastically moody and resonant', in terms of the rendering of domestic space, as a novel the author herself described as such and which she once said she would like to have written: Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca * Literary Review *
Sickeningly tense - and thumpingly good * Daily Mail *
You will be hooked within a page . . . At her greatest, Waters transcends genre: the delusions in Affinity (1999), the vulnerability in Fingersmith (2002), the undercurrents of social injustice and the unexplained that underlie all her work, take her, in my view, well beyond the capabilities of her more seriously regarded Booker-winning peers. But The Paying Guests is the apotheosis of her talent; at least for now. I have tried and failed to find a single negative thing to say about it. Her next will probably be even better. Until then, read it, Flaubert, Zola, and weep * Financial Times *
A nod towards Little Dorrit also seems perceptible in the book's quiet ending amid the bustle and clamour of London. Unillusioned but tentatively hopeful, it is a beautifully gauged conclusion to a novel of ambitious reach and triumphant accomplishment * Sunday Times *
A masterpiece of social unease . . . It isn't so much the plot that makes you read on - the novel's armature is a comparatively uncomplicated suspense narrative but barnacled to it is an astonishing accretion of detail . . . A virtuoso feet of storytelling * Evening Standard *
A seductive thriller * Vanity Fair *
The Paying Guests is so evocative and compelling that all the time I was reading, I had a feeling it was me who had done something terrible, instead of her characters * Observer, Books of the Year *
Brilliantly involving . . . juicy, beautifully observed and not afraid to be explicit * Metro *
Waters's page-turning prose conceals great subtlety. Acutely sensitive to social nuance, she keeps us constantly alert . . . From a novelist who has been shortlisted for the Booker three times, this is a winner * The Economist (Intelligent Life) *
An uninterruptable joy of a novel . . . Sarah Waters at her tip-top best * Evening Standard, Books of the Year *
Sumptuous... The writing is impeccable... A joy in every respect * New Statesman, Books of the Year *
A triumph: spellbinding, profound and almost problematically addictive... Waters is so powerful a narrator, so in command of her material as she twists, defies and confronts without using cheap tricks, that she could make us believe anything... Morally complex, atmospheric, romantic and psychologically deep, The Paying Guests is an astonishing achievement... a beautiful and brilliant work