The Paying Guests is a brilliant novel by Sarah Waters about life in Post-War London, circa 1922. A widowed mother and daughter are forced to take in tenants and let the servants go, due to their changing circumstances. An unexpected friendship arises between the daughter and the young wife, both in their twenties, and the pace of the novel really picks up from there.

Waters is a masterful storyteller, and her writing is refreshingly original, there were times I had to linger over a single sentence, re-reading it over and over again. I was fully pulled into this story and stayed up several nights in a row to finish the book.

A well written, suspenseful and engrossing read.