Press Reviews

• Adam Kay

  Totally immersive with brilliantly drawn characters... a page-turning thriller while managing to be a tender love story

• Douglas Kennedy

  Mail on Sunday

  Intensely atmospheric, impeccably paced, and cunningly structured, this is that rarity in contemporary fiction: a deeply serious novel that is also a thumping great read

• Julie Myerson

  Guardian

  There are always novels that you envy people for not having read yet, for the pleasure they still have to come. Well, this is one. Long, dark, twisted and satisfying, it's a fabulous piece of writing... An unforgettable experience

• Laura Shepherd-Robinson

  The Times

  One of the best twists of any book, one that lifts the novel from a brilliant piece of modern Victoriana to something altogether more original and daring... Fingersmith, like so many great books, calls into question our desire to fit novels into restrictive boxes... If you like a great story, brilliantly told, you'll love this book

• Sunday Express

  A chilling, ingenious erotic thriller - unputdownable

• Tracy Chevalier

  She distils a slice of London Victoriana, involving pickpockets, orphans and identity, into a fantastic plot and handles the story so well that you just can't wait to get to the end

• Robert McCrum

  Observer

  High spirited and utterly compelling

• Nick Hornby

  The Times

  Serious entertainment... One of the most startling plot twists you'll ever read

• Sunday Telegraph

  A thrillerish plot, fast-moving with umpteen cunning twists, it is inhabited by richly human characters whose fortunes instantly engage the reader

• Jane Perry

  Observer

  Fingersmith's tight and intricate plotting and full-flavour characters follow in a fine tradition of gothic storytelling, full of love, villains and intrigue

• Isobel Montgomery

  Guardian

  This disquietingly twisted tale will engross

• Los Angeles Times

  Deliciously brazen... A smart and seductive enchantment

• Travis Elborough

  Fingersmith is the third slice of engrossing lesbian Victoriana from Sarah Waters. Although lighter and more melodramatic in tone than its predecessor Affinity, this hypnotic suspense novel is awash with all manner of gloomy Dickensian leitmotifs

• New York Times Book Review

  Oliver Twist with a twist... Waters spins an absorbing tale that withholds as much as it discloses... A pulsating story

• USA Today

  Superb storytelling. Fingersmith is gripping; so suspenseful and twisting is the plot that for the last 250 pages, I read at breakneck speed

• Entertainment Weekly

  A deftly plotted thriller... absorbing and elegant

• Washington Post

  A marvelous pleasure... Waters's noted attention to historical detail and her beautifully sensitive dialogue help to anchor the force-five plot twisters

• Seattle Times

  Calls to mind the feverishly gloomy haunts of Charlotte and Emily Bronte... Elaborate and satisfying

• Kirkus

  A richly woven tale of duplicity and passion... nobody writing today surpasses the precocious Waters's virtuosic handling of narrative complexity and thickly textured period detail. This is a marvelous novel

• Boston Globe

  A sweeping read

• Newsday

  Astonishing narrative twists