BOOK: Affinity by Sarah Waters

Affinity by Sarah Waters,  352 pages

Gothic Reading Challenge

Sarah Waters An author I've almost read everything of now, just Tipping the Velvet to go. Waters is a reliable author who tells good stories with good characters in great settings

Characters Margaret Prior, an upper-class spinster, recovering from some incident and the death of her father
Selina Dawes, a spiritualist, who is in jail
Plenty of jail matrons and a bossy family to keep Margaret in line

Plot Margaret meets Selina in her role as a Lady Visitor at Millbrook prison. Can't tell much more in a Sarah Waters book!

Setting Victorian England, women taking chloral and dilaudid and becoming weak, literal swooning, dark and dreary and Dickensian, seances and ghosts and medias

Gothic-ness A pleasing sort of terror, supernatural, secrets, castles (jail), darkness, romance

Verdict Not quite as mesmerizing as Fingersmith, nor as twisty, but still, a great suspenseful book