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

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

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

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

A chilling, ingenious erotic thriller – unputdownable

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

High spirited and utterly compelling

Serious entertainment… One of the most startling plot twists you’ll ever read

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

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

This disquietingly twisted tale will engross

Deliciously brazen… A smart and seductive enchantment

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

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

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

A deftly plotted thriller… absorbing and elegant

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

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

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

A sweeping read

Astonishing narrative twists