A review by definitelynotcats
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

4.0

Fascinatingly different from how I thought it would be. I'm glad I read ahead of time that it was a slow burn, or else I might have lost interest. Because it was almost halfway through the book by the time

Spoiler

truly supernatural events started occurring. And I thought from there, the action and suspense would really start to pick up, but it didn't. Instead, we have a very realistically paced "final girl" type story, where everyone but one person is gradually picked off. With this pacing, I felt like I could really understand all of them. I saw how joyful (albeit lonely) the family was to start off with, and how utterly dejected they became after this presence overtook the house. I found myself (by around the point of the doctors' dance) thinking, "I genuinely believe this romantic plot. I've seen all the subtle things over time that would have made two people like Caroline and the doctor fall in love, and I'm glad for them." And it was all the more realistic and heartbreaking that Caroline, overwhelmed with her own mother's ill mental health and feeling rushed into marriage by the doctor, would have pulled away and rediscovered who she is.

I think I would have liked a little more suspense or touches of the supernatural (aside from just "a bad feeling about the house") but all around still a very good story.