The Paying Guests

"I spent a good couple months reading The Paying Guests in 2014 — not because the book is long, but because I couldn’t let go of the pleasure of reading it. The bare bones: Post World War I, a newly impoverished Frances Wray and her mother are forced to take in boarders, the young couple Leonard and Lilian Barber. The Barbers are several rungs down the social ladder from the Wrays, but post-war British society is changing — everything from family life to the place of women — and every relationship in the house is affected. When a romance develops between two of the characters (I won’t give away which two), the plot explodes. This book reads like a Daphne Du Maurier psychological thriller with the heat turned way up. And when I say heat, I mean it. I’ll never think of a scullery without blushing again."