A very strong 4 stars, and I honestly think it would have been 5 had I read it at a different time. As it is, this just happened to be what I was reading as life stuff got in the way, which made for a strange mix of this book being so good and readable that I could still use it to distract myself (when I usually can't read during times of acute mental turmoil) but also not connecting fully because I was still somewhat distracted/dissociated. So maybe I will revisit this one day, but regardless I still really loved it. Sarah Waters is just so good at characters and pulling you into a specific setting. I am a bit sad I couldn't appreciate this fully but I am also glad I had it to keep me company the last few days. C'est la vie.