Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - The Night Watch

This book is basically a series of vignettes of 4 specific people's lives. There's no plot; instead there's a running narrative of the characters daily experiences during and after the war. This was sometimes really interesting and sometimes a tad boring. However, Sarah Waters' writing is so beautiful and engaging that it makes slow, drawn out stories become compelling page turners. The Night Watch is the last Waters novel I had left to read. I have my favorite books of her's (Fingersmith and The Little Stranger), but all of them are well worth the read.

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gravys's review

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adventurous emotional reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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afion's review against another edition

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3.75

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ellislilylovestoread's review

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slow-paced

4.0

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steviaplath's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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rieviolet's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book felt even longer than it is, it was a bit of a hard slog for me to get to the end. I really wanted to try a book by Sarah Waters but I think I did not choose the right one.
I do not question her writing style (she clearly is really a very accomplished writer) but I was left quite disappointed with the story itself.

I had a really hard time connecting with the characters and their relationships and even understanding their actions/motivations. Aside from Kay and Duncan a bit, for the others, I have to be honest, I cared very little and I was not much captivated by their storylines.

I'm not sure that I really understand the author's decision to rearrange the chronological order of the events, I do not think that it added to the story, quite the opposite actually.
In the first section you are thrown into the characters' circumstances without
knowing anything about how they got there and, at least for me, it made it hard to get through the story, it was difficult to understand and get close to the characters. I think that the end also suffered from this narrative choice; it felt quite abrupt and like we were left with nothing much in terms of a closure, just loose threads.

Lastly, be mindful of the trigger warnings, there were a couple of scenes that very really difficult for me to read,

Helen's scene of self-harm was especially hard and upsetting.

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