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Discuss part 2.

I finished Part-2 and Part-3 in a go. I couldn't resist.

Here the narration changes to Maud and we here almost the same story of Part-1 but in Maud's version. It's surprising how cheating went on to a new level.
I didn't like maud much, I preferred Susan. And I just hated Gentleman. I mentally hit him several times :(

Narration was too good. And writing the same story in different perspectives is rather difficult and messy one, but Waters have a great job with an ease.

I couldn't stop at Part 2 either bookfetisher!

Ended with yet another twisted twist! This book is so great and I'm loving the different perspectives on this story. Can't wait to see what happens next.

My thoughts on the first chapters, about 7-11: This definitely took a turn more into erotica than I had expected. Somehow, I find Maud's "voice" more irritating that Sue's, I'm not connecting with her as much. I think partly because the plot just doesn't make sense to me; doing it the way he planned with Sue, Richard got nearly the entire fortune, minus the $3k or so he'd promised to Sue. But with Maud, he only gets half. Why go that route? Why does that work out better? Or is it just a clever way of getting them BOTH out of the picture so he can have it all and no witnesses, by the end? I think the latter is more likely. We haven't seen all of his scheming yet, I feel.

Boy, her uncle is something else. What a twisted, bizarre creature! It's a wonder Maud hasn't been physically sold to one of his friends for their pleasure before now... although I suppose he has sold her by making her read all of this aloud to them?

Regarding Sue's language: I kind of imagine the author is giving us a more "real" picture of life in Dickens' world... the language and the people weren't always so neat and tidy. I'm sure Dickens might have written them that way, if censorship wasn't involved, though. I'm sure plenty of things went on that our Victorian authors would never have tried to write about, so maybe Waters is just giving us the "real" side of things.

Or maybe she just wants to write Victorian erotica.

Lol, the latter is probably more likely, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

This part of it moved along rather slowly for me. If I wasn't listening to it, I probably would have skimmed some of the pages.

Thoughts on the second half of part 2:

Ok, so the pace picks back up! By the time they showed up at the house, before it was revealed where they were, I pretty much suspected that Mrs. Suxby was in on all of this, maybe even the mastermind, because it just didn't line up otherwise. It didn't make sense for Richard to double-cross Sue unless there was something else entirely going on, because he made out with more money with that plan.

Poor Maud, she really is so naive about people. Her uncle really has her in a terrible fix, since she knows no one, none who can help her. I still don't feel as sorry for her as for Sue, since she had money and knew they were double crossing Sue, and she didn't seem to have as many qualms about the whole thing as Sue did, but she's certainly getting a rude shock now.

I have been most impressed with the two perspectives, though (as you mentioned, Pallavi Sharma). How many times have we read a novel where two characters gives their perspectives, and the conversations are nearly word-for-word, but with different nuances? Here, however, both characters give account of the same scenarios, but save for a few sentences here and there, they remember the events slightly differently, or remember different phrases or actions more keenly, depending on what they felt at the time. That is much more true to life. The voices are done differently enough that I feel them as different characters (I have lost count of the number of books where I can't keep track of which character is which because their "voice" is all exactly the same), even though I'm listening to the audio and I believe the same voice actor is reading both parts. It takes real talent to write different "voices" for characters within the same setting, especially when it's different perspectives on the exact same scene, and I think Waters has captured that remarkably well.

I, too, am forging onward to see how this all wraps up!

I agree. I think Waters has done a fantastic job creating these characters and giving them unique voices. I thought this book was terrific. And I do think she is going for erotic for the sake of erotic. That usually bothers me, but in this book, everything else was so fantastic that it did not.

Irene wrote: "And I do think she is going for erotic for the sake of erotic. That usually bothers me, but in this book, everything else was so fantastic that it did not. "

I think that's the way I felt about it too, you just said it better! The novel just went so well that most of that didn't bother me in the way it normally would.