TBR Jar DNF Review: Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Waters

I wrote a post not too long ago about how I just can’t seem to not finish a book, but how I was going to change that, because my life is too short to be reading books I don’t enjoy! And lately I have been DNF’ing books left, right and center. So I am quite proud of myself, even though I still feel kind of bad for the books I DNF. 

This book is one of the many I have decided to stop reading. I made it about halfway through, so I feel like I gave it a good try, and it just wasn’t for me! 

The book is about a young girl in late 19th century England. She lives an unassuming life in a small coastal town where she goes to the music hall for fun. At this music hall she one night sees a young woman performing and she falls in love. Soon this young woman whisks her away to London, and she thinks she has it all made. But then something happens that sends her reeling, and she only slowly manages to pick herself up again. I assume. I left the book just as she was beginning to get her life together again, but whether she managed to, or not, I can’t say. 

As I said, I made it about halfway through and I actually really liked the book. The protagonists were quite unusual, gay women in 19th century England, and it was well written. But already about 1/3 of the way through the book, I started feeling like it wasn’t really going anywhere, like it was just rehashing the same thing over and over. And in the end I just lost interest. Which is a shame as I had been looking forward to reading it. 

But I decided to move on and pick the next book from my stuffed TBR Jar, and that book is: “The Seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World” by Brian M. Fagan. A bit of non-fiction! That should be interesting. I’m excited to hopefully learn some new things. 

(Confession: I had to dip into the jar a few times to find a book that was actually available through the library. But I am not buying books at the moment, so…patience is a virtue I guess)