Top Spot: September

I love a good meme, and the Skype Sisters are hosting Top Spot each month.  Simply pick your favorite book of the month and share the reasons why. 

Picking just one book is always hard.  But as much as I loved A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, the book that I most want to gush about is Fingersmith by Sarah Waters.

According to meme rules I can't give away any spoilers, so I'll just say that Fingersmith literally made my jaw hit the floor a few times... okay, more than a few times.  I don't know much about Sarah Waters, but her mind must be a dark, twisty, clever thing.  And I love her for that!  Fingersmith is often compared to Charles Dickens' books, but as my book club member Randy said, it's like "Dickens on acid".  It's like Dickens gave a peek to London's dark underbelly, but Waters drags you inside.

Here's the thing, I didn't particularly love the characters.  At first Sue's too harsh and Maude's too weak- in fact one of my favorite quotes is about her:

She was like milk- too pale, too pure, too simple. She was made to be spoiled.

And for a first time, it didn't matter that I didn't particularly love the characters, they were still intriguing, and I was so caught up in the plot that I honestly didn't realize I didn't have much love for the characters in it.
But now that it's been a few weeks, I guess maybe I do love the characters, despite their many, oh so many, flaws, because I miss them.

Fingersmith starts out a simple con game, you think you know the players and their moves, but nothing about Fingersmith is simple, except maybe Dainty.  The book is chock full of mystery, danger, madness, murder, and love- both twisted love and enduring love.  Fingersmith is often found in many parts of a library or bookstore- Historical Fiction, GLBT, Mystery, Romance, etc.  And it fits in all of these categories to degrees, but for me it transcends them all and I don't know if it really belongs in any other category than Awesome, Mind Blowing Reads. 

Fingersmith made for an amazing book club discussion too, one where we actually discussed the book itself for hours instead of just a few minutes before bringing up Halloween or Harry Potter (because inevitably, all things lead back to the Chosen One).   There was much talk of plot twists and motives and a lot of "did you notice this?" or "yes, but did you read the part where this happened?".  Read this book and you won't be sorry!

So what's your September Top Spot?

Thanks to Reading Angel for introducing me to this meme!