I've just now finished Mrs S by K Patrick, a novel I've been reading on and off for what must be weeks now. For a while I wasn't sure if I'd finish it, and certainly I didn't think I'd post about it here as I wasn't sure I liked it enough to recommend. However, there's just something I can't put my finger on that makes it so so interesting, and I definitely want to read what other people thought of it, once I've solidified my own thoughts.

The book is about an unnamed young woman from Australia now living and working in an English boarding school, in an unspecified time period - it just seems dreamingly traditional, out of time but very grounded in its history. The school, named after and set up by a famous, female, unnamed "Dead Author" is where the narrator ran away to after her family refused to come to terms with her sexuality, and while a more standard narrative might have her find herself there, the book does something more interesting, obscuring her more and more even as more is revealed about her life and past.

None of the characters are named - the students are just The Girls, a kind of hive mind of nebulous teenage girl energy - and in this void of identities all the air is sucked out by Mrs S, the headmaster's confident, elegant wife. The narrator becomes obsessed with Mrs S, and their illicit affair reveals layers of themselves, while never really getting to the heart of either character.

It's a book, I think, about repression, and what happens to the self when it's eroded by shame, and what happens to those identities when we refuse to meet or acknowledge our needs. The narrator doesn't know who she is, and that seems to extend out how she sees others - it's a book that, while it seems to have a lot to say about bodies and sexuality, stays in an in-between realm, neither quite of mind or body. It doesn't feel so much like a story but a problem to be worked out, which sometimes is more rewarding a while after finishing rather than in the moment of actually reading. Much to think about!

As the school year begins, it’s the perfect time to share my thoughts on this dark academia sapphic romance set in an elite all-girls boarding school.

“Mrs S” is a captivating portrayal of desire, infatuation, and steamy encounters. Our unnamed protagonist, a butch lesbian, takes on the role of matron at a posh girls’ boarding school. As she acclimates to her new surroundings, she becomes increasingly obsessed with the headmaster’s wife, Mrs S.

The narrative pulls us into the protagonist’s growing obsession with the overtly feminine Mrs S, creating a gripping sense of longing and anticipation. The unique choice to leave characters unnamed, identified only by their roles or as a homogenous group like “the girls,” amplifies the protagonist’s tunnel vision on Mrs S.

Initially, I was unsure if this book would resonate with me due to its stream-of-consciousness style, lack of speech tags, and short, choppy sentences. However, I quickly fell into the protagonist’s rhythm, and the story flowed naturally.

I absolutely loved the school setting, the traditions, the patronage of a deceased author reminiscent of Emily Brontë, and the interactions among the girls.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in dark academia or sapphic novels for #SapphicSeptember.

A slow and sultry novel, tautly plotted, this is a queer love story that smoulders with the heat of summer.

A sensual sapphic narrative perfect to read over a scorching hot summer. This book was poetic and lyrcal.

I did not gel with this book. Objectively it’s well written and the story is sound, unfortunately it just wasn’t for me

Mrs S is the headmaster’s wife of a private boarding school for privileged girls in the UK. The new matron has newly arrived from Australia and is struggling to find her place until she meets Mrs S. Their relationship develops over a hot summer in this unique and isolated environment.
I struggled to follow some of the storyline due to a lack of punctuation and the slow pace which did add to the atmosphere of the book.

I’m a sucker for academic noir and this fit the bill perfectly. Shades of The Secret History but with a modern sensibility that was really refreshing. Gripping.

Thank you to NetGalley and 4th Estate, who gave me this eARC in exchange for an honest review.
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<i>“Remember, yeh, don’t go falling in love with her or anything ridiculous like that. Deal. It’s not to late is it? No, I lie. It’s definitely not too late.”<i/>


Mrs S follows our narrator, a young Australian teacher who has moved to England to teach at a prestigious, private all-girls school. The narrator feels like a fish out of water for much of the novel, a sensation all the more heightened by the fact that she is a lesbian in an unfamiliar rural community. It doesn’t help that the current object of her affections is Mrs S, the wife of the school’s headmaster. So, when Mrs S begins returning said affections, our narrator is forced completely out of her depth.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. It was exactly the book I was looking for on paper – a sapphic romance in a boarding school with dark academia vibes, what more could you want? I got a bit of that. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t enjoy the reading experience.

One of the issues was the characterisation. I often found it difficult to differentiate between different voices and characters within the narrative, to the point where I had to go back and reread sections several times to try and figure out which character was speaking.

This was made more difficult by the writing style – and if I’m honest, I think it’s the writing style that stopped me from enjoying the story as much as I wanted to. Mrs S is written the whole way through in short, choppy sentences, a style I usually only see in action scenes. This style worked in select areas within the story, but to use that style for the whole book was more a hindrance than a help. I probably would have been able to handle if it wasn’t for the lack of quotation marks and the long paragraphs. Just to give an example:

“Eyes blink then narrow. No mascara today. Irises blue, as indifferent as a watercolour. Can I get you a drink? No, I’m fine. What about that shirt? She removes a glove and grips my forearm, twisting to better see the scratch. Gardening is a dangerous sport. I laugh. Really, I’ll be fine. With her free hand she pulls down her collar to reveal her neck. A raised cut. You’re not the only one. Only now does she realise my arm is still in her hand, fingers tightening. Something passes between us. Breath across light. Or maybe more. More than breath, more than light. A glance like a cigarette burn. Nausea floods, then subsides. My arm is released. I put on the gloves and count the leaves. She watches. At five I cut. It is tougher than expected. The stem resists. When the secateur blades finally meet I recoil. The force is a surprise. My body tips forward. Tough stuff, roses. She smiles and pats my shoulder, maternal. Again I am clumsy. The smile, its type, is not what I wanted.”

This passage is also a good example of the potential this story had. The writing works here, I can feel the tension between the narrator and Mrs S. It’s why I’m so sad that I didn’t enjoy it.

I found myself wanting to DNF the book. I only finished it for the sake of reviewing it. I hate to say that, and I hate being so negative about it in general, as I know many authors put their heart and soul into their work. However, I would not be doing my review any justice if I didn’t admit that.

I feel like if you are in any way intrigued by the premise, and you feel the writing style would be to your taste, give this book a go. Just because it wasn’t my cup of tea doesn't mean it wouldn’t be someone else’s.

This was a very weird, very strange, book – but I kind of loved it for that!

It’s set in an English boarding school for girls, at an undisclosed time in the late twentieth/early twenty-first century. No one has a name (the closest being “Mrs S”), and there is no specific place setting. Sometimes this can make a story feel unmoored. In this case, it does sometimes feel detached, but I think it works. It helps to capture that headiness of the relationship, and the fish-out-of-water feeling the main character has throughout the whole book.

I really liked how the author explored gender and sexual identity in this book. Sometimes it was done subtly, with a little throwaway moment here and there. Sometimes it was so obvious it bowled you over, but when it came out of nowhere it had a big emotional impact. Especially towards the climax of the story, I really got to appreciate the complexity of the characters and how they related to their own gender and sexuality.

I listened to the audiobook which I really enjoyed. It was excellently narrated by Nicolette Chin, who made all the characters so real and vivid. It was such good narration that it’s hard to distinguish how much is the writing, and how much is her acting. It also meant I avoided one of my biggest bug bears – missing speech marks! I suspect that, had I read the book and not listened to the audiobook, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it quite so much.

I received a free copy for an honest review.

I wasn’t convinced by this book, it was really good in parts and I love the premise but it ran out of steam

A sultry, sexy novel with a memorable intoxicating voice. I was completely pulled into the heady obsession of the main character and her fixation on Mrs S. There were times where the repetitive sentence structure became a little grating but I'd love to read more of what K Patrick writes next.

Sadly the slow burn was too slow for me. The writing itself at the line level was exquisite and it was refreshing to see a butch queer woman at the centre of the narrative.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of tis book in exchange for an honest review.

Different and very atmospheric, Well-written and interesting. Recommended.

I went into this read with incredibly high hopes. The cover art is striking, the blurb is intriguing, and even the simplicity of the author’s name was a draw. I only wish it had lived up to them.

For me, this story was shapeless, with a jerky and often unclear narrative, and no truly likeable characters within. The perception of the scandal seemed to do the heavy lifting, plot-wise; in reality, though, not an awful lot happened. Then again, I may have had difficulty understanding what did happen due to the confusion caused by the namelessness of most characters and lack of punctuation. Perhaps the finished version is more polished, but for me, this was not much more than a letdown.

A truly glorious debut. A claustrophobically close narrative of queer desire, illicit love, and ripe sexuality. Written in a style that takes a little getting used to but is propulsive and evocative once you get used to it. I absolutely loved this and hope K Patrick writes many more books so I can read more of their work.

I found the writing style of Mrs S to be jarring with it's short sentences and lack of speech marks, in fact I struggled at times to keep up with who exactly was talking. I also found the quick jumps between different scenes made for a distorted read - unfortunately for this reason I decided not to finish.

On paper this should have been my ideal read, but the unique and sometimes laboured writing style prevented me from fully engaging in the story. This felt like an 'its not you, its me' situation, and I will continue to pick up and even suggest K Patricks work to others, it was just a personal preference scenario. In the very latter stages of the novel the writing style at least started to make sense to me as an authorial choice, and I was invested in this incredible slow burn romance from the start. The setting was impeccable and so well described.

Mrs S is a novel that fizzes with the lingering tension of being an other- our main character is a teacher at a girls' school, lurching from moment to moment, binding their chest, and falling in love and lust with the headmaster's wife- the titular Mrs S.

There is something almost unbearable about the way the book holds long pauses- just like our main character from whose eyes we see the unfurling drama, the book is yearning, tense and cloaked in mystery, and there is something powerfully queer about the way it resists being easy and certain.

This has made me excited to see what K Patrick will do next, and how they will carry this strength of voice to future books.

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

It took me a good while to get into this book. 6 weeks passed before I even finish the first half. I don’t know whether it was the structure of the book, no chapters and constantly flowing text, which meant I often lost my place. But the second half was an easier breeze, I found my rhythm and the slow burn that had been burning for 6 weeks finally paid off. I liked it. I like it because the setting of an English all girls school let me reminisce on my school days. Many of the experiences The Girls go through are things I had real life place markers to draw back on as K Patrick described them. It’s definitely a hot horny lesbian novel as it has been described. And I look forward to sampling K Patrick’s writing again in the future.

An absolutely exquisite tale of butch lesbian desire, lust, and passion. I adored this book, it's atmospheric setting, it's hopefulness, and it's realistic representation of female desire. Mrs S is a story set in an English boarding school during a long humid summer, where our narrator falls for the headmasters wife.

An utterly gorgeous, sensual, erotic novel that is full of queer desire, butchness, and forbidden lust. I really loved the novel’s exploration of longing (to find out who you are, what your place in the world is, and all the sexual longing of course).