The Companion Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Updated on October 8, 2026

Verdict: The closest thing on this list to Fingersmith’s actual machinery — a servant narrating from a cell, a mistress she loved, and a double murder she says she did not commit — told with real control and almost no heat.

Best for: Readers who want an unreliable narrator on death row, a slow psychological burn, and a sapphic relationship that is implied rather than staged — and who do not need it consummated to count.

Heat level: ★★☆☆☆ (1.5/5 — implied throughout; romance.io does not catalogue it and assigns no steam band)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.5/5 — a 3.66 Goodreads average across 1,280 ratings)

Tropes: Historical suspense, unreliable narrator, servant and mistress, prison narration, dual timeline, forbidden love, class difference, disability, jealousy, no HEA.

The Companion by Kim Taylor Blakemore is a standalone 2020 novel — historical suspense rather than historical lesbian romance — narrated by Lucy Blunt from a New Hampshire jail in 1855, in the days before she is due to hang for two murders in the household where she worked.

It holds a 3.66 average across 1,280 Goodreads ratings and 3.29 on StoryGraph — and Amazon files it under LGBTQ+ Thrillers, LGBTQ+ Historical Fiction and LGBTQ+ Literary Fiction, which is unusually honest shelving for a book this understated. Both halves of the split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is The Companion About?

This is 1855 New Hampshire, and the novel’s structure is its argument. Half of it is Lucy in a cell, counting down to an execution, narrating in the present tense to a reader she is openly trying to persuade. The other half is the household at Burton Farm, told in the past tense, building toward whatever it was that put her there. You are never given a neutral account of anything, because there is no neutral narrator available.

Lucy arrives at the Burtons as a kitchen maid after her mother’s death and her father’s collapse into drink, and rises to companion to Eugenie Burton, who is blind and largely confined to the house. Between them stands Rebecca, the previous companion, who has not accepted being replaced. What passes between Lucy and Eugenie is left deliberately unnamed — the Criminal Element reviewer called it ambiguous same-sex attraction and reached for the era’s own euphemism for it — and what happens to the household is what Lucy is in a cell for.

What Makes This Historical Suspense Work

The structure: Two timelines, one of them narrated by a woman with an execution date and every reason to lie. The dual frame is the book’s best decision.
Lucy: Readers consistently name her as an unreliable narrator done properly — she insists on her innocence and undercuts herself doing it.
The restraint: Criminal Element called it a slow psychological burn and explicitly not a historical romp, which is the right register for a novel that lives in one house and one cell.
The gothic lineage: Reviewers reach for Jane Eyre, Rebecca, The Yellow Wallpaper and Sarah Waters’s Victorian novels — and the naming of a rival servant Rebecca is not an accident.
It is short and free to borrow: At 268 pages and available in Kindle Unlimited, this is the lowest-commitment book on the whole list.

Book Synopsis

Lucy Blunt has a date. In a matter of days she will be taken out of a cold New Hampshire cell and hanged for the murders of two people at Burton Farm, and in the meantime she has a matron who tolerates her, a visitor or two, and a story she wants told her way. She says she is innocent. She also says a number of other things that do not entirely fit together.

The story she tells begins with the kitchen. Lucy comes to the Burtons with nothing after her mother dies and her father drinks the rest, and she works her way up out of the scullery through competence and watchfulness. Eugenie Burton is blind, largely housebound, married to a man whose attention is elsewhere, and in need of a companion who can read to her, dress her and be with her through the long afternoons. Lucy is very good at it.

The obstacle is Rebecca, who held that position first and has no intention of ceding it, and the household is small enough that a rivalry between two servants has nowhere to go but inward. What Lucy and Eugenie become to each other is the thing the book will not say plainly and the thing everything turns on. Somewhere in the months that follow, a housemaid drowns and a second person dies, and Lucy ends up in a cell — telling you, insistently, that she did not do it.

My Review

Of everything on this list, this is the book that runs closest to Fingersmith‘s actual machinery. A servant who moves up through a household, a mistress she becomes indispensable to, a crime, and a narrator whose account is the only one available and cannot be trusted. Blakemore does not have Waters’s range, but she has real control over the one thing she is doing: alternating a cold present-tense cell with a warm past-tense house, so that every scene of intimacy at Burton Farm arrives already stained by where it ends up.

Lucy is the other strength. Readers describe her consistently as unreliable in the good way — not withholding for effect, but visibly shaping her story while insisting she is only reporting it. Criminal Element’s reviewer finished the book saying they were not sure what to think, which is exactly the intended result and a much better outcome than certainty. The prose is spare, the household is claustrophobic, and the book earns its 268 pages rather than padding them.

Where it struggles is reach. This is a Lake Union title, and the coverage reflects it: no Kirkus, no Publishers Weekly, nothing in Booklist that I could reach, and — more surprisingly — nothing at the Lesbrary, LezReviewBooks or Autostraddle, each of which returns no results for it on their own site search. Its StoryGraph did-not-finish rate is 8%, which is high, though the sample is small enough that I would not lean on it hard. And the pacing is genuinely slow: this is a book in which two women sit in rooms, and if that is not enough for you, nothing else is coming.

One expectation to set. The relationship is implied rather than depicted. There is no consummation on the page, the language stays inside what 1855 would allow, and Criminal Element characterised the attraction as ambiguous rather than stated. For some readers that is the point — a period-accurate rendering of a thing that could not be named. For others it will read as a book that gets credit for queerness it never quite commits to. Both reactions are fair, and which one you have will decide your rating. What is not ambiguous is the shape of the ending: Lucy is in a cell from page one, the relationship is already over when the book begins, and there is no version of this story where the two of them get a future.

My honest note: A genuinely well-built small novel that gives you the Fingersmith structure and almost none of the heat. If you want the servant-and-mistress dynamic and an unreliable narrator with a noose in the room, it delivers. If you need the relationship on the page, it will feel like a promise unkept.

Element	In The Companion
Central relationship	Lucy Blunt & Eugenie Burton — a kitchen maid turned companion and the blind mistress of the house, told entirely in retrospect
Core tropes	Historical suspense, unreliable narrator, servant and mistress, prison narration, dual timeline, class difference, jealousy
Setting	New Hampshire, 1855 — Burton Farm and a county jail cell in the days before a hanging
Heat level	1.5/5 — implied and unconsummated on the page; romance.io does not catalogue it
Series	Standalone — no series and no sequel; the trial and its outcome resolve
Content notes	Murder and a drowning, judicial execution and the wait for it, interpersonal abuse within the household, disability and its treatment in 1855, alcoholism, class exploitation, implied same-sex intimacy in a hostile period

How Explicit Is The Companion?

A 1.5 out of 5, and the reason is a choice rather than an omission. romance.io does not carry the book, StoryGraph’s readers have logged no content warnings for it at all, and the one full review I could reach describes the attraction between Lucy and Eugenie as ambiguous rather than depicted. Nothing is consummated on the page. What you get instead is proximity and dependence — reading aloud, dressing, sitting through afternoons — and a narrator who tells you what it meant without ever telling you what happened.

The content that does need flagging is the execution. The book opens with a woman counting down to being hanged and returns to that cell throughout, and the sustained dread of it is the strongest thing in the novel and the hardest. The other flagged elements from the one substantive review are a drowning, abuse directed at Eugenie by another member of the household, and the period’s treatment of her blindness. If you want a similar implied-rather-than-stated register elsewhere, Affinity is the closest neighbour on this site.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want the servant-and-mistress structure done seriously, you like an unreliable narrator who argues with you, you read for dread rather than incident, and you are content with a relationship the period would not let anyone name.

You may want to skip it if: you need the relationship on the page, a slow book set almost entirely in two rooms will lose you, you want an HEA, or a novel built around waiting for an execution is not what you can read right now.

In short: the Fingersmith structure at a third of the length and a tenth of the heat, and better than its obscurity suggests.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

The most useful thing to report here is how little of this book’s reception exists in public. It was published by Lake Union, an Amazon imprint, and the trade press largely did not engage: I found no Kirkus review, no Publishers Weekly, and nothing retrievable from Booklist. The one substantive professional review is at Criminal Element, from January 2020, which read it as a slow psychological burn and placed it in a lineage running from Jane Eyre and Rebecca through The Yellow Wallpaper to Sarah Waters’s Victorian novels. More surprising is the silence from the sapphic circuit — the Lesbrary, LezReviewBooks and Autostraddle each return no results for it on their own site searches, which for a book Amazon itself shelves under three separate LGBTQ+ categories is a real gap. What it has instead is a genuine reader following: 1,280 Goodreads ratings, and inclusion in Kindle Unlimited, which is how most people seem to be finding it.

The audiobook is narrated by Ann Etter across 8 hours 33 minutes — the shortest listen on this entire list.

Prefer audio? Listen to The Companion on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The structure first — the alternation between the cell and the house is what reviewers name, and the countdown to the hanging gives an otherwise quiet book a clock. Then Lucy, praised repeatedly as an unreliable narrator handled with care: she claims innocence in a voice that keeps undermining her. The atmosphere draws consistent credit, with Criminal Element’s slow-psychological-burn framing echoed by readers. And the twist has defenders — one reviewer described being made to believe he had the plot worked out all along before it turned over.

What readers argue about and complain about: The pace, first: this is a slow book in which two women mostly sit in rooms, and StoryGraph’s readers mark it slow-paced with an 8% did-not-finish rate, high for this list although drawn from a small sample of under seventy reviews. Second, and the one that matters most for this site’s readers: how little of the relationship is actually on the page. It is implied throughout and never depicted, which some readers experience as period-accurate restraint and others as a book taking credit for a romance it declines to write. Third: the ending, which every reviewer I found deliberately refuses to spoil — an unusual level of discretion that tells you the reveal is the point, and also means there is very little public discussion of whether it satisfies. Fourth, a structural note: a few readers find the present-tense prison sections stylistically at odds with the past-tense household chapters.

The standalone question worth asking first: this is a standalone and it resolves — but be clear about what it resolves. The relationship is over before the first page; Lucy is narrating from a cell about a woman she is no longer with, and no reading of the book produces a future for the two of them. Whether Lucy hangs is the engine, and it would be unkind to spoil it here. If you want more Blakemore afterwards, she has written several more historical suspense novels — After Alice Fell in 2021 and The Deception in 2022 among them — but based on their synopses none of them carry sapphic content, so this is the one book of hers for this audience.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is The Companion a sapphic romance?

Not in the genre sense. There is a relationship between Lucy and Eugenie, but it is implied rather than depicted, never consummated on the page, and framed in the era’s own euphemisms. Amazon does shelve the book under three separate LGBTQ+ categories, which is fair, but readers wanting an explicit romance will not find one.

Does The Companion have a happy ending?

No. The novel opens with Lucy in a cell awaiting execution and the relationship already in the past, so there is no version of the story in which the two women have a future. Whether Lucy hangs is the book’s central question and every reviewer I found declines to spoil it.

How explicit is The Companion?

A 1.5 out of 5. Nothing is on the page. romance.io does not catalogue the book and StoryGraph’s readers have logged no content warnings for it at all.

Is The Companion on Kindle Unlimited?

Yes — it is a Lake Union title and is currently included in Kindle Unlimited, which at 268 pages makes it the lowest-commitment book on this list.

Is there an audiobook of The Companion?

Yes — narrated by Ann Etter, running 8 hours 33 minutes.

If You Loved The Companion, Read These Next

The obvious next step is Fingersmith, which runs the same servant-and-mistress machinery at twice the length with far more plot and far more heat. For the same unreliable narrator writing her own defence while the state prepares to kill her, The Confessions of Frannie Langton is the direct parallel. And for the gothic version of a woman fixed on someone she cannot have, Affinity is the colder relative.

For more in this register, browse our books like Fingersmith guide, the historical sapphic romance reading list, or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

The Companion is the most underrated book on this list. The two-timeline structure is genuinely well built, Lucy is an unreliable narrator handled with real care, the household is claustrophobic in the way this kind of story needs, and at 268 pages it does not waste a chapter. It is also slow, almost entirely uncovered by the press that would have championed it, and built around a relationship that stays implied from beginning to end — which will read to some as period honesty and to others as a book hedging. Worth it if you want Fingersmith’s shape in a single sitting. Check The Companion on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, The Companion ranks as a well-built, badly overlooked historical suspense novel with a queer centre — tightly structured and genuinely tense, held back by an unconsummated relationship and almost no critical footprint, and best approached for Lucy’s voice rather than for the romance.