I loved the premise of this book, however I found the execution somewhat lacking. It was incredibly slow and I struggled to finish it.

‘ she wondered how an establishment that promised to educate ‘girls of the world’ could somehow make its women feel so small.’
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Mona Lisa Smile meets Handmaid’s Tale in what has to be one of my favourite reads of this year is far! I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN. Give me a girl’s private school boarding house with a dark hidden agenda and I AM THERE!
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For 150 years, Caldonbrae Hall has loomed high above the Scottish cliffs as a beacon of excellence in the ancestral castle of Lord William Hope. A boarding school for girls, it promises that its pupils will emerge ‘resilient and ready to serve society’.
Into its illustrious midst steps Rose Christie, a 26-year-old Classics teacher and new head of department. Rose is overwhelmed by the institution: its arcane traditions, unrivalled prestige, and terrifyingly cool, vindictive students. Her classroom becomes her haven, where the stories of fearless women from ancient Greek and Roman history ignite the curiosity of the girls she teaches and, unknowingly, the suspicions of the powers that be.
But as Rose uncovers the darkness that beats at the very heart of Caldonbrae, the lines between myth and reality grow ever more blurred. It will be up to Rose – and the fierce young women she has come to love – to find a way to escape the fate the school has in store for them, before it is too late.
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I keep seeing this book compared to The Secret History, in my opinion this link is lazy as the only similarity is that they both take place in a school... whereas Mona Lisa Smile is VERY much of the same ilk, yes a film, but a brilliant one! This book has me from the get go, the descriptions of the school, the girls upon whom you meet very quickly, the rules we slowly learn about the past and present of this weird establishment... I don’t think I could ever fully do my thoughts on this book justice, I just loved it so much! Dark Academia with a strong flurry of feminism, this book ticked many boxes for me and to find out it’s Phoebe Wynne’s first just has me excited to read her next!
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Thank you so much to Netgalley and Quercus for my ARC, I will be recommending it to everyone!!!!

DNF @50% but if pushed to rate, probably two stars at this point.

Madam did not live up to my expectations at all sadly. Dark academia, a great cover and an intriguing blurb were all draws. What I founds was a bizarre choice to position this story in the 1990s when the feel of this read was at least a century ago. The story was set around a female boarding school in the highlands, shrouded in mystery and reputation.

Actually what you get is a new classics teacher Rose, a strange recruitment and she never fits in. She's an odd character and difficult to like with poor sleuthing skills. I wanted her to better at figuring this out. The pupils were bizarre and the male teachers just plain weird.

My problems with the story were the slow plod, constant circling around the same mystery with the feel of where it was going (but it never went anywhere for an age). I could not get on with it and because it was a slow read, I did not see any point in continuing.

From other reviews I can see that there are even darker themes ahead and I do feel obligated to give a TW of paedophilia.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review. After accepting a role as the head of classics at an exclusive and prestigious boarding school Rose starts to realize that there may be a much dark side concealed by the traditions and values Caldonbrae Hall upholds. I absolutely loved the first half of this the mystery and dark atmosphere was built so well. I also really enjoyed all the snippets of Roses lessons that added context and foreshadowing. I found the actual answer to the mystery to as satisfying as the mystery itself, but still really enjoyed the themes and questions it raised.

'Madam' is desperate to be 'The Secret History'. Which is understandable: Secret History is an excellent novel, and I can see why this book is being described as its more feminist sister. A young Classics teacher is recruited to join a mysterious girls’ school in the depths of Scotland, but the school has some dark and mysterious secrets. The book feels like Jane Eyre, perhaps, or Rebecca - haunted by legacies of women that Rose must get to know along with the strict rules and systems of this strange Victorian school. Caldonbrae Hall is so isolated from reality that time seems to no longer effect it, and it’s become trapped in the Victorian era in more ways than one.

But it’s set in the 90s. Did you notice? In chapter one, over the space of about three paragraphs, I was bombarded by cultural references: Silence of the Lambs, Princess Diana, Thelma and Louise, and don’t forget that Rose is listening to a walkman, in case I was unsure what to picture. Perhaps this is a personal preference. There’s nothing wrong with clearly grounding the time setting at all, but to me, explicit cultural references like these always scream of this conversation:

EDITOR: Book is great. One thing though, the time setting isn’t totally clear.

WRITER: Oh okay. Should I make it clearer? Sprinkle some references gently throughout the book?

E: Eh, sure. Or you could slam a load of references in chapter one. We want the reader to immediately know when they are.

I think a similar conversation will have happened surrounding the Greek mythology, a thematic cornerstone of the novel. If you’re interested in Classics then I recommend this book. 'Madam' teaches you the stories of Dido and Medea, Medusa and the Moirai. However, I wonder if the novel could assume reader’s knowledge in the same way Donna Tartt often assumes reader knowledge of Classics and ancient worlds. There’s arguably a more sophisticated way of explaining the references to Greek women than including a mini-synopsis of each myth. It could have benefited from a glossary or index, rather than squeezing them at the start of each chapter.

Madam parallels 'The Secret History' in its thematic backdrop, Greek and Roman mythology, questionable secrets, sexual tension, but more importantly in its structure. Much like Donna Tartt’s famous opening in which we’re told what awaits the characters, 'Madam' opens with the ending of Rose and her students’ story, leaving you wondering how they get there. This was one of the main things that kept me reading, but narrative structure is where the similarities to 'The Secret History' end.

The issue I found was that the content, themes and literary feel of 'Madam' don’t match with the tone. We must acknowledge that a book’s aesthetic is crafted through language and tone just as much as plot, little ceramic owls and references to Jason and the Argonauts. The narrator’s voice is not particularly adventurous and as a result I felt like I was reading a YA novel. No shade whatsoever, but this book isn’t YA suitable and nor does it want to be.

Nevertheless, the simple style was another thing that kept me reading: it feels effortless, and gripped me as I followed Rose’s unravelling of the institution of Caldonbrae. But it’s clear that the tone is holding the novel back from what it badly wants to be: a classical, literary creature somewhere between 'Circe' and 'The Handmaid’s Tale.' If you’re into dark academia and in the mood for a simple mystery novel, then Madam is worth the read.

Hmmm. I am in the camp of those who were excited to read it but disappointed with the execution. It definitely reads like a YA novel and is too long for what it is. Characters are not rounded and it is all so unlikely with too much need to say why? It has its moments, I enjoyed the classic tales and the whole premise but felt it didn’t deliver.

This book has such a great premise but unfortunately for me it fell flat in its execution.

The book is set in an elite boarding school for English aristocracy and high society on a remote Scottish peninsula. The atmosphere is creepy and cult-like; the teachers and pupils, and their behaviours and routines, are eerie and Stepfordesque with a touch of Gilead thrown in for good measure.

Rose arrives as an idealistic 26 year old Classics teacher about to embark on the next stage of her career with no idea of what is ahead of her.

I’ve tried to put my finger on where this book fell down and what could have made it better - a different pace, better character development, a different time (it’s set in the 90s)? - but I think ultimately the only thing that would save this book is a different protagonist.

It reads like a YA novel but with a woman in her twenties instead blundering awkwardly through. It takes a very long time for Rose to twig what is going on (you’ll have figured it out yourself before she does) and then it takes her even longer to figure out what to do about it. In the meantime, there’s quite a bit of dithering and fretting that frustratingly comes to nothing.

The best part of this book for me was the story of famous women from Greek and Roman Classics. There are some nice thematic tie-ins with plot lines but there is also a lot of repetition.

I think I’d have enjoyed this story told more from Freddie and Clarissa’s perspective - perhaps with an alternating cat and mouse narrative.

I really wanted to enjoy this book more than I did but unfortunately it just didn’t quite work. 2/5 ⭐️

*I read an ARC of this book courtesy of @netgalley and the publishers @quercusbooks. As always, this is an honest review. Madam will be published on 13 May 2021 and is available now in the Kindle store.*

Madam certainly has an air of unease within its writing - it reminded me of something like The Demon Headmaster or the Stepford Wives in places. That said, the pacing of the novel felt really off, it’s about 50% before we find out what it happening at the school, although I’m certain most readers would have guessed way before our protagonist needed it spelling out to her which was very frustrating! The second half of the book then felt very slow with lots of repetition of Rose finding out something truly awful, having a bit of a breakdown and then acting normally for a few weeks (?!) and then discovering something worse and events happening all over again.

Rose is a frustrating main character and she didn’t feel realistic at all. I liked what she was trying to teach the students with her insights into the Classics and historical women standing up for themselves, however she didn’t seem to have much of a personality. Her decisions and lack of reaction to massively disturbing events going on around her seemed so unrealistic – I understand they were blackmailing her and had taken over the care of her mother but surely there were other ways out that were not explored. Rose just seemed very meek – taking each terrible thing and then just carrying on with her job without really trying to escape or make an impact.

Other characters also seemed very vaguely filled out and we felt no sympathy for any of them. The characters we do initially like suddenly have personality transplants or do something truly awful so there’s no-one we really like inside the institution – they all seem like pantomime villains! The students as well seemed very interchangeable – their voices were very similar and it made it hard to work out who was who at times.

Although I sometimes enjoy a sneak preview of future events at the beginning of books, the fire that is introduced in the first chapter is just a spoiler for the end of the book (it’s also on the book’s cover which doesn’t help!). You don’t really see the events from another perspective and so it does little other than ruin the ending of the book, particularly as events start to build up towards the end. The ending also didn’t feel like a triumph – it wasn’t even done deliberately, just an unfortunate accident rather than Rose rising up and doing something about the circumstances she had been placed in against her will.

I enjoyed the chapters focusing on different women from Classic stories and mythology but sometimes the links felt tenuous at best and some were just repeated again in the classroom setting. This added to the length of the book and didn’t help with the pacing issues.

When you looked back over the plot with hindsight there were also a lot of plot holes. Why on earth would they have chosen an outsider to come into one of the teaching roles, for example? Also, if that had been necessary why didn’t they choose someone with a similar background who would have been more amenable to their ways already? They seem to have done a lot of background research when it came to Rose’s father but her mother was an active feminist which seems to have completely passed them by and not raised any red flags.

Overall Madam was a sinister read but also a frustrating one with an unrealistic and weak main character, pacing issues and plot holes. Thank you to NetGalley & Quercus Books for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Rose Christie is a Classics teacher and accepts a job at Caldonbrae Hall, a boarding school in Scotland. This should be a wonderful opportunity but Rose finds the weird set up difficult to understand and impossible to accept.
She is trapped as her students are trapped in a system designed to produce appropriate young ladies for marriage in society.
A gripping read that is scary as maybe such a place could exist. Read, enjoy and hope for a good ending.

Madam tells the story of Rose who takes up a new job as head of classics at the prestigious Caldonbrae school for girls. Having previously taught at a state school, Rose struggles to understand the quirks and traditions of the place. The behaviour of some of the students leaves a lot to be desired, and Rose soon comes to realise her predecessor left under strange circumstances.
I found this book quite difficult to relate to and the pace was far too slow. I think it would appeal to fans of unusual fiction who enjoy a slow burn novel.

Rose could not believe when she got the job as Head of Department at Caldonbrae Hall (known as Hope by students and teachers), a very prestigious boarding school in Scotland. So she packed her few pieces of furniture and faced the long journey up North.

At Caldonbrae Hall, all female teachers will be called Madam and the male teachers Sir, there are a lot of riles and also, it seems, a very busy schedule for the students, espically as they reach the last year. However, when Bethany, one of the student, targets Rose with a false accusation, she will start to realise that there is so much more to the school, behind its very formal and antiquate ways. Rose will regret taking the job and will try to figure out a way to leave- as it is is not as simple as just resigning.

Reading Madam made me think of Handmaid's Tale, a series I loved so much. Therefore I could not but loved this dystopian story. I found myself getting angry at the school's rules and true intent of the education with Rose, but I couldn't stop to read the book until I discovered what had happened to the previous Head of Department , I enjoyed her lessons on mythology and her bonds with some of the students.

Thanks to Netgalley and Quercus Books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

When young classics teacher Rose is headhunted for a Senior teaching position at an exclusive boarding school for girls she cannot believe her luck. Soon it appears that things may not be quite as they seem and maybe it wasn’t the good fortune she’d thought.

Reminiscent of the Handmaid’s Tale, Madam is full of suspense and a brooding atmosphere which made this book impossible for me to put down. Interspersed with snippets of classic mythology as Rose teaches them to her classes, this gave an added depth to the story which I loved.

Perfect for fans of dark academia, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Power and The Vow.

Obsessed with this book and I have been talking to everyone I know about how good it is!
A position comes up as Head of Classics at one of the most highly respected private girls' schools in the country, and Rose, a young teacher, is surprised to find herself appointed
From the moment she arrives, she is caught out by the hidden rules that everyone else seems to know, but which she isnt told about until her probation period is over. The girls act in a way that she's not used to, but when she tries to win them over, it goes wrong and she's wrongfooted again and again.
The oppressive atmosphere seeped through the pages and until the last page, I wasn't sure how the story would end. I cantt believe its a debut novel, the style is amazing and so readable
Its going to be on lots of Book of the Year lists, not least mine!
Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers

I was sent a copy of Madam by Phoebe Wynne to read and review by NetGalley. This novel wasn’t quite what I was expecting but once I got used to the layout of the story I enjoyed it. I’m not sure that the prologue was a necessary addition, although I understand that having an ‘exciting’ hook will entice people to keep reading. For me however, it just made the transition into the main book a little confusing, I found myself checking back at the dates a couple of times.
I found that the chapters telling the tales of ancient Greek and Roman women seemed at first to be very random and weren’t always followed up immediately by the discussions in the classroom. The stories were relevant but I think maybe the final positioning of them could have been better.
The characters and relationships between them were very well observed and I found myself being horrified and outraged in turn throughout the book, the content feeling rather too plausible to me! This novel is a slow burner and takes its time to totally draw you in – as soon as I started wondering if I was enjoying it I found myself totally committed!

‘Perhaps Daphne was ravaged then, afterall.’

As a Classicist myself, I have a weakness for books that call upon the ancient world to highlight issues that are still relevant today, and Phoebe Wynn does it beautifully. Rose is recruited as the new Head of Classics at a prestigious school that promises a top class education. However, all is not as it seems. Despite its rampant nepotism, Caldonbrae Hall has secrets, and these secrets threaten to undo Rose. This book is carefully crafted to make you think, and I love how Wynn peppers the narrative with stories of ancient women who seized control of their own lives and stories. I adored it, and was very disappointed when I turned the last page. I wanted it to last forever.

Fans of the Secret History, by Donna Tartt, and the Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood will love this.

Madam is a dark, Gothic gem of a book that I will be recommending fervently.

I adore feminist retellings of classical tales and really appreciated how these complex tales of women were woven into the text. On top of that, the discussion they were able to have as a result of these texts were really illuminating in the wider context of the book. This is a story where you have to pay attention to the small details, those hidden within the gorgeous writing of the book and I loved piecing together the puzzle. Dark Academia is a fascinating genre to me and I particularly love when it gets a feminist spin.

This is a book that pivots on what it excludes from the narrative just as much as what it includes. It trades on secrets and shadows, mysterious movements in the dark that keep you utterly enthralled. It harness the best aspects of the Gothic tradition and weaves them into something newly exciting and dangerous. The horrors that lurk within this world are just as prevalent within our own. Part of me spent much of the novel just screaming at Rose to wake up and see what was going on around her. That’s the worrying part though, this kind of danger stares us straight in the face. It’s enmeshed within the very fabric of society and asks what people will have to sacrifice in order to cement themselves within it.

From the start, you have a strong sense of what you’re in for, but you cannot guess the full extent of the wild ride ahead. The opening is incredibly strong, with a horrific and spine-tingling overtone to it. You know this is a book that will be characterised by death, in many differing forms. There’s the scene at the start of death, but there’s also a more insidious form of death that erodes your sense of self and entire personality to nothing.

Madam is an eerie, unsettling and darkly feminist book that will chill you to the bone.

A brilliant modern=day gothic novel set in a girls school with echoes of The Trials of Miss Jean Brodie The Amber Fury.. It gripped me - don't want to give away any plot spoilers - and I raced to the end. A recommended read.

Loved this! So good, so exciting, so gripping and great story. Can't wait to read more by this author - absolutely brilliant.

“Light a fire they can’t put out”

OMG! I really just don’t know where to begin with this review. I generally try not to research any reviews by my fellow readers until I have finished reading a book for myself and having now done that, I realise just how divided opinion is about both the storyline and writing style. For me personally, the only slight disappointment, if you can call it that, is the length of the book, which might have been a little overdone, although I’m not sure it would have had such a comprehensive outcome, or had such a horrific impact, had it been rushed or condensed any further. With the stakes getting higher by the minute, I really needed to read and digest, every word, nuance and inference, whilst making sure that I hadn’t missed the tiniest detail of the visual action, where every syllable spoken, every snide look given, every innocuous movement taken, was so important in the overall scheme of things.

Apart from that, this story did the job the author no doubt set out to do, with the reactions it engendered and the feelings it evoked – At least I do hope that was the case, as I was really taken on what seemed to be a uniquely individual journey, which I didn’t want to take when I realised even a small part of what was going on, definitely didn’t want to finish because I was quite frankly scared of how it all might end, but was powerless to stop!

In fact, at one stage I did begin to wonder if some part of this novel was indeed based on fact! As far-fetched as this may seem, given the multitude of scandals and atrocities of abuse and exploitation, both physical and mental, which have been uncovered in so many esteemed institutions over recent years and released as information into the public domain, highlighting similar events which took place over the course of past decades, including the 1990s, when this storyline is set, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised. This storyline was perhaps made more nauseating by the fact that many of the parents were also complicit in events, along with the adult teaching staff, although why that should astonish me even more, I have no idea!

Anyway, I digress!

The opening lines of the prologue set the expected outcome in no uncertain words, leaving me in no doubt that everything before that was going to be a boiling pot of disturbingly intense emotions and events. The storyline was a real slow-burner, which set the scene and ramped up the tension at almost every turn. But that ending wasn’t the killer I had thought it would be, as there was more beyond, but I just couldn’t think about that, I was too shell-shocked to comprehend the final outcome, which I was only able to sit and digest the consequences of fully, after I had closed the final page. I certainly never saw it coming and I am left wondering if the overtly feminist overtones of this catastrophic endgame might have gone just a little too far and totally overstepped the mark for me. There surely has to come a time in any war waged, when the end cannot justify the means!! Perhaps Rose is more of her mother’s daughter than she realises, or has she just been pushed beyond the limits of all sane and logical reasoning? Although, with all the chapter opening vignettes featuring strong female characters from classical literature, which Rose includes as part of many lessons for her classes, I’m wondering also just how complicit she is in the ultimate turn of events, however unwittingly.

This multi-layered, well structured, lugubrious storyline, was never going to have any lighter moments of heart and humour, this was intense Gothic Noir all the way, and for me personally evoked real overtones of a Daphne du Maurier piece. The air was constantly crackling with tension, the atmosphere was dark, brooding and highly textured.

Skilfully, maturely and assuredly written, with great depth and range, by an author who is clearly unafraid to tackle difficult subjects, this gripping and disturbing storyline, is desperately intense, highly perceptive, sickeningly rich in detail and achingly raw. The physical landscape, whilst also fictional, which meant I couldn’t relate to it in quite the same way as if I had been able to physically research the area for myself, is still well described and defined, whilst this monolithic fortress takes only prisoners. No-one escapes this life sentence, at least not with body, soul and mind intact!

Phoebe has created an entire cast of complex characters who are entirely reprehensible, completely untrustworthy and definitely not investable on any level, as Rose herself quickly discovers. They are all brain-washed, emotionally challenged and place themselves willingly at the mercy of the ‘money making machine’, for whom feelings, sympathy, empathy and any form of humanitarian engagement with either their peers or the children in their care, is way outside of their emotional psyche. Once you are in the ‘care system’ of Caldonbrae Hall, you can’t escape its clutches.

As a powerful, debut work of fiction from a new author, the future bodes well for Phoebe, although I am almost dreading what storyline she might possibly have in store for us next!

The story centres around Caldonbrae Hall, a fictional (I really hope) all girls boarding school on the Scottish coast. It’s set in the 90s. It doesn’t really feel like there’s a reason for this as the school itself is very isolated so it isn’t really impacted by what is happening in the rest of the world - maybe just because it feels less plausible that this kind of place exists in 2021?

Rose is a young teacher who is a couple of years post qualified and is approached directly by the staff at Caldonbrae to be the first new member of staff for a few decades. Rose doesn’t seem to be very surprised that she has personally been approached by this incredibly prestigious private school. Rose also identifies as a feminist and clearly feels that she has very inclusive values, and yet has no qualms about teaching at one of the countries most elite and exclusive private school which I think is interesting.

The book is described as a modern gothic tale and it certainly wanders in the direction, but I don’t feel like it ever got to a real gothic place. The descriptions of the building, teachers and scenery could have gone further.

Some of the dialogue reads as unnatural like it is written rather than something that would be spoken. We don’t really get any insight as to what anyone other than Rose is thinking - I think it could have been really great to hear more about the backgrounds of some of the other characters, especially the really villainous ones like the headmaster and deputy.

Having said that I really couldn’t put this book down. I just wanted to keep reading. I5 has such an eerie, creepy feel and you kind of know what’s going on but also don’t at all until the very end. I thought the ending was especially good and really thought provoking. There were no easy answers in this book. Apart from a couple of the children everyone was a little bit monstrous with a huge nature/nurture dichotomy going on. Also, the vignettes of mythological women were really interesting and well written. I would have read a book of those alone for sure. I thought this was a really innovative plot idea and I really enjoyed reading it. Thanks to NetGalley for my free copy.