I requested this book because the idea of a gothic asylum type thriller ticked all the right boxes for me. I really enjoyed the setting, the writing style and the array of characters. Violet, the protagonist grated a small bit on my nerves with her flightiness but I think overall it was a well written, well paced thriller. I look forward to seeing what the author writes next.
Thank you Netgalley and Harper Collins for the advanced reader copy in return for an honest review.

Hmm, I was looking forward to reading this, the synopsis sounded great but it didn't quite hit the spot.
The story starts with a young woman Violet, who is under pressure from her over bearing mother to marry an eligible young man who has wealth, and therefore able to help the family financially. But Violet has other idea's, she dreams of becoming an artist's muse and eventually becoming an artist herself.
On the eve of her engagement party, she feels under pressure and panics, the story then jumps to the morning after when Violet wakes up in an asylum with no memory of the night before, and now under the care of Alienist Dr Rastrick, who believes that mad women are a threat that could end the human race if allowed to breed.
I've read other asylum based thrillers but this just didn't hit the mark. I found Violet pretty annoying at the start, though I did pity her and the other women who had to endure the inhuman and often brutal treatments disguised as care.
I had a theory about Violet and was proved right when she was seen by the French Doctor.

Having read the brilliant ‘The Mad Women's Ball ‘ by Victoria Mas, I was looking forward to reading this book that covers a similar topic. Unfortunately it didn’t live up to the blurb (or the cover which initally caught my eye).

The story starts strong but it’s not long before the pace slows considerably and I almost didn’t finish the book, Most of the characters are either thoroughly unlikable or very boring and I found the plot unrealistic and somewhat insensitive.

There seem to be a lot of similar books on this subject at present and I feel that The Darlings of the Asylum struggles to compete.

However, I am grateful to NetGalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read the book in return for an honest review.

This was a great read, I found the early chapters a little slow but as soon as Violet is in the asylum (not a spoiler!) the book races along and I needed to know what would happen to Violet by the end.

Violet Pring leads a dull life of being primed for marriage to a wealthy bachelor, when her true passion is painting. Just before her arranged marriage, she meets the talented artist Wilf Lilley, who is acquainted with many famous artists of the day, and she gets a taste of what life could be like if she were free to make her own way in the world.

It all comes crashing down suddenly when Violet's parents consign her to a lunatic asylum and she hasn't a clue why. Whilst in the asylum various doctors and medical staff administer drugs and treatment that lead Violet to question how well she actually knows herself and learning her family have disowned her. The Darlings of the asylum are dying, once by one, so can she escape with Mr Lilley and start a while new life, or could that be even worse than staying in the asylum....

The fact this took me 4 attempts to start shouts loudly. I couldn't get into it at all. I'm glad I finished it as it did get better but still wasnt better than 'okay’, the writing flowed well but overall unremarkable. Wouldn’t recommend this one but I would still try anything else by
this author. Overall three stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I have mixed feelings about this one. It started strong. I really liked the protagonist, Violet, but after a while it didn't feel like we were getting anywhere. Then next thing we know she's in an asylum for "unknown reasons". Here, the novel really could have saved itself. Instead we ended with a twist that, honestly, I hated. I really wish I could be more positive but it played on a trope that, quite frankly, I can't stand.

Thank you to NetGalley and HQ for the advance reader copy.

For the most part, I enjoyed this book and its stark setting in a Victorian Asylum. I just struggled a bit to reconcile the person we meet at the start with the person we're left with at the end. And some of the personal relationships didn't quite work for me. Having said that, I was committed to the story and finding out what was going to happen. I did feel it took a turn I really wasn't expecting and that left some of the threads of the story hanging. Very evocative and an enlightening read regarding the way women were treated at the time.

This is a difficult book to review, I'm gonna give it 3.5 🌟

I enjoyed the start of the book, and how you never really knew if the doctor was good or bad. But I would have loved more detail and storyline within the asylum. It also tries to brings attention to how women in asylums were treated, but at the same time, to stick with the storyline that someone with mental illness is dangerous and harmful towards others when it's already something so stigmatised is not only overdone in books, but also adds to the stigma.

I would have much preferred sticking with the storyline that she was placed in there because she didn't want to marry. There were so many stupid reasons people, but especially women, were committed to asylums, such as Novel Reading, Immoral Life (could have fitted well with the storyline), or simply Women's Troubles. This would have done so much better and bought more attention to the fact that women were shut away mainly as a way of control and because men simply didn't want women to become too knowledgeable or political.

Overall, an interesting start with some interesting parts throughout, but seemed to use mental health as a shock plot point instead of a well written and thought out plot point. Would have been much better using one of the stupid reasons women were committed instead of playing on and adding to mental health stigma

Violet Pring is a middle-class young lady in 1886. She divides her time between playing tennis and socialising with the jeunesse dorée of Victorian Brighton and her passion for art. Her mother, fearing that Violet, at 24, is about to be left on the shelf, is keen for her to marry Felix, an enterprising, wealthy young man, whose only flaw is his nouveau riche background.

So far, so conventional. But Violet has a rebellious streak (her “vibrant moods”, as her mother calls it). She lives for her art; it consumes her. She wants to plough her own furrow, not rely on Felix’s goodwill to be allowed to pursue an artistic career. Hence the danger embodied in visiting artist Wilfred Lilley, a hanger-on of the Pre-Raphaelites. Lilley recognises her talent and fuels her ambition, which culminates in an incident that lands Violet in an asylum.

What I think is so very clever about ‘Darlings of the Asylum’ is that it takes a long time for the reader (this reader, at least!) to decide whether Violet is mad, possibly inherited from her maternal grandfather, or not, though we can all agree that the treatment she receives is, by modern standards, harsh and unfeeling.

As it’s a first person narrative, we have only Violet’s perspective and her justification of her behaviour. After sitting on the fence for a good part of the novel, I decided that we nowadays we would probably say that she is bipolar.

Similarly, what is Dr Rastrick’s game plan? Victorian Britain was the breeding ground of the eugenics movement and we know he is in favour of isolating imbeciles and defectives (not my words!) from society. Does he have an even worse motive? He seems to have no sense of what the women in his care have gone through, and we never see any judgement of the feckless men in the novel. The women’s behaviour is, in fact, a rational response to how women at the time were treated by the men in their lives and quashed by the wider society.

I have read ‘Darlings of the Asylum’ twice now and look forward to reading more from this author. It is quite an achievement to have got inside his protagonist’s head so convincingly and weave such a suspenseful story.

I will post this review on Amazon when the book is released in early December.

There seems to be a plethora of books out dealing with this subject matter, and I have read quite a few. Unfortunately this book brought nothing new to the table. It started off well, the middle was too long and went off the boil and the ending was abrupt. A very mediocre read.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for giving an honest review.

"The Darlings of the Asylum" by Noel O'Reilly hit all the right notes with me. What I liked was that it followed the traditional gothic storyline of seemingly "evil" family put their daughter in an insane asylum because she refuses to conform to society and not marry but refreshingly has some twists when she is incarcerated and she finds out what happens to her when she has blackouts. It also leads you down the path of a possible romance, but again with a twist. For me, it bridges the gap of "Mad Woman's Ball" and another book I'd read about hypnosis at Salpetriere asylum in Paris. I'd happily read more of this genre.

This seems to be a popular subject matter at the moment, but annoyingly this didn't seem to offer anything new or different. A strong start, but a rushed end and the middle went on way too long. Had so much potential with the art and creativity side but left feeling like i wanted more.

This book took me completely by surprise. It started in much the way I had anticipated – a young woman resists her family’s guidance and society’s social expectations by refusing to marry – but the final chapters left me stunned and made me question everything I had just read.

Violet Pring is twenty-three and enjoying the privileges that her social standing affords her. However, her home life is less than perfect – with a lack of money, her highly-strung mother, and marriage proposals to navigate. An encounter with an enigmatic artist encourages Violet’s rebellion against her family’s wishes, so much so that she ultimately finds herself placed in an asylum. But the moments leading up to her incarceration are a blank and the asylum’s methods for treating the women in their care seem unorthodox. Can Violet remember what happened and find a way to bring about her release or is she destined to be locked away forever?

There is much to unpick in this novel. Whilst sometimes harrowing, I enjoyed following Violet’s development during her time inside the asylum; getting to know the other women, listening to their stories and supporting them. Comparing and contrasting the men in the novel was also interesting; the different shades between good and bad, the themes of ambition and motivation. Ultimately, though, this novel is about mental health; how it has been treated in the past, how it was viewed by others at this time, and how we recognise it in ourselves. As mentioned, the final chapters of the book really shone a light on these issues and gave me pause to consider everything that had gone before in the book and consider various characters in a new light.

I think the author has done a remarkable job; making the novel seem about one thing, focusing our thoughts and emotions in one direction and then suddenly providing another perspective. That feeling – like a stomach flip caused by a sudden drop – has stayed with me some time after finishing the book. Highly recommended!

TW: mental health disorders, suicide, non-consensual sex, gaslighting, threatening behaviour, murder.

My thanks to the publisher, HQ, and to NetGalley for the advance copy on which this review is based.

Ever since reading The Mad Women’s Ball, I’ve developed a morbid obsession with stories set in insane asylums. Noel O’Reilly’s The Darlings of the Asylum did not disappoint. I loved Violet Pring’s character and emphasised with the pressure she faces from her mother to find a wealthy husband to shore up the family’s dwindling finances. All of which is in conflict with Violet's growing resolve to be an artist. The tension between mother and daughter reaches a crisis point when her mother attempts to force her daughter to marry her rich childhood best friend. The fallout results in Violet being locked up in an insane asylum and desperately plotting her escape from Doctor Rastrick who seeks to keep her imprisoned for his amusement. Could escape come in the form of artist Mr Lilley who Violet met just before her imprisonment? I won’t spoil it for you, only to say that this story became so much more than I expected when I first started reading. I loved how layered all the characters were. Violet’s mother could have come across as a one-dimensional villain, but I understood her desperation for her daughter to marry, even while hating the methods she deployed to force her Violet's compliance. The author takes up deep inside Violet’s psyche and I felt like I was right there alongside side her as she began to uncover the true reasons behind her confinement and question her sanity. All of this, coupled with a killer ending, makes me excited to read the author's next book and catch up with his first one.

I absolutely loved this novel.

It's got the most intriguing premise. A woman locked in a Victorian asylum. Neither she, nor the reader knows quite why. She was a headstrong young woman who wanted to be an artist, but her family - financially on their uppers - wanted her to marry someone well off.

What's going on? Is it purely abusive control of a wayward woman? Is there something more going on? Is the doctor malevolent or benevolent? How on earth is she going to get out? And how far is she prepared to go to gain her freedom?

The story is revealed one tantalising piece at a time. It's a very tangled web indeed, and absolutely gripping and dramatic. Read it!

On reflection, there is one aspect of the story that I didn't like, but I can't reveal it without spoilers. It's what made me cut it down to just 4 stars. Nonetheless, I highly recommend this novel for anyone interested in the themes and the gothic novel tradition.

This book had a wildly inconsistent tone that made it difficult to connect with. It also told a story that has been done to death and brought nothing new to the genre. This topic is always better as non-fiction because much of this novel's content simply falls back on old, tired tropes rather than bothering to represent anything real. Probably not a book I'll recommend.

It doesn’t matter how many times I read about old asylums, I still can’t get my head round their brutality and how inhumane some of them were, and the fact that this isn’t just fiction, this actually happened, particular for “manic” women.

There is a very blunt and sudden skip from “normal” life to life in the asylum, there’s no real build up or clues that the setting is about to change. This is good because it adds to the confusion and suddenness of the change for the characters, but it’s bad because it makes the book feel like two different stories. My concern is Violet seemed to accept her new situation very quickly. Yes she questions it and gets upset about it, but it all seems a bit too clean and smooth for me.

Dr Rastrick was a vile man and excellently written as such. I didn’t care for Violet’s parents at all, they had no redemption in my eyes, and her brothers were inconsequential. The asylum staff were neither here nor there for me. Felix is a bit of a wet weekend, and Mr Lilley, whilst slightly more layered, was a very egotistical and unsavoury man.

I would have liked more made of Mr Rastrick’s experiments. It was touched upon and discussed but it never reached the heights of terror I was expecting.

I did find the tone a bit odd. There’s this historical element, a bit of romance but then there’s this supernatural element and it makes it quite bumpy to read. What did irritate me was in the “normal” half, there was the odd bit of the asylum scenes, but it wasn’t consistent. It’s a random few scenes hare and there that didn’t make any sense being there and didn’t add to anything.

Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy it, it’s well written and entertaining, but it felt a bit samey. There wasn’t much new about it and I think this did it a disservice. It comes after a lot of stories involving women in the 1800s who live in manor houses who want to rebel about their circumstances. And I think it’s just become a bit of a stale market.

Many thanks to HQ and Noel O’Reilly for the advanced copy of The Darlings of the Asylum via NetGalley, in return for my honest and unbiased review. Quick note: I don’t recap plots in my reviews, as it’s easy enough to read the book’s synopsis and blurbs, I purely focus on my feelings & opinions of how the books makes me feel.

This book reminded me why I normally don’t read books with female protagonists written by male authors. There are so many wonderful female authors out there that need our support and they write amazing, strong, wonderful female protagonists. And then there’s this.

Disclaimer: I have experience with hospital care for mental illness in the 21st century. Whilst we’ve moved on from some practices from the 19th century, you’d be surprised how some attitudes haven’t changed.

Having done a brief dive into the author’s background, it’s clear they have no history in mental health. And that is clear in the writing of this book. The symptoms given to the protagonist, Violet, describe some strange hodgepodge of Bipolar, Dissociative Identity Disorder (a highly controversial diagnosis, one which the majority of the psychological profession does not believe actually exists) and very little of the actual, historical “hysteria” that many women were thrown into asylums for. It’s like the author set out to make a point of how women were unfairly treated but then set off on his own random tangent and, in doing so, completely disrespected the plight of the hundreds of thousands of women who died in these asylums under the guise of “hysteria”.

Overall, I found the book poorly researched and unrealistic. Of course the book is a work of fiction, but one expects any piece of historical fiction to be accurate and true to the time. This was not, and it disrespected the women who were victims of the asylums and the ‘doctors’. The addition of DID and poorly researched mental illnesses was atrocious. Do your research before tackling these huge subjects.

Moods: dark, emotional, mysterious, tense
Pace: medium
Character development: medium
Plot or character driven: plot
Diversity: low
Spice: 0/5
Trigger warnings: Mental Illness, Misogyny, Physical or mental abuse
Rating 2/5

I'm in two minds about this book in that I'd like to have given it 7 out of 10 rather than 4 out of 5.

I thought the story interesting, clever and historically accurate. It centres around Violet Pring, a young woman from a good (but financially constrained) family background. Violet finds herself in the unenviable position of wanting to pursue her own dreams yet being expected to restore the family fortune with a good marriage to the rich (but newly rich) Felix.

The more she is pushed into the marriage, the more she rebels until one night she finds herself forced into an engagement party she claims to have no knowledge of. The following morning Violet wakes to find herself incarcerated in a lunatic asylum, which happened (as we now know) to far too many people with mental health problems.

It is here that my difficulties with the narrative lie. Maybe I was misreading but we'd have Violet in the depths of despair with the dangerous Dr Rastrick (the doctor in charge of the asylum) giving her more and more drugs or having her confined to a strait jacket. However the next paragraph would see Violet virtually returned to her status as a private patient with all its benefits - having her own clothes and her own room.

I don't doubt any of the descriptions of a Victorian lunatic asylum. We've all read descriptions of what went on in these places. I've also no doubt that the staff were poorly paid and not qualified for any kind of nursing care. In that the book is horrifying and quite disturbing as it's unclear whether anyone will believe Violet or another doctor who hypnotises her to get to the root of her psychosis.

The small niggles aside I enjoyed this book. It is interesting but really quite unnerving. When reading books like this where any kind of injustice is taking place I invariably find my nails curling into my palms with frustration as I will the heroine on. Darlings of the Asylum passed that test with flying colours. My only niggle was that I think it has been badly edited. Usually I beg for an axe but this time I wanted more.

Women in distress ★★☆☆☆

hysteria (n.)
Nervous disease, 1801, coined in medical Latin as an abstract noun from Greek hystera “womb,” from PIE *udtero-, variant of *udero- “abdomen, womb, stomach” (see uterus). Originally defined as a neurotic condition peculiar to women and thought to be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus.
General sense of “unhealthy emotion or excitement” is by 1839.

Desperate to lead an independent life as an artist, Violet struggles to accept her family’s marriage plans for her. However it’s 1886 and women have very limited choices. Society doesn’t have a place for Violet and, after an incident she can’t remember, she finds herself in an asylum at the mercies of sinister family adviser Dr Rastrick.

The tone of the novel – a little formal and quaint – mimics the period which can make it difficult to connect with Violet in the first part of the novel.

Once she is in the asylum we get more of a sense of the women’s lives and the disturbing focus on mental illness being perceived as part of female physiognomy rather than trauma or life experiences. This is the part of the story which really resonated with me.

I found Violet’s revelations in the latter part of the novel to lack credulity and to create too much of a contrast with the earlier story but I appreciated the clever finale.

A novel of three parts which delves into the fate of Victorian women who are victims of their life experiences and of society.