The Governess is an unusual character in media. They can be the Nanny in the vein of Mary Poppins restoring a family to health, they can be more tortured as in the case of The Turn of the Screw and occasionally the unsettling in many a horror story. The person allowed into a family to help bring order, a person you can trust with your children and possibly your secrets means they may know your vulnerabilities. Prepare though for a new type of Governess in the form of Winifred Notty who appears and seizes your attention by the first page in Virginia Feito’s new gothic tale of death and murder the very engaging Victorian Psycho.

In the 19th century the Pounds family have inherited an ancient rambling estate named Ensor House and moved from London with the ir two young children Drusilla and Andrew. They are going through governesses at a fast rate and three months prior to Christmas its time for a new one. Winifred Notty has experience with families and children but is not telling her employees everything as it’s a fresh start for her in many ways. Winifred wants to do well and not let any bad things happen but something things happen. In three months, everyone in the house will be dead.

We tend to think gothic as staid and moody with atmospherics and long silences, but you can dial it up a little and we move into the world of the gothic grotesque and the penny dreadfuls. Victorian Psycho is ramped up to the max and creates it own surreal reality where as Winifred’s confidant we both experience the strange world of the Pounds into which Winifred and her own unusual grasp on reality are colliding. Its an explosive mix and once we realise what Winifred is capable of means it is very hard to put this down all the way to what we know from just a few pages will maan a lot of death.

The star attraction is Winifred herself. She’s absolutely fascinating. She appears well educated, sarcastic, affable and then every few lines drops a line that makes you read again what she just said in her asides to you or to other characters. She can dress an insult to one of her employers just by smiling or acting as if she never said something. She gets the urge sometimes to just lash out or even something strange like lick the fingers of her sleeping charges. The more she talks we get the sense there are a series of strange incidents in her life, unusual keepsakes in her luggage means she both keeps us on edge and yet we like her! She is a woman of extreme passions in life, has a sense of humour and has her eye on a young maid who captures her fancy. Despite the book’s title she is more someone that death and murder seem to accidentally happen to as if she was caught unaware and then must then work out how to hide things. Usually a body. There is an incredibly dark comedic aspect to her even though she is a mass murderer in waiting.

That sympathy works because in the nicest way possible the Pounds family really don’t help themselves. The patriarch of the family measures Winfred’s head is delighted they share a skull size and makes unsubtle hints as his intentions; Mrs Pounds makes her displeasure to Winifred clear all the time and loves to keep the family servants on edge with the occasional weird punishment meted out. Winifred’s charges are sadly no better. The young Andrew is spoilt, demanding and has flashes of very unpleasant behaviour and Drusilla is simply expected to be a lady and yet despite her simpering is at 13 focused on a painter who has caught her eye. Its an explosive household that Winifred is the lit match thrown in with and that isn’t going to well at all for anyone…well except for us as the reader.

At a short length this allows us to follow quickly over three months Winifred’s employment, there are minor events that occasionally may or may not lead to murder (but rarely pre-planned) and then with the arrival of the Pounds’ even more horrible friends and family members for Christmas the finale awaits. By then we know what Winfred can be capable of and its just a question of what event will trigger things and how bad will things get. Reader…it gets BAD we go full on Sweeney Todd Penny Dreadful at the end and with an added reveal of family secrets that explains a few things there is a dark humorous feast of epic violence awaiting us and yet by the end there is a twinge of sadness that poor old Winifred was just trying to be good and saying that after the pile of bodies we find is an impressive thing to say.

Victorian Psycho is a gothic black comedy with a lot of horror that dares readers with how far the story can go and then pushes that little bit more. It has an Addams family style mix of the grotesque pictures and the words not always quite lining up with what happens. A world where upper class snobbery, stupidity and cruelty are getting matched by someone who is very much oblivious and yet more than capable herself of striking back without even knowing they have until they notice the bloody weapon they hold in their hands. You can have a lot of fun reading this but you may want to recheck the moral compass afterwards as no one was really hurt… were they? Highly recommended!

I read this book from beginning to end and am wondering why I did! This book did nothing for me or my synapses, in spite of its rather good synopsis.

This was a book I've devoured (definitely the right word)
I finished it in a day. it's not for the faint of heart but the narrative for any horror fan the gore and unsettling atmosphere in the Victorian setting taking the meaning of gothic horror to a new level. Please pick this up it will definitely be one I recommend for a long time to come

If you like your violence graphic and whimsical, then this is the book for you. This is an Addams Family-style lit fic chaotic mess. I loved Virginia Feito’s Mrs March but this, this was just too much.

Set in Victorian England, Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House to work as governess to the Pounds family’s horrid children. Notty has a secret she’s keeping though, and she’s about to unleash horror on her hosts and their unsuspecting guests (who are more than a bit weird themselves).

I found the novel’s incessant, pantomime-like blood and gore nausea-inducing and while there are moments of tongue in cheek humour dotted throughout, the overall vibe was crass and tasteless.

It lacked the refined style of Mrs March, being more slapstick period horror than clever, psychological fiction. It’s a no from me but I can well imagine how others will enjoy it. 2/5 ⭐️

Many thanks to the publisher 4th Estate for the arc via @netgalley. Victorian Psycho will be published on 13 February 2025.

‘It’s crushed in paint.
It’s papered on the walls.
Everywhere, death.’

From the opening, I was all in with this book. Virginia Feito’s writing is immediate, kinetic – has its own energy: ‘My boots land in mud with the squelch of viscera squeezed in a fist’.

Really great writing always fires off lines of connection for me that link it with other literature. And ‘Victorian Psycho’ did exactly that; our ideal anti-hero, Winifred Notty, has a more-than-judicious dash of Lady Macbeth about her, only with a lot less guilt and a smidge more gristle. She talks to us repeatedly about ‘the Darkness inside my chest’, as though Shakespeare’s ‘spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts’ have filled her, ‘from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty’ (‘Macbeth’, Act One, scene V):

‘Observing my clean respectable image in the glass I open my mouth wide in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the Darkness within me, to spy it peeking out of me, slick and muscular and toothed, like a lamprey swallowed whole.’

Notty tells us her Darkness is ‘like a bat’s rubber thumb hooking onto my organs, accelerating my heartbeat.’ Feito’s imagery is just as revolting as Lady Macbeth’s ‘Make thick my blood. / […] Come to my woman’s breasts / And take my milk for gall’, and just as resplendent!

I also read a grim version of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Pelicans crash / into [the water] / like pickaxes’ and ‘Black-and-white man-of-war birds soar / on impalpable drafts / and open their tails like scissors’ similes from her poem ‘The Bight’ in ‘Victorian Psycho’:

‘Two mute swans glide across the water towards us. Their plumage is pure alabaster, but their beaks […] are a shock of bloody orange, and serrated, like garden shears sewn to their faces with thick black thread.’

And finally, I can’t ignore the likeness (to my mind) between our protagonist’s superciliousness and that of Satan’s self-aggrandising tone in ‘Paradise Lost’. But – wholly aside from comparisons – the fluency with which Virginia Feito crafts Winifred Notty’s first-person present-tense perspective loops narrative, direct speech, inner monologue, and action together is something to savour:

‘I unfasten my home-made cotton corset and as always am invaded by the alarming sensation of rapidly falling flesh, as if it would slap against the floor if I weren’t to catch it.’

Even though the ‘I’ voice is the most difficult perspective to wave around when unspooling plot, Virginia Feito stretches first-person present-tense perspective as far even as to have Notty playing with direct address: ‘I wink at you, dear reader, upon this, our first introduction.’ Delightfully disconcerting!

‘Perverse’ is a word I’m seeing in a lot of reviews used to describe Winifred Notty; she’s giddy with wickedness. Ugh! There are so many ways to describe her! She is frivolous in her interactions with others:

‘“William Ebenezer Poncy Fancey,’ Mrs Fancey announces, then sighs proudly. ‘Heir to the family name and fortune. He is going to do great things, and I pray I may bear witness to them all.”
‘Meanwhile, his three useless sisters, who are standing dully by the drawing-room doorway, look down at themselves as if searching for hitherto undiscovered penises.’

Yes, our anti-hero is recklessly homicidal, pertinacious in her bloodthirst, yet there’s also a naïveté about her murderousness that leans into a type of blamelessness, almost. Feito’s novel is a fine chastisement of the conditions of the time, conjuring up her version of the brutality bred easily by them.

Although the palette for descriptiveness here is gloomy (‘[l]eaves are strewn across the grounds in hues of bile and blood’), altogether, the novel holds a modern vibrancy that turns the monochromatic Victorian, neon:

‘I picture my own soul escaping my body, oozing from between my legs in a clotted, barley-coloured sludge. It leaves a vicious stain on the carpet before slithering about the room to examine the porcelain with the hand-painted boar crest, the ox painting, the sweaty-faced footman who stares straight ahead as if blind. It then slides upward along the wall and presses a featureless face against the window overlooking the copper beech hedges.’

For anyone who prioritises writing style, Virginia Feito’s is some wordsmith! Her similes (‘the clicking of the chain like a blade tapping on teeth’) and metaphors are jaw-dropping, almost always ghastly:

‘Their souls, as soft and unsuspecting as plump, round little robin hatchlings held in sweaty fists.’

‘Ensor House sits on a stretch of moorland, all raised brows and double chin, like a clasp-handed banker about to deliver terrible news.’

And even down to word choice, with the rhythm and form of her lines, Feiro excels. The poetic play of her prose is striking in its ability to reflect meaning in form, where sound shapes and musical patterns (if you hear a novel in your head when reading it, like I do!) let the words show – as well as say – what the author means. Consider the following faint and feeble, vowel-heavy description of a dying body, losing strength, dulled by soft and round ‘o’, ‘a’, and ‘l’ sounds:

‘[H]er arms appear to have lost mobility, as she can only manage to pat clumsily at her collar-bone.’

Compare the spiky consonant-rich description of the crime scene (full of prickly ‘t’ and ‘s’ and ‘k’ sounds) during the slasher finale, which is repulsive – agreed – but Feito channels so much life into her craft that it turns kaleidoscopic:

‘There is a red spatter on the tapestry bell-pull, although the fabric features a pattern of cherry pickers.’

An easy five-star rating, my thanks to 4th Estate and William Collins for my last-minute eARC – this has been a treat of the year!

Frankly speaking, I picked this book because of the title.

Winnifred Notti arrives at Ensor House to be a governess for two children of Mr and Mrs Pounds. At the beginning of the story, you'll feel that this governess is "different." She is a governess that will tell children scary dark stories before bedtime. She has darkness inside her that can't be contained for too long. Unhinged character, unhinged plot.
It's a pretty dark story with trigger warning of violence (gory and messy details), especially close to the end because Winnifred has "a special plan: on Christmas Day. Beware for some shocking moments in this book.
I only wished that there were more pages to feel the psycho behaviours of Winnifred instead of the violence act from her.

"It fascinates me, the fact that humans have the capacity to mortally wound one another at will, but the the most part, choose not to"

Is it weird that I kind of want to be friends with Winifred Notty? Yes? Ok then, moving swiftly on.... 😂

This novel is a fast-paced look into the life of a governess, employed to care for the two young children of Mr and Mrs Pounds. Far from the typical 'governess with a secret' story, the plot of this book deposits the reader right inside the psychopathic brain of our FMC. Fond of prowling the estate in her nightgown and mindlessly slashing the throats of guests of the family, the entire book had me gripped from start to finish!

Can't recommend this one enough!

A Victorian tale of rage and revenge, nicely over the top and pretty funny as well.
Thank you Fourth estate and Netgalley UK for the ARC.

I had hoped Victorian Psycho would be as gruesome and weird as I hoped and upon reading it I was pleasantly surprised, I absolutely loved it and the darkness and humour was a perfect match.

Oh, my God, what a fearsome, horrifying book from start to finish. Victorian Psycho is gory and raw and macabre, and the perfect read for someone who's looking for some history to accompany their horror. Feito does not shy away pretty much from anything, being the reality of the time period or the horrors she explores through the protagonist, Winifred Notty. It's an efficient read, but it absolutely doesn't compromise on the plot or the characterisation. Winifred, in particular, is a delightfully terrible person, but a wonderful protagonist, and it shines through her point of view so strongly. If you're looking for something a bit rougher and unique as a horror story, then this is the book for you!

Not for me. I should have read the blurb more as gratuitous gore is not my idea of a fun time and this has that in spades.

Unfortunately, this novel just wasn’t for me. I was excited to read this, but it fell flat for me. For the most part it felt like it just wanted to shock or disgust the reader which I’m just not a fan of. While I liked the nods to Victorian bookish traditions (the illustrations, the sub-titles of chapters), the whole book left me indifferent as I would have preferred to learn more about the characters and their backstories.

Came for the cover, stayed for the plot - this was such a fun read. Winifred Notty has arrived at Ensor House. She is the new governess to Andrew and Drusilla - the spoilt children of Mr and Mrs Pounds. But as she steps off the carriage at her arrival, she amusingly notes that it’s really funny that soon everyone in this house will soon be dead.

“Little girls everywhere will know they can aspire to kill, too - ‘tis not only the men that do

I absolutely LOVED the creative chapter titles, the addressing of the reader and the protagonists commentary throughout and the combination made this so much fun to read. It’s gothic, macabre and grim at times, but a really great reading experience. It's also quite short so could easily be binged in a weekend - and once you pick it up, it's unlikely you'll want to put it down.

You get glimpses into her mysterious past, with the general idea that it was cruel, depraved and definiitely questionable. The descriptions of the fashion, the manor and the other characters makes it an immersive experience, and Winifred just adds a bizarre, unreliable, hallucinatory and mildly murderous vibe to the function.

Feito brings her Victorian psychopath to life in a kind of lovable way - I loved her as the protagonist and honesly could have read so much more about her antics around the house and in her previous jobs. There is a humorous commentary on class, race, child labour, gender and other topics of the time throughout which made me giggle out loud.

Her employers and their friends are awful - drawing from Victorian stereotypes of the elite and wealthy. You slowly get glimpses into Winifred’s dark past, which I could have had more of.

If you love a “good for her” kind of book this is for you. I went in knowing I would enjoy it, but didn’t expect the level of sharpness and wit which made me love it.

Thank you 4th estate for the copy. This book is out Feb 13th!!

Well, this was a lot of fun!
I wasn't sure what to expect going in to this book and thankfully I ended up having a great time reading it.
It did take me a little while to tune into the character of Winifred and the way the book is written but after that I found myself loving the main character and I was really interested in the story.
This was such a unique, bizarre story that really drew me in and I loved the dark humour that is throughout.
I read this in one sitting and I highly recommend you do that as for me, it really added to the experience.
This was only a short book and whilst I did enjoy that fact, maybe it could have been a bit longer in places, especially the ending where everything goes crazy. This was one of those books where I can totally see it being made into a movie.
I highly recommend you check this out, as I loved it!

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for this eARC.

A book simmering with rage and cutting wit, there is a real glee and gusto to Feito's writing that brings her Victorian psychopath to loathable, loveable life. Winifred Notty has just arrived at Ensor House as the new governess to two delightfully dreadful charges. She has a "darkness" within her and alludes frequently to many devilish past deeds and yet she seems determined to turn a corner, to be different in this new placement. Marrying the class Gothic tropes of a bleak, isolated setting, lingering doom and mysterious noises in the night with a delightfully sharp take on both Victorian society and its lingering influence on modern day life, this story is thoroughly absorbing and explores themes of class, gender and the origin of evil at breathtaking speed and with sharp tongued elegance. Feito has a distinct voice, and she leans into the lyricism of her writing to devise some distinctly disgusting imagery that linger uncannily in the mind. Yet, it is Winifred's asides, scathing in their accuracy, that particularly stand out. Her voice carries this propulsive novel, and yet she is a distinctly unreliable narrator, prone to hallucinations, blackouts, flashbacks and deliberate omissions, so that the reader themselves is unclear of exactly what Notty's intentions are throughout the piece. The tension builds, her actions escalate, the revelations about her past unravel, and yet you are unsure of exactly how her story will close until the very last page. You are unsure of whether to even believe it when it does.

Every character is unapologetically awful, riffing off classic Victorian stereotypes and gruesome caricatures and peeling these back to reveal the scummy underlayers of the rich and the wealthy. Poking fun at their treatment of women, at the hypocrisy and duplicity of the upper classes and at the endless, tiresome social conventions that they must follow, in many ways it fits effortlessly into the literary canon of that era, particularly with the tongue in cheek cartoons peppered throughout. I also enjoyed the exploration of psychopathy: is Winifred's "darkness" derived from her parentage, from her traumatic upbringing, from God or from a mixture of the two? We are left unsure, and yet the novel has no intention of solving that problem, instead we simply lean and shift with her unbalanced mental state and find ourselves indulging in her twisted views, nodding along with her unhinged beliefs as those around her are equally awful.

This is a gloriously gruesome book, full of macabre and visceral description, that moves at a ruthless pace through Notty's experiences at Ensor House. I enjoyed Feito's first novel, Mrs. March, but this one shows her full potential and is a perfect wintry read.

Rating: 3.75 ⭐️

There was so much hype surrounding this book and I get it, but also couldn’t help like it was missing a little something. I really loved the writing style, and it suited the times very well. It also had some great unhinged moments, along with the humour being very dark and subtle. I think for me, I wanted more of a deep dive into the character on why she is the way she is. With this been such a short read, I feel the character development could of really been pushed further for me.

Having said that though, I do think there isn’t enough gothic extreme/unhinged books out there and it’s a genre I absolutely adore and I would still very much recommend this book. I just think I was expecting a 5 ⭐️

Winifred Notty has just arrived at Ensor House, Grim Wolds where she has taken up the post of governess to Andrew aged 8 and Drusilla, aged 13, the spoilt children of Mr and Mrs Pounds, her employers. But as she steps down from the coach she observes:
‘It is early fall, the cold is beginning to descend, and in three months everyone in this house will be dead.’
At their first meeting, Mrs Pounds informs Winifred that the previous governess had been ‘most ungrateful…disappeared without a trace.’ I wondered if Winifred might have a hand in it. Mr Pounds is fascinated by the Victorian art of phrenology and wants to measure Winifred’s head. He’s also very interested in other parts of her anatomy as well and likes to study them at night. She meets, Andrew, the heir apparent and a bully well aware of his position, and Drusilla who is barely educated as it’s seen as unnecessary and that ‘she is now of an age when she risks her fertility from the ravages of overeducation. Says so in the Times’ according to her mother. Winifred immediately interprets it as meaning that
‘Drusilla will be doing much ornamental needlework.’
But all is not well under the apparently normal surface of Ensor House. Mr Pounds asks his wife in front of Winifred if
‘She is growing paranoid again?’
And hints about
‘not wanting to call upon the doctor.’
But there are strange sounds at night as Winifred prowls the house and its many forgotten staircases and rooms until she finds a secret garret which she will put to good use very shortly. She also assumes that:
‘this must be the place where the Poundses have stowed their generations of female hysterics through the ages.’
But Winifred’s true nature cannot be hidden for long when she insists on killing a wounded deer and bits into a calf’s snout in the kitchen. She talks to the children about how a cuckoo invades a bird’s nest killing the other birds and that of course is what Winifred is. Along the way, in flashback, the reader learns of her appalling childhood in which her mother
‘posing as a respectable widow’
marries a clergyman. Illegitimate, Winifred longs to find her father and she has her own reasons for finding employment in the Pounds household. She was convinced that she heard the safety bells inside coffins ringing in the churchyard and her psychotic behaviour began.
But the stage is set for a memorable Christmas at Ensor House. It will be like no other.
Female madness is a theme throughout the novel; Mrs Pounds at one point makes Winifred sleep in the dog kennel and her own mother tried to kill her at 13 months. Even the female mummy unwrapped as an entertainment is devoid of any power as she’s a woman and was a substitute for a far better male specimen. She lies, naked, devoid of any bandages as the Poundeses guests gawp at her while Mr Fishal, stands beaming. Then she’s cleared away.
This is a book written with real gusto and relish. It felt at times like a really black comedy or satire as Winifred begins to go about her work with impunity and, seemingly, without being caught. The attic hiding place soon become filled with her treasure trove.
It’s a dark, dark tale with her childhood, her schooling and her previous posts and her plans for the Poundses. She makes no apology for what she is and revels in it as in her exploits at the Clergy Daughters School. In this case revenge wasn’t a dish best served cold.
I really enjoyed the author’s previous book, ‘Mrs March’ which was such a tour de force. Winifred’s tart observations throughout the book skewer the milieu of Victorian society in which she finds herself in such as when she comments:
‘Bad luck wasn’t a dish served to the privileged’
The book has all the trappings of a Gothic novel; dark, shadowy house, isolated location, mysterious nocturnal noises, an enigmatic housekeeper and a feeling of impending doom. However, I liked Winifred despite her proclivities. She was a fascinating and engaging anti heroine and the cover could have been a portrait of her.
But there are some very gruesome scenes in the book which may be too much for some viewers.
For fans of Gothic novels and anti heroines I think you might enjoy this book as much as I did.

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.

It's hard to describe Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito. I had no idea what to expect going in and I'm still not 100% sure what I read. It's a gleefully grotesque horror-comedy celebration of women's wrongs, subverting the tropes of gothic horror and digging into the gender and especially the social inequality of the Victorian era.

Winifred, the unhinged governess protagonist, isn't exactly a likeable narrator (by design) but she is undeniably compelling. The plot is fast paced and does a great job at seamlessly weaving in backstory in a way that raises the stakes rather than detracting from them.

Thank you to NetGalley, 4th Estate and William Collins for the ARC in return for my honest review.

This was exactly what I was hoping for when I signed up for ‘gleefully gruesome’.

I came for the promise of mayhem and women’s wrongs and stayed for the black humour and the visceral prose. Catch me reading the author’s backlist for more of the same.

Hell bent on a revenge plot that slowly but surely unfolds it’s petals like watching a flower bloom in real time, we follow our unhinged Governess to the Pounds’ estate wherein she hatches a plan to surprise the entire family and their esteemed guests with a Christmas gift they won’t forget…

Winifred is the kind of narrator that makes you laugh even when you know you really, really shouldn’t. It’s the kind of humour that only comes with trauma, okay. But taking a serious look at the prose for a moment, this is a fun and interesting largely linear novel which seamlessly blends backstory and present events so that the reader is able to understand what has driven Winifred to the person we meet en route to the Pounds’ estate. The writing is opulent in its descriptions, breathing with Winifred’s skewed way of seeing the world. Sighs are not gusts of air, they slip out of mouths, soft like organs; reality warps as Winifred’s mental state shifts and flows like water. It’s truly a delight to read, despite the macabre reality - we’re following in the footsteps of a psychopath.

If you love “good for her” horror and reading sharp-toothed women clawing back at a monstrous world, keeping hold of their own inner darkness until they can wreak havoc, this one’s for you. Forget morally grey, Winifred is morally black and I’m here for it.

I laughed, I ‘hmm’ed in agreement, I recoiled and delighted in the chaos. The fast pace doesn’t detract from the robust plot, nor does it dim the engagement with the main character. Snappy and delicious, I ate it up.

It's not a terrible story by any means. It had everything I usually enjoy in this type of novels, actually. But in this case, nothing hit. Nothing. The grotesque moments fell flat each and every single time, I never even snorted at some of the unhinged things she did, I was just completely indifferent towards this entire story and its characters. Some of the twists had me raising my eyebrows in a surprised kind of way, and I liked the poking fun at Victorians, because those people truly were unhinged. I think here it's very much a case of "it didn't hold my attention" rather than "this book is terrible". It has a lot of elements I know others might like so don't cross it off your wishlist because of me, but it was a bit of a flop on my part.