Thank you first off to the publisher and NetGalley for an early copy in exchange for a review!

I will start off by saying, I had high hopes for this one. The premise sounded very interesting and I was hoping it would be very dark, full of feminine rage, etc. I'm left feeling disappointed as I did not feel those things. I ended up DNFing at 72%.

My main problem is I did not connect well with our main character here. Lilly is indeed flawed and things don't seem to go well for her. With this, usually I connect well with these types of female leads. But I didn't here. Most of what I read was very boring unfortunately. I found it mundane, day to day things that were uninteresting. Again I think I was just expecting darker or more riveting with her being in an insane asylum and talking about the journey she took with bodies behind her... not sure what happened here. The atmosphere was done well, very detailed in describing her boarding houses, the details of some situations and things going on in this time period. But that was about all that I found interesting.

I will round up my rating to 3 starts as it didn't bore me to death or anything extreme like that. I think if this caught me in a different point in my reading mood it may have worked, with it being slow and descriptive, the way the author had Lilly do her story telling was interesting sometimes. But I'm not in that mood and reading it along side the other book I'm reading, which is very action packed and dark, it just fell flat.

Thank you again for the early copy in exchange for a review! I may definitely pick this up and finish it at a later date if my mood matches.

Adored this book from start to finish! I loved our unreliable narrator, Lily, and her cut-throat sense of humor so much, I really found it hard to put this book down because the contrasting stories were so interesting. One of the best books I read this year and one i'll be recommending to friends who also enjoy well-plotted and well-written historical fiction!

Sehr gut geschrieben, sehr interessant, über die Anfänge der Psychoanalyse und natürlich einmal mehr die schlechtere Behandlung von Frauen. Werde ich sehr gerne empfehlen.

The cover is gorgeous - this is a really enticing book! 💜

This is a debut historical fiction - and an award-winning one. I think it'd appeal to fans of Virginia Feito's Victorian Psycho, Jane Harris' The Observations and Kat Dunn's Hungerstone. I loved the North of England settings.

It's the kind of story where 'voice' is key - and fortunately, especially in the opening of the novel, the first person narration is a tour de force. The writing is vivid and unpredictable which made it an engaging read (e.g. "My previous cellmate, a tiny red-haired girl from Eccles with impeccable sleeping manners, has been carted off to the seclusion cells and shackled for whittling a knife from laundry tongs..."). The most memorable scene for me - though pretty gruesome - was Lily's foray into killing rats. If I have a minor quibble, it's that I wasn't keen on the epilogue - it felt a bit heavy-handed and as if Lily, on achieving safety/contentment, had lost her sparkle. Overall this a great read & I look forward to more from this author.

4.5 ⭐ rounded up

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy.

I was drawn to this book because of the time period and setting and really enjoyed that aspect of it. I also liked that we had an unreliable narrator, though there were points later on in the book where I expected the true parts to be a little more shocking. Even though she was obviously conniving, I was still rooting for her all the way through.

I personally found the scenes in the asylum outside of the therapy sessions to be a little mundane at times. Due to a plot point towards the end I can see why they were included, but when reading them they felt a bit like filler. Overall though I enjoyed the book and was excited to see how it ended.

Rounding up to three ✨


I liked lily, I liked that she was not always telling the truth. I liked her ability to get up and get on with things no matter what the circumstances.
The dual timeline worked well too, giving up present day, and life in an asylum, and looking back on what brought us there.
My main issue was how slow some parts could be. I'm afraid some felt a little dull (to me. Could just be me)
But there was always something happening to pick up the story and keep me interested

I was excited to read this debut novel by Heather Mottershead. On the face of it, it seemed like a straightforward story of a woman in the late Victorian period who is recounting her incarceration in a mental asylum. But as the story progresses, the reader realizes there is much more to this tale. The main character, Lily, is a very unreliable narrator. Imprisoned for murder, she is later sectioned in an asylum, and it is here that she is given the new 'talking' therapy by a strange therapist. Lily tells her life story to this therapist, hoping that it will free her. But her account is twisted, and the reader gradually understands that much darker forces are at play. The novel highlights many of the struggles women in this period faced - the injustices, the dangers, the misogyny. The novel tackles important themes, such as women's lack of rights, lack of bodily autonomy, lack of freedom. I think Mottershead has done a great job in bringing history to life, and I look forward to reading whatever she writes next.

Thank you to the author and publisher for this e-ARC via NetGalley! That has not influenced this review and all opinions are my own

The blurb for this book sounded so incredibly interesting and it drew me in straight away!

This is a book about revenge, adult relationships, hardships, and one woman’s journey through life which ultimately ends with her in an ‘asylum’.

We have an unreliable narrator which I really loved and found interesting. There are time jumps which seem to fit in perfectly with the current timeline, and a lot of important context was given. I just love how incredibly intelligent the FMC was, and how manipulative and shady she was. And to be fair, every decision she made was very much justified!
The Victorian gothic setting was incredible - there’s a lot of language reminiscent of the time, and you can tell the author did a lot of background reading to provide that atmosphere. There are some triggering topics, but I feel they’re managed in a very respectful way, and they are there to provide specific purposes (which is hard to explain in a spoiler free review).
The pacing of this book was great and I was drawn to it, hence why I finished it pretty quickly. There are no ‘mundane’ parts, and there is no part of the book which is just ‘fillers’ for scenes. Every single scene is carefully chosen with the plot in mind.

If you’re looking for a gothic tale of a Victorian woman in rebellion, this is the one for you!

Rating: 5/5 stars (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)