The premise drew me in because it stood out as unusual.

I felt for the women of the story, you’re really put in the shoes of the main character and it’s really quite scary to feel what she felt waking up not know why she was in the asylum.

Enjoyable read.

4⭐️ A thrilling, unsettling and all too real gothic tale that’s perfect for fans of The Mad Women’s Ball.

Happy Release Day and thank you so much to @hqstories for sending me a #gifted copy of this book in return for an honest review✨

As a fan of historical romances, especially the female characters who are spinsters that behave scandalously by the standards of society (the ones who have ambition and want to be more than just a mother and wife), Violet was all too familiar and likeable- definitely no ‘shrinking violet’.

What struck me most about this book was the realisation that Violet represents the sinister reality of what those romanticised heroines, the ‘obstinate headstrong’ girls that refused to conform, could have faced if they weren’t fictional creations.

O’Reilly did a great job of portraying Hillwood Grange as a dark and claustrophobic prison that was basically its own entity, governed by the law of Dr Rastrick and I could feel Violet’s panic as though I was committed in Hillwood Grange myself! Dr Rastrick was the most unsettling kind of villain and he felt real to me - he literally made my skin crawl and made me anxious as to what he would do next. The most terrifying thing about him was that his beliefs and the treatments he administered were all things that patients were subjected to in the real world and I felt like Dr Rastrick was really well written!

If you like gothic and historical fiction or enjoyed The Mad Women’s Ball i’d definitely recommend you give this a read.

A captivating read full of emotion and great characters. Violet was an interesting one - supposedly flighty and highly strung I found her fascinating and brave. Trying to set her own rules and live her own life, her story was a stark contrast to the thoughts of the time, of a female finding a good marriage and conforming to society’s wishes. I loved how we got to explore Violet’s thoughts with her as she spent time in the confines of the asylum - understanding her emotions and neuroses was cleverly detailed and added such feeling to the story.
The asylum itself was atmospheric and haunting, giving a feeling that things were happening behind locked doors - almost sinister by implication. I was certainly gripped til the very end.

This was an interesting read. It felt authentic and I enjoyed the writing style but it seemed lacking in a clear purpose.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for gifting me this arc in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Brighton 1886. Violet is the narrator. Her family were minor members of the landed gentry, but have since fallen on hard times, they are impoverished, and Violet is needed to make a rich marriage, after all she is 24 and almost left on the shelf.
Felix Skipp Borlase is the type of man that Mama approves of, he is pleasant, good looking , well educated and rich, although his family is nouvelle riche in matters of social standing.Mama tries to persuade Violet that she and Felix should marry, but Violet has other dreams and passions, she wants to be an artist, an occupation that is generally considered as unsuitable for young, unmarried ladies.
Violet is strong minded, wilful and impulsive, probably narcissistic in manner, she doesn’t appreciate how lucky she is. Her art teacher, Miss Fanshawe, introduces her to Wilf Lilley , an artist, and he takes an interest in Violets paintings, they are wild, unconventional in subject matter, and he offers words of advice and encouragement, her head is turned by this praise, and he becomes an obsession., she is infatuated with the idea of a bohemian lifestyle and wants a taste also.
The book then takes a darker turn, and we next meet Violet in an Asylum. She became over emotional and has been incarcerated in Hillwood Grange, run by Dr Harold Rastrick. She cannot remember the chain of events that have led to this fate, and resolves to seek her release, as she is not mad or insane.
Whilst undergoing various treatments, Violet gradually becomes atuned to the distressing cases of her fellow inmates, and starts to listen to their stories and provides comfort by listening.
The Asylum cases are disturbing, locked wards were a feature of Mental Hospitals when I did my Nurse training in the 1970’s, and the reasons why women were placed there were poor, pathetic excuses to the modern mind, insanity and hysteria blamed for a too healthy sexual appetite, or when a female refused to allow her husband to let his friends have sexual access to her body.
How Violet copes with incarceration and still maintains her hope of freedom makes for intriguing reading, this aspect of the book is atmospheric, Gothic, and disturbing, the ulterior motives of the medical profession is ever so slightly creepy, yet psychosis and it’s treatment was in its infancy, thank goodness, things are much better understood now.
I really enjoyed this book, it was tightly written, didn’t apportion blame to a hysterical female, but questioned the methods used, and showed compassion. I found it to be well researched, and I did enjoy the ending, it was perfect and deserved.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers HQ Books for my digital copy, freely given in exchange for my unbiased review. I have rated this as five stars, and will leave reviews to Goodreads and Amazon.

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.

"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.