It’s 1847, Urania Cottage in the countryside outside London, is being readied to receive it’s first residents, ‘fallen women’, the intention to offer a refuge to those coming from prisons - prostitutes, petty thieves - and the destitute. They are to be trained for service, and rehabilitated and given a safe place to live, so as they can go on to live a different life abroad. We learn the stories of Martha, Josephine, Emily and Annie through their time in Urania Cottage and beyond it’s doors. Mrs Holdsworth is the matron who runs the house, in charge of both the house and the residents. Her character and that of the women are so well drawn.

Urania Cottage was founded by Charles Dickens with benefactors, one of which is Angela Burdett-Coutts. Dickens doesn’t really feature in the story other than acknowledging his role in the project. In Angela Burdett Coutt’s house in Piccadilly in London she learns that her stalker is being released from prison early again. I love how Stacey Halls brings fact and fiction together, grounded in what is real and happened. Her stalker Richard Dunn is determined and misguided in his attention towards her. His life and that of Angela and the women residents of the cottage are about to collide.

Captivating, evocative and engaging. It is a story of hope, friendship and opportunity. It is up there with another favourite from Halls, Mrs England. Thoroughly recommend if you enjoy historical fiction, this is one to put on your TBR.

'The Household'. I ended up listening to this as I was struggling to finish it but, the q & a at the end was fascinating. While it was interesting, a privately funded household away from everything and everyone out in the Countryside, the Household taught young women vital life skills. Specifically, however, this Household (which Charles Dickens himself secretly funded with Angela Burdett-Coutts who created the RSPCA) focused on thieves, prostitutes, criminals as a way of bettering them for another life in Australia. While it was interesting and fascinating that this is steeped in history, I found it confusing with the stands of different characters.

This book is inspired by real people and events, it’s based in Urania cottage, a home for fallen women to give them a second chance that was setup by Charles Dickens and other benefactors. The story follows the lives of Martha and Josephine, two women who have both left prison under different circumstances to try again in a new home, and Angela Burnett-Coutts their millionaire benefactor.

I love Stacey Halls’ writing, she sets the scene so well I feel completely transported to her world when I’m reading. I think her descriptive writing contributed to the stark contrast between classes as the chapters flick between the girls at the home, and how they got there, and Angela’s privileged life as an heiress. Although Angela has her own problems that impact how she lives her life too.

I didn’t see where this one was going at all and how their worlds would collide so the ending was brilliant for me!

Definitely recommend!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Great historical fiction with sweeping characters and a plot that had me hooked. It took me a while to get invested, but once I was I really enjoyed it

Never say never? It seems this adage comes true at least once in our lives.

Stacey Halls has written some of my favourite Historical Fiction novels. Beautifully written, ‘populated’ with characters that stay with you. Therefore, I was delighted to be approved for an ARC of her latest novel The Household. Alas, we were simply NOT meant to be.

The story is based on true events and, without a doubt, the vast majority of readers will find it interesting, moving even. To me? It was utter boredom on pages. A heiress with money to waste chooses to ‘’create’’ a ‘’household’’ for fallen girls instead of a hospital or an orphanage. The ‘’girls’ feel as if they have been locked up - never mind that most of them have recently arrived from prison - screaming ingratitude towards Angela with every sentence. Her keeper desperately tries to resemble Mrs. Danvers and poor Angela (the only character who is remotely interesting) tries to escape her stalker while pining for a man 30 years her senior.

Not impressed.

I am sorry to say that the toils, woes and troubles of prostitutes did not attract my sympathy or my interest. In addition, Mrs Holdsworth was irritating to the core. Certain parts of the plot ‘’felt’’ fake and cheap. For example, the remarks about colonization from a girl who can’t write her own name seem to serve a gimmick urge to satisfy a portion of the so called ‘’modern’’ audience. And don’t even get me started on the atrocious dialogue.

Yes, well, I doubt these people even KNOW how to read…

The atmosphere is excellent, and the sense of setting is beautiful. And that’s just about it. Unfortunately, this novel was not for me but I have no doubt it will appeal to the majority of today’s readers.

And that says a lot about today’s readers.

Many thanks to Bonnier Books UK and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Stacey Halls is a great storyteller. Her characters come to life on the page and the pace is just right to hold and keep the reader’s interest. I’m particularly impressed that her stories have converted me to historic fiction. I thoroughly recommend it.

My thanks to the author, the publishers and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review The Household.

Stacey Halls is the queen of pulling you into her world. Deftly written, brilliantly described and wonderful.

Halls’ new book focuses on the founding of Urania Cottage, a house set up in 1847 by Charles Dickens and Angela Burdett-Coutts for “fallen women”. These women are offered the opportunity to train as domestic servants and to work abroad, letting them start afresh and be rehabilitated.

The Household focuses primarily on two of these fallen women, Martha and Josephine, and their stories. Halls’ ability to successfully fuse fact with fiction to give her readers a compelling story is one of the reasons why I enjoy her books so much.

Characteristic of Halls’ writing is ensuring that she gives a voice to women of the past, providing them with an opportunity to be the central focus of the story. Within this story, Dickens appears but is largely kept as a background figure, letting the female characters’ voices take precedence as can be seen in all Halls’ other books.

Urania Cottage’s co-founder Angela is also given a prominent role within the story, her wealth and status within society contrasting sharply to those of the women seeking help. An interesting aspect of the story is Angela’s personal issues with a stalker as it depicts the challenges of being a woman, even one of means, in 19th century English society.

My favourite book by Halls is still her debut The Familiars but The Household is still a compelling read although I found it a bit more disjointed than some of her other books and the pace quite slow at times within the book. If you enjoy historical fiction, add The Household to your tbr list.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bonnier Books UK for the arc. The Household is out now. 4⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What a fascinating story and even moreso because it's inspired by real life, I believe?! This novel was impossible to put down, not only because of the brilliant author's writing, but because of the plot, the characters and the emotion of it. Wow!

Having thoroughly enjoyed all of Stacey Hall’s previous books, I was eagerly awaiting this latest offering and was not disappointed.

Although I didn’t enjoy this book quite as much as her previous ones, it is still very interesting historical fiction about Urania Cottage, a house set up in 1846 by Charles Dickens and Angela Burdett-Coutts, for street working and destitute women and girls, where they are trained up for service and a new start in life.

There are multiple stories in the book as we follow the lives of some of the girls following their release from prison, but also that of Burdett-Coutts, their wealthy benefactress.
I found the various threads hard to keep up with at times, hence the fact I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as her previous books, but it is still nevertheless a beautifully written and extremely interesting book about a place I had never heard of before.

As always, I now eagerly await the next offering from Stacey Halls. 4*

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance copy return for an honest review.

Urania Cottage in Shepherd’s Bush, London, was a home for ‘fallen women’ founded in 1846 by Charles Dickens and Angela Burdett-Coutts. Their vision was to provide a safe place for young women to rehabilitate after serving prison sentences or working on the streets as prostitutes. At Urania Cottage they would receive an education and the opportunity to train as domestic servants, enabling them to start new, more respectable lives overseas. In her latest novel, The Household, Stacey Halls imagines the stories of some of these women.

During the period covered in the novel, there are many young women staying at Urania Cottage, but Halls chooses to focus on two of them. One is Martha who, while trying to rebuild her own life at the cottage, is also worrying about her sister, Emily, who has disappeared. As Martha grows more desperate about Emily, she is driven to make a decision she may later regret. The other is Josephine, who had expected a close friend to accompany her to Urania Cottage. When the friend never arrives, Josephine must decide whether to continue participating in the scheme or leave in search of happiness elsewhere.

Dickens himself is mentioned now and then but always stays in the background, never becoming an actual character in the novel. Angela Burdett-Coutts, on the other hand, has a much larger role. We meet Angela as a woman in her early thirties who several years earlier inherited a fortune from her banker grandfather, making her one of England’s wealthiest people. She is becoming known as a philanthropist and Urania Cottage is one of her first big projects.

Angela’s privileged lifestyle means she struggles to truly understand the needs of the women at the cottage, but she and Dickens both enter into the project with the best intentions. However, despite Angela’s wealth and position she still has problems of her own to deal with – such as being stalked by Richard Dunn. She had thought she was safe from Dunn when he was sent to prison for four years, but now he’s been released early and is on her trail again. As I read, I wondered whether this was a fictitious storyline, but I looked it up and found that, yes, Richard Dunn was a real person and did obsessively pursue Angela Burdett-Coutts as described in the book. It seems that other parts of the novel I had assumed were invented were also based on historical fact; after finishing the book I was interested to learn that many of the incidents described as happening at Urania Cottage were taken from Dickens’ letters to Angela and even inspired his own David Copperfield.

The Household is fascinating in many ways, yet it’s probably my least favourite of Stacey Halls’ books. The separate stories of Angela, Josephine and Martha never quite blend together properly and give the novel a disjointed feel. I found the first half very slow and although there’s a twist towards the end that I hadn’t seen coming, it happens too late to really change the way I felt about the book overall. Still, I’m pleased to have had the opportunity to learn about life at Urania Cottage and will look forward to whatever Stacey Halls writes next.

I enjoyed this book. It wasn’t as gripping at her previous stories, but it did keep me interested. It just felt like it lacked something “wow”, but I can’t put my finger on it. Thank you to the writer, publisher, and NetGalley for allowing me to read this.

The Household follows the lives of women who are connected to Urania Cottage a place for women who have fallen in society.

This is fantastic, this is historical fiction at its finest. The right amount of known and unknowns and beautiful character relationships, with an undercurrent of mystery and some jeapardy involved.

I loved the following of Angela Burnett Coutts, her involvement made the story for me where she could have been a stuffy benefactor she isnt. She has her own unique storyline which is facinating in its own right.

My favourite characters have to be Martha and Josephine though, their growing friendship is endearing. Stacey Halls manages to put twists in that I could not see coming and includes so much of London history its incredible that the story never feels slow or meandering.

Another 5 stars and Stacey Halls remains a firm auto-buy author for me.

I love this author and have so far read all of her books. I feel this lacked something that her others had however it was still an enjoyable read

Thank you to Netgalley and Manilla Press for the ARC.

I found this an absorbing and heartfelt historical novel about young women in the early Victorian era from dramatically different walks of life, all left with restricted choices. The novel is dedicated to the inner lives of the women who wash up at Urania Cottage, set up by Charles Dickens, as well as the affluent female benefactor who funded it and the housekeeper who runs it.

The focus on the pleasures and trials of domesticity and class difference in this novel reminded me of Longbourne by Jo Baker, with its exquisite detailing of domestic chores circulating around and beyond the notice of the Bennett family. In at least the first half of The Household there's a similar attention to how domestic tasks can make people feel, as well as the difference between when those tasks are chosen and when they are dictated to you. There's a section early on where Josephine, one of the new young women taken into the house of corrections, is baking with another young woman making a jam pudding. The other woman, Martha, offers Josephine the jam spoon and Josephine asks what she should do with it, not used to offers of pleasant or delicious things. The taste of the jam and the wistful explosion of feelings and memories it wakes in Josephine are palpable and emotive, serving to remind the reader that she has never before been in a position to receive grace or joy from domestic work.

As powerful as these moments can be, the other side of the girls' work isn't neglected. There's a sustained focus on Dickens/the board's obsession with what the girls should think about, talk about, and do in order to make themselves permissible. Sometimes the ideological shackles on the girls draw so tight that it seems these moments of joy are only able to be narrowly snatched from those who mean excruciatingly, suffocatingly well. The novel is very clear that this is the huge, overwhelming flaw of well-intentioned charity work. People have their own impulses and histories, and it's made explicit over and over again that erasing the girl's histories is not only impossible - trauma lingers, as does love - but the crucial mistake at the foundation of the enterprise.

The plot of the novel gains more momentum after the halfway point, although I found many of its developments to be quite predictable. As the novel drew to a close there were not really any surprises, but the author's efforts to give closure to her characters and her affection for them was clear. After the halfway point, I often found myself wistful for more description of life inside the house and less plot. However, I'd still recommend this to anyone who enjoys historical novels, particularly those which embrace the complexity of women's roles.

I have loved every single previous book by this author, and this one is no exception.
The novel is set in a place called Urania Cottage, a small house on the outskirts of London, for "fallen women", It is set up by Angela Burdett-Coutts and some benefactors (Charles Dickens being one of them) The Household revolves around some of those women and Angela herself.

The plot is intriguing, blackmail, missing girls, prostitution, stalking, and the characters all shine through - particularly, Martha, who is searching for her sister, Josephine, and Angela who set up the house. I particularly loved reading her story. The matron is also a very strong character, and the way the different characters and plot aspects weave together is really well done. It's very readable, and I couldn’t put it down. Stacey Halls books just get better and better and I highly recommend this, and can’t wait for her next book!

I can’t say this is my favourite by Stacey Halls - I thought the blurb and premise sounded great, but in all I found it quite slow and difficult to get into. By the time the story did take off I felt a bit like it was too late for me.

There were some great characters and I was interested to see where their stories went, however there were other POVs in the story that I was much less invested in which I think slowed this down for me.

Overall one I’d recommend to fans of Stacey Halls to make their minds up about, an alright story that missed the mark a little for me.

Overall, I enjoyed this novel, but it did seem to take a long time to get going. It completes beautifully, and very satisfactorily, but the run up to that satisfying conclusion took a rather long and slow path, with very little tension along the way. The concept is great - the travails of women of that era, regardless of social status, are clearly demonstrated, along with their almost total lack of power - only wealth brings any sense of power, and even then there are significant constraints.
This is not one you'll rip through, turning pages to see what happens next, as very little does, but as a way of bringing to life some of the brutal realities of Victorian England, it does a great job.

Set in the victorian era featuring the one and only Charles dickens. He comes across an idea to reinstate those that have been in poverty of somesort or in prison back into society. This is where the house hold is formed. It follows those who support the project and those that are part of it. It started off pretty slow tbh, until 70% there is a twist and then the ending is a bit rushed. It had its good parts, but I was wanting more.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy. I really love Stacey Halls books so was really excited to read this one. Love the way she tells historical fiction and was drawn in from the beginning.
However I have only given 3 stars as this book was good, I just didn't fall in love with it like The Familiars or The Foundling. I liked the characters and the story but it went on a bit long and not much happened. There was quite a lot of characters that I struggled to keep up with all the storylines.
I enjoyed reading it I just didn't fall in love with it.
I would still definitely recommend Stacey as an author but this isn't my favourite.