I am a big fan of Bridget Collins books but I did not enjoy this at all .
It was all a bit contrived for me -the spiders and the silence inducing cloth were a step too far I'm afraid .

Thankyou NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest review

First, thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read an ARC of The Silence Factory. Definite touches of gothic horror in this book - and not for anyone who's scared of spiders. I can't say that I liked any of the characters in the book very much and it wasn't a book that I particularly enjoyed reading. I thought that the idea was a good one, but just not for me. 3.5* rounded up to 4*

Henry Latimer is an audiologist whose chance meeting with Sir Edward changes his life. Sir Edward's family fortune is based around a silk that can create silence. As Henry gets drawn deeper into the family's history and the secrets which surround the silk factory he questions everything he hears and feels - just how powerful is the silk?

Bridget Collins excels at strange gothic historical novels and this is really atmospheric. The novel combines the story of Henry's business ambitions and the diary of Sophia who discovered the silk spiders. For me both of the stories had too many missing elements there were secondary characters I wanted to know more about, actions that were never fully explained.

Thank you for this ARC!

Unfortunately I couldn't get into this story. The writing was beautiful but I was struggling to picture anything as the descriptions are so detailed and metaphorical. It was very slow starting it and I did take a while to get through it.

A gothic mystery that leans into folklore to build it's plot and characters that was truly an edge of your seat read.

A gothic mystery dips the edge of its handkerchief into the sphere of folklore and magical spiders. Sounds bizarre but it works thanks to the narrative weaving skills of the author.

Henry, a hearing aid specialist, becomes embroiled in the world of silk making quite serendipitously when called upon to examine the apparent deafness of the daughter of a mill owner. The silk fabric has the magical property of creating a curtain of silence wherever it is placed and is created by a cluster of spiders who were snatched from their natural habitat, sailed to England and used to create a fortune for the mill owner. Sadly, there are nefarious plans afoot that don’t bode well for anyone

I’m sure it’ll be a bestseller, however after enjoying Collins’ previous novels, I was left a little disappointed with this one as I couldn’t warm to hardly any of the characters; I also felt desperately sorry for the spiders...

My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own unbiased opinion.

The Silence Factory is a double-narrative story. It starts with Sophia Ashmore’s narration, written in the format of her diary.
Sophia has followed her husband James to the Greek Island of Kratos to find a man who, it turns out, has died before their arrival.
She tells of her friendship with a local healing woman, Hira. And the discovery of a species of Spider ‘the seirine’ which spins a silk with seemingly magical properties.

The second narrative is from the viewpoint of Henry Latimer, a couple of decades later.
Henry Latimer is a hearing trumpet practitioner, still mourning the death of his wife and still-born child less than a year previously. He’s a delicate character. A poet and rather naive and lost.
He has a chance meeting with the enigmatic Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy. Owner of the Telverton Silk Factory, which weaves the silk from the spiders bought back from Greece by his descendant, James Ashmore.

Henry is infatuated with the silk and also with the eccentric and megalomaniac Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy.
It’s clear that Sir Edward is a Narcissist. His initial charm and exuberance holds people’s interest but he is also a laughing-stock amongst them.

Edward travels to Sir Edward’s Estate -Cathermute house to try and fit his profoundly deaf daughter Philomel with an auricle. Philomel is a joyous little girl, despite her deafness but she is forbidden to use ‘Finger Speak’, the sign language that her nursery teacher, Miss Fielding has taught her.

Sir Henry employs Edward to promote Telverton Silk and one of the things that Henry develops is a property called
Sub Rosa - a show-house of silence, showing off the many ways in which the silk can be used.
It certainly seems like a miraculous fabric. But one side offers up complete silence and the other, hallucinatory disturbances.
There are even medicinal tablets (Telverton Numms) try and ward off the strange sickness, auditory hallucinations and disorientation that workers at the factory and visitors to Telverton experience.

I think the secondary narration in the format of Sophia Ashmore’s diary from the Greek Island of Kratos, where the spiders came from and their theft for monetary gain wasn’t as gripping as the Henry/Sir Edward narrative.
And unfortunately, the Factory scene towards the end with Worsley was when I pretty much switched off entirely. It was chaotic and a bit frustrating to read.

The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins is stunning, stunning! A dark Victorian gothic and as such, pay close mind to the TW's

Dual timelines, dual pov, artfully woven with mystery, secrets and betrayals

Dark gaslamp, industrial revolution grittiness interspersed with the restrictions of the time in respect of Henry's affections. An era where Henry just wants respite from the noise that surrounds and engulfs him. Henry meets a trader who claims to have a silk that will keep all of the noise out, will he buy into it and where did it come from?

A gripping read that had me completely captivated. Perfect for fans who love to get their teeth into a Victorian Gothic tale

Thank you to NetGalley, HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction | The Borough Press
and Bridget Collins for this ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

Henry dreams of silence, and for his loneliness to be filled, when one day he meets the enigmatic Sir Edward offering him a new life. In spite of all the warnings he receives, Henry cannot help but be charmed by the magical silk that can drown out the noise of his emptiness.

Filled with tense, dark and sinister undertones, Bridget Collins yet again succeeds at building a plot woven in mystery and a cast of characters with hidden agendas and secrets.

Collins’ statement historical world with a hint of fantasy is created yet again with an original concept that takes time for the reader to understand, but it is time worth taking.

Collins’ asks you for patience, she doesn’t give things away quickly, she stretches the imagination and confuses before she reveals it is utter brilliance.

I feel Bridget Collins’ writing is the Black Mirror of Historical Fiction and I cannot wait for the next new concept.

I received an advanced kindle copy from Netgalley, thank you so much for this. I loved it so much I couldn’t resist buying this beautiful hardback to join my Bridget Collins collection.

What seemed like a very interesting concept turned out to be a huge disappointment.
The story had so much potential and unfortunately it was wasted.
Henry as a main character was incredibly hard to cope with because of how self-deprecating and truly annoying he was. He falls in love with Sir Edward (who himself doesn't feel very real either) for no real reason whatsoever because no interest was shown, and just appears to be blinded by that love throughout the whole book. His decisions and choices were honestly stupid and I found it really hard to even finish the book because I just couldn't take his whininess anymore. I ended up skimming the last 20ish % of the book just for the sake of finishing it so I could properly review it.
The only interesting parts were the diary entries from the past but sadly their potential wasn't truly explored either.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for sending me an egalley in exchange for an honest review.

Anyone who has ever lived in a flat or a terraced house will understand just how wonderful it would be if there was a fabric that you could buy that would completely block out sound all the sound behind it. I found I could relate so hard to Henry's desire for silence and why he thought it could be such a life-changing thing for so many people. I enjoyed the unusual historical fantasy setting, and the author really brings to life the setting and the characters within it. There's a lot of strands to this story and a lot to unpack and think about, and I really enjoyed that. I thought it was brilliant.

I thoroughly enjoyed both storylines in The Silence Factory. As with Bridget Collins' other works, the world-building, plot, and prose in her latest book are impeccable! The descriptive narrative and well-paced plot make for an incredibly exciting read.

I highly recommend The Silence Factory to all fans of gothic and mystery novels!

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed The Binding, though not so keen on The Betrayels, this Bridget Collins book again didn't really do it for me.
A very drawn out, long winded story with a dual narrative which didn't really work. The story seemed to drift off and although the style of writing is beautifully descriptive I felt let down by the ending.

A firm Collins fan after reading her first two adult novels, I was sold when I heard she had a new book out. Before I start with this one, there’s some content that some readers might want to be aware of - check out at the end for more detail.

Told in two timelines, with two points of view, you follow Sophia in the past and Henry in the Industrial Revolution present. I struggled with this one as I found it really hard to connect with Henry, particularly with the choices that he makes in the first 3/4 of the book. I really struggled with engaging with the story as it unfolded, it felt overly lengthy and just not for me. But then it started to pull me in at about half way through, and Henry makes his big discovery at the 3/4 mark.

Thanks to the team at Harper, Netgalley and the author for the opportunity to read this review copy.



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⚠️Content warning/potential spoilers: includes reference to miscarriage, mental health, suicide, there’s reference to and much detail about spiders. I know it’s in the blurb, but just so you know, there’s spiders. And webs.

I was so excited to read this but I requested and got it too late, archived before I could read, unfortunately!

I had read and loved The Binding by the same author and so was really looking forward to reading this novel. It is Victorian Gothic at its best, the author’s use of imagery is poetic and allowing you visualise everything she writes about. The conclusion of the story is dramatic and gripping. I will be highly recommending this book at my various book groups.

This book wasn’t for me. As much as the story was compelling to me the writing style just wasn’t for me unfortunately so I couldn’t finish the book.

A brilliant gothic mystery with a plot split into two timelines that gradually fuse together
Loved the concept of the novel - just spellbinding and chilling at the same time
Thanks @bridgetbutnotjones @boroughpress @netaglley for the fabulous gothic read

I quite enjoyed this book although thought it was quite a mixture of different genres; all at once it was historical fiction, dystopian, gothic and almost a bit of horror (the spiders!). I had enjoyed The Binding, which I thought was wonderful, but was less keen on The Betrayals. There is no doubt at all that Bridget Collins is a fantastic writer; her descriptive powers are unsurpassed, the plot is tightly woven and the characters are really good. I felt this book wandered off tangent somehow and for a change I didn't feel the dual narrative worked particularly well. Three stars from me.

I’m finding it difficult to pull my ideas together for ‘The Silence Factory’, and for the best reasons! Normally, I take down noteworthy quotations and annotate the text with my thoughts as I read, but with this novel, I didn’t mark any quotes and I took no notes – I was too busy reading! I was so happily given over to Bridget Collins’s storytelling.
I had wolfed down Collins’s other books, and so, when I saw mentions of ‘The Silence Factory’ start to appear, I could hardly contain myself and – wow, oh wow – does she deliver!
Book by book, Collins has demonstrated a gift for writing sympathetic characters. Sophia’s diary entries punched through my chest, right to my heart and squeezed. Her discovery of her sexuality is written with such bruising pathos, and it’s not just Sophia: Miss Fielding’s relationship with her charge, Philomel, is also perceptively real, delicately drawn. Bridget Collins, in fact, is superb at writing authentic female voices, down to the Telverton women who work in the silk factory; mothers, wives, cousins, daughters, sisters. Even the women off the page (Henry and Edward’s dead wives, even Hira to a certain extent) flare with blazing life.
On the other side of that coin, Collins’s main character Henry, is also absorbing. I don’t think I’ve felt such simpatico with a male protagonist since Natasha Pulley’s ‘The Half Life of Valery K’ (okay, maybe Thomas in ‘Enlightenment’ by Sarah Perry).
Two other crucial elements typical to Collins appear in ‘The Silence Factory’: hand-in-hand with the gorgeously gothic setting, she once again explores the theme of madness/mental suffering, and; we are, once again, invited to suspend our disbelief. I love Historical Fiction that balances on that edge of Supernatural/Paranormal – think Natasha Pulley, Laura Purcell. If you like these writers, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend ‘The Silence Factory’ as a crucial addition to the Queer Gothic Fiction canon.