Winifred Notley has urges that she struggles to control. An unwanted child, she is forced to make her living as a governess and she comes to Ensor House in that role. As Winifred tries to control herself, her actions and imagination swirl in an unhealthy atmosphere.
Did I like this book? No, I can't say that I did but despite myself I found myself reading on. It's not for me but there is lots to admire in the writing within a fairly narrow genre.

A 5 star read!!

Miss Notty is one of my favourite protagonists of recent years...never have I routed for someone quite so unhinged. As immoral as she is there is a wonder to her, a sense of whimsy and I think this is what draws me to her. Her quick wit and surefire vision that what she is doing is simply a mistake like dropping coffee on yourself or is completely justifiable.

SPOILER* - The scene with the baby swap will stick with me, the dark humour of it all truly bubbles up to the surface in this section and that is what shines for me in this book.

With short snappy chapters, you will fly through this. Or if you prefer an audiobook the narrator for this does a stunning job.

Highly Highly Recommend for a romp into the unhinged.

Wow wow wow. I was expecting something dark and twisted but this is next level!
I must admit I am partial to a Victorian novel with a governess as protagonist.
If Jane eyre had been more like Fred mr Rochester would’ve definitely had a different ending ….

The story fell flat for me. The concept was interesting and I was really excited for it. However, the story didn't fulfill that interest

What a brilliant book. The dark Ms Notty is a nanny to the Pounds children but has very little tolerance for the rest of the household and staff. People disappear, secrets are revealed and I loved it. Dark, funny and just brilliant.

F*** me up Florida this was fab, and I read it so quickly! I love blood, guts, gore and angry girlies. It never gets old, give me 5000 more. I definitely will be chatting everyone’s ear off in our bookshop about this one. Perfect for lovers of subversive horror, and female rage. It’s a unique play on typical historical fiction tropes, filled with twists, dreamscapes and a really gorgeous degree of dark humour. I loved the blend of reality and Fred’s twisted imaginings throughout, and the prose was deliciously horrifying. What a beautiful wee beast of a book!

Victorian Psycho is a bloody triumph. Feito creates a vivid, absurd, but oddly relatable world, which Miss Notty slashes her way through. Her energy: sadistic and sarcastic in all the right ways. This is the kind of book I'll be thinking about for a long time to come, I can't wait to go back and read Feito's debut, Mrs March.

I chose to read a free eARC of Victorian Psycho but that has in no way influenced my review.

There I was, minding my own business on Goodreads (actually, that's the opposite of what I was doing - I was having a nosey at what everyone else was reading!) when this book suddenly popped up. One of the horror bloggers I very much admire was RAVING about it. The version I actually saw was the US version so I went looking to see if it was being published in the UK. It was, by Fourth Estate Books, and if I loved the US cover then I was completely smitten the the UK cover (that neon green! Those blood splatters!). It was then that I realised who the author was - Virginia Feito - author of Mrs March. A book I have been desperate to read for quite some time now (also, another FABULOUS cover - go check it out!). By this point, I felt it was written in the stars. I had to read this book and I wouldn't rest until I had a copy in my sweaty paws.

And what a bloody, macabre, twisted ride it was. Victorian Psycho is a fairly short novel at 184 pages but oh my gosh, it packs one helluva punch. Winifred Notty has arrived at Ensor House as new Governess to the Pound Family. Tasked with looking after the two rather obnoxious Pound children, Winifred spends her days entertaining herself with her own, somewhat dark thoughts. That is until Christmas morning arrives and the dark fantasies harboured by the Governess spill over into reality with gruesome results. Read with caution if you're uncomfortable with fairly graphic violence.

Personally, I loved Victorian Psycho. Extreme, violent, totally unrelenting and wholly unapologetic. Unlike anything I've read before (and I've read a number of Victorian Gothic thrillers where the Governess dallies with the dark side). Victorian Psycho really pushes those boundaries. Feito takes her main character further than most who write in the same sub-genre would dream, and it was a nerve-shredding, exhilarating experience. The book starts three months before Christmas but in that time the reader becomes acquainted with Winifred Notty and her innermost thoughts. She's dangerous, darkly funny, completely unpredictable and the last person suited to the role of Governess. No one, old or young, human or animal, is safe from the murderous hands of Miss Notty.

Would I recommend this book? I would, yes. Victorian Psycho is a shocking, unsettling, creeping read that won't let you go until you've turned the final page. It's full-on, macabre and totally engrossing. I adored the feminist edge, I fell head over heels in love with Winifred (she's wholly unlikeable and evil to the core so I may be the only one there!). The dreary Victorian setting  of Ensor House and its grounds was uncomfortably vivid, creeping under my skin and giving me chills. The supporting characters were sublime, I whole heartedly believed in them. And I was entranced by the dark, disturbing plot which had me turning the pages at a rate of knots. Oozing darkness, totally irresistible and shocking to the core. Truly a Penny Dreadful for the modern times! Highly recommended.

I chose to read and review a free eARC of Victorian Psycho. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.

[Review will be published on 18th February]

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.