More books like this please! Fans of historical fiction and gory horrors, you won't want to miss this one. This was so darkly fun, I couldn't give it any less than five stars.
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A pre-warning that there are plenty of content warnings for this, so I'd recommend staying away if you're squeamish. However, for me it was perfect. It was the right amount of gory, grotesque and downright psychotic. The Victorian setting fitted so well with the story; it made it so atmospheric along with Feito's amazing descriptions, you could physically feel the dinginess and the gloom all throughout. I don't think this book would have had quite the same effect had it been set in more modern times.
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I loved how fast paced it was with the short chapters; it definitely is one a lot of readers will be able to inhale in one sitting. The FMC of Winifred was so unlikeable in the way a serial killer should be but I also couldn't help but get behind her— I liked that she seemed to have more about her than just being a straight up killer and that plot twist toward the finale had me spinning! The supporting characters all had a good part to play too, they all felt like real people to me, as if this was an event that could have easily happened during that sombre era. I also loved the surprise of the few illustrations that were dotted in the book, I thought this really gave more depth to the plot as a whole and made me feel even more immersed into the story.
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I'd absolutely recommend this to fans of the horror genre and those who may have a morbid fascination with the dark and macabre side of the Victorian era. It turned my stomach while also keeping me gripped, I need more!

Thank you Netgalley & 4th Estate for my eARC!

Winifred Notty steps into the foreboding Ensor House with a mission to embody the quintessential Victorian governess. Her intentions are clear—she will dutifully teach Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime tales, and make only the occasional jest about eating children. However, as the days stretch on within the dreary halls of the Pounds family estate, Winifred’s resolve begins to falter under the weight of the family’s grotesque peculiarities and moral failings.

Virginia Feito crafts a protagonist who is both unsettling and captivating. Winifred’s attempts to suppress the sinister urges of her past lead her into bizarre and darkly humorous escapades—whether it is traipsing across moonlit lawns in her undergarments or slyly unnerving the house staff. Feito’s prose deftly navigates the fine line between the eerie and the absurd, pulling readers into Winifred’s twisted world where the boundaries of imagination and reality blur.

The story crescendos on Christmas morning, when Winifred’s macabre imagination finally overflows into the tangible. Feito’s trademark sardonic wit shines throughout, paired with a flair for vivid, gothic descriptions that make Victorian Psycho a delightfully chilling read. The book offers a fresh, darkly humorous twist on Victorian tropes, underpinned by Feito’s masterful ability to balance the grotesque with the gorgeously macabre.

Fans of psychological thrillers and gothic tales will find Victorian Psycho an enthralling and uniquely twisted exploration of identity, repression, and the haunting allure of the bizarre.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.

I enjoyed this silly novel about a psycho governess, even the chapter headings are funny. Great cover too.

The premise promises yet another Gothic story of a governess in a haunted house, so I was expecting a dreary sort of feminist (or, at least, female centric) corset flick, of the Laura Purcell variety. I could not have been more wrong. What you might expect seemingly becomes clear when the narrator, a governess coming to a haunted-looking house, breaks the fourth wall for the first time. Reader, is this the Fleabag of Gothic flicks? But then, it becomes completely unhinged.

Part Gothic spoof, part satire, part Shirley Jackson on steroids, this should have totally worked for me. We have some gory imagery, a postmodernist style and a story worthy of a real, not Netflix Disneyfied, take on an older Wednesday Addams. I loved the style and was curious about the narrator and her motivations.

Unfortunately, Feito's narrative did not manage to keep me engaged or entertained. The characters' motivation becomes clear pretty early, and I can't believe I am saying this, but Bella Mackie did it much better (despite all the issues with that book). At least she had kept me hooked on the plot.

It felt like Victorian Psycho really wanted to be edgy, but, sorry, I've read Walking Practice by now, if you want unhinged, go all in. The style eventually got a bit stilted, too - the beauty and endurance of Shirley Jackson is in the hints and the moderation, it is not supposed to be on steroids.

Overall, I liked the beginning and the anticipation of this book much more than I liked the book itself.

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher, for the review copy.

✨4 stars✨

This book had the eerie Victorian vibes, with a dark and grotesque plot, bizarre and definitely psychotic (as the title would suggest) protagonist with a sprinkling of humour throughout.

Winifred, our protagonist, was one of if not the most unhinged character’s narrative I think I have read. Multiple times I had to reread sections to try and work out whether it was actually happening or parts of her imagination which made for a sense of foreboding.

This was definitely one of the most unique books I have read, and it was relatively short at around 200 pages so if you’re looking for a fast-paced read this could be for you, if you don’t mind a bit of gore.

I received an ARC from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

If you like your books on the slightly grotesque side then do check out "Victorian Psycho" by Virginia Feito. It reminded me of "Poor Things" and "Salt Burn", mixed up, quirky... This is a short read, bound to shock at times but brilliantly written. Can't wait to see the film adaptation.

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Felto won't be for everyone. It's dark, disturbing ,often gross and totally bonkers.............I loved it!
Winifred Notty is employed as Governess to the children of the Pounds family. A family who like almost every other character in this crazy romp are dysfunctional, awful and downright weird. As the saying goes there's "something of the night" about Winifred, a kind of psychotic Mary Poppins with more than a touch of Michael Myers and after she enters the Pounds' house things will never be the same again.
This is great fun but definitely not for the squeamish and there's more than a touch of social commentary about the class distinctions of the Victorian era with the Pounds and their awful friends being a motley collection of totally amoral grotesques. This to a degree that I saw the grisly denouement of their story to be almost a happy ending.
I really enjoyed this book,pitch black humour,moments of genuine horror and plenty of "too much information" parts thrown in just in case the reader isn't already cringing enough.
A new author,and genre,to me but I'll definitely be reading more of Ms Felto's books.

This was a fun read, a romp through Victorian society highlighting, through the voice of governess Winifred Notty much of what was wrong with the era. The story is told rather like a penny dreadful, full of gory detail.
The reader figures out very quickly that Winifred is unusual and she is hiding a secret. She applies for a job with the Pounds and is governess to their two children, thirteen year Drusilla and eight year old Andrew. The children are undeniably awful, the father lecherous and the mother pompous and the house is managed with a strict hierarchy.
The author creates a wonder gothic atmosphere with details of life such as the Christmas dinner, the details of the discovery of a mummy, the chimney sweep stuck in the flue and the house guest with syphilis. Winifred is a gloriously unreliable narrator who hints darkly at the ending throughout the book.
Lovely details and great fun. With thanks to Netgalley, 4th Estate and William Collins for an arc copy in return for an honest review.

A stunning, sharp, and utterly hilarious rendezvous through the psychotic, strange, but strangely relatable Winifred Knotty a young woman with a tragic past exploring her life, mind (and questionable actions) as she navigates her newest post as governess to the Pounds family. The love child of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho and Elliot Gish’s Grey Dog this is the penultimate mix of female rage, sarcasm, jaw dropping scenes, and wit. The Victorian backdrop only adds to Feito's explorations of liminality and insanity. A sharp punch of a novel that promises flesh served with its fun.

I found this quite difficult to get a handle on, and eventually decided that it worked best if I imagined all the characters looking like they had been drawn by Edward Gorey. It's bleak and brutal but also quite funny in places, the narrator being a self-proclaimed murderess telling the story of her latest crimes on the way (I think?) to the gallows. There was an odd mix of upper and lower-case letters used at the start of chapters and I could not tell if this was intentional or sometime to do with the fact I was reading an ARC on Kindle, the formatting just seemed off. It wasn't a bad read, but I might not go out of my way to read it again.

You know how comedians talk about having a tight five - this is like a tight five of a book. I don’t mean it’s a laugh a line, rather that Feito has trimmed the fat from this to the point you can romp through it at breakneck speed, missing nothing and loving every minute. If you had the time, you could devour this in a single sitting.

Dark, gruesome, hilarious, wild, weird. I loved how this felt true to its Victorian gothic roots but also incredibly modern. Our protagonist and narrator, Winifred Notty, governess to the Pounds family, is abhorrent and indiscriminate in her choice of victims, and yet the vile upperclass are still shown through a critical lens and there are moments of excellent social commentary.

I always enjoy an unreliable narrator and Miss Notty definitely keeps you on your toes - did she really just do that? Was she imagining that? Is that exactly how it happened? You’ll be left with questions when you finish this book, perhaps wanting to go back and reread certain sections, but not in a way that leaves you dissatisfied. I also really loved how she directly addresses the reader throughout.

I absolutely loved this and will definitely need to check out Feito’s debut and any works that follow this. Thanks so much to 4th Estate for sharing the e-ARC with me - the second I saw it, I knew I had to read it and it’s always such a pleasure when a book lives up to your expectations!

Was it believable? No. Did that bother me? Absolutely not. I confess that I can get a little irked when storylines get too far fetched and although this book was totally bonkers and some of the stuff that happens if it had happened in another book my logical brain would be telling me ‘that’s impossible’ etc. But I think, from quite early on in the book we can tell that our MC is unstable!

This book is very dark and should have all the trigger warnings, yet, I sped through it and was completely engrossed by it.

Thank you to #NetGalley, #4thEstate and #WilliamCollins for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Wonderfully perverse, sometimes bleakly comic take on the Victorian gothic, served up with more than a dash of sensation fiction and a generous dollop of penny dreadful. Outwardly-dutiful governess Winifred Notty is a subversive, unsettling cross between Jane Eyre and Michael Myers, her gruesome past slowly revealed after she takes charge of the son and daughter of the wealthy Pound family. It’s England in the 1850s, the Pounds reside in their isolated, rural, ancestral home Ensor House, its overblown trappings and rigid hierarchies signifying the suffocating excesses and social inequalities of Victorian England – references to James Ensor’s bizarre artwork one of several (heavy) hints at what’s to come. And it’s soon obvious that what’s to come is likely to be a bloodbath, albeit with some unexpected twists and turns along the way.

Feito’s narrative’s deliberately – sometimes ridiculously - over the top culminating in a macabre rescripting of A Christmas Carol. Body horror with a feminist slant, Feito’s combination of revenge fantasy and gorefest plays out like a slow-motion slasher movie – a film version’s already in the works. Feito knows her Victorians, weaving into Notty’s story ongoing commentary on the period’s widespread repression and depravity: from the casual exploitation of the impoverished and enslaved to the prolific murders of babies by foster carers like the notorious Amelia Dyer to the women confined for apparent signs of hysteria and the children tied up at night to guard against masturbation. Although the pacing could be more even, and the critique of gender roles more sophisticated, at its best this is gloriously grisly fun.

This book is utterly mad and incredibly dark. Winifred Notty is employed as a governess to the Pounds children but from page one you know that something isn't quite right. Flashes of the past - or is it the future? - indicate a troubled childhood and more than that in adulthood. Rapidly gaining pace, this novel presents Winifred as the ultimate unreliable narrator, murdering half the house before the reader can catch up with her. The whole thing feels like a fever dream you can't wake up from.

Gothic, grim and gory. This was so much fun to read! Winifred is not your typical governess, in fact she’s much worse. Her unreliable narration sheds light on her horrific past, with a traumatic childhood and murdered mother seeming tame compared to her inner thoughts. I adored the writing, it was stomach turning and disturbing with just enough mystery to keep me hooked on what was going to happen next. This was horror at its best, from the gruesome descriptions to the unjustifiable and unspeakable violence. I do wish the ending wasn’t as rushed, but apart from that, a spine tingling read.

Firstly I like the cover and it was a fast read. Plot wise? There wasn’t really one., It was a very strange book and a little deranged by the end which I didn’t hate but just felt like I didn’t really get anything from it when I finished?

Thanks to netgalley for providing an ecopy of this book on exchange for an honest review.

This book was a surprise hit for me. It had all of the elements that I love: good writing, strong

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. characters and of course, a little gothic horror thrown in.

Victorian Psycho is so so cool! I rated 5 stars because I loved the experience of reading it and the storyline is immaculate! I totally recommend everyone to read this.

Possible spoilers

This one should come with several warnings. It's gruesome, and bloody and violent.
It's also incredibly good fun.
Fred seems to rampage through life leaving a trail of corpses in her wake, and gets away with it.
She has some cracking lines that had me outraged, in the best possible way.
The whole thing builds up to a frenzy, and ending chapters that are quite something.
I found the whole thing thoroughly enjoyable, but not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.

This is one hell of a ride. I absolutely loved this. It's a dark take on Victorian gothic but instead of the couch fainting governess we have a psychopathic, queer, feminist one. It's a breath of fresh air.
Clever take on themes of misogyny, imperialism and class. I liked the use of imagery to conjure such a dark and twisted atmosphere. It's a deftly written book. The descriptions of the food alone are a standalone horror film.
Perfection. I loved her previous book and this is equally as good.