2.5⭐️ This is described as gothic feminist horror novel which is one of my favourite genres and the blurb sounded great so I couldn’t wait to dive into it. Unfortunately it fell flat for me and it wasn’t at all what I was expecting.

I found it very slow and quite confusing in places and I can’t really tell you what the plot was because I don’t feel like it had much of one. It was also very repetitive especially in the historical storyline.

Disappointed I didn’t enjoy it but thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this before publication in exchange for an honest review

This is a book I’m going to be thinking about for a long time.

Slashed Beauties is a haunting and disconcerting yet thought-provoking novel told from dual POV. There is a legend of three 18th-century wax models of women, known as Anatomical Venuses or 'slashed beauties', and legend says they are bewitched, coming to life to murder men who have wronged them.

Eleanor is an 18th-century sex worker. Young and naive, she is taken in by Elizabeth and Emily, who promise her a life of luxury if she joins their soon to be illustrious sérail.

Alys is a modern day antiques dealer, offered an extremely generous amount of money to transport one of the anatomical venuses to London - but she is told that it must be destroyed when it gets there.

“𝑭𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚, 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒔𝒆 𝒎𝒆𝒏 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒅𝒆𝒔𝒆𝒓𝒗𝒆. 𝑾𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒊𝒕. 𝑻𝒐𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓.”

A story of sisterhood and betrayal, this is a gothic feminist horror that made me sad and angry from start to end. Emily and Eleanor were by far my favourite characters, I was absolutely enamoured by them and how their story unfolded. But it was really the end of this book that hit me the most, and the plot twist that I truly never saw coming.

I would give this 6⭐️ if I could, genuinely.