If you're into domestic suspense and historical fiction, then The Savage Instinct by Marjorie DeLuca should be your next read! (Readers should be aware that the novel has themes involving miscarriage, stillbirth, and violence against the incapacitated.) Set in Victorian England, the story follows Clara, a young wife who is released from an asylum for experiencing a violent display of emotion after delivering a stillborn baby. Her husband is more concerned with Clara's inheritance than her well-being and having her committed is the easiest solution to his money woes. Clara has to tread carefully as her husband and his companions plot and scheme to have her declared insane and locked away forever.

One of Clara's hobbies is to read scriptures to women at the local prison. She is especially attached to Mary Ann Cotton, a real historical person who has been hailed as England's first female serial killer. Mary Ann is being tried for the murders of her husbands and many children via arsenic poisoning. Mary Ann's impending trial and sentencing are the backdrop for the tumultuous events in Clara's life. The novel has a slow build and there's plenty of infuriating "man talk" about how fragile and pathetic the female sex is, but there is plenty of suspense at the end to make this a worthwhile read. The ironic ending was unexpected. I'm interested to learn a bit more about the real Mary Ann Cotton after reading this book. I think fans of suspenseful historical fiction will enjoy this one!

*Thanks to the author, Inkshares, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review!

A journey into the dark and desperate mind of a woman with nothing left to lose.

𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬:
DeLuca’s writing is poetic and captivating. I was pulled into this story from the beginning. I enjoyed the parallels and differences between the two women and their struggles. I loved the dark depths the author crawled into to properly portray this tale. This book dives deep into the troubled and desperate minds of women left with little to no options or resources.

It was truly appalling how little rights women had. They were not even permitted to have their own thoughts and opinions. DeLuca intimately captures the struggle and hopelessness Clara felt with absolutely nowhere to turn to escape his cruelty.

This book has made me really appreciate how far the world has come with women’s rights, although I know there is still quite a distance to cover. It has opened my mind to just how strong and resilient women had to be just to survive in a world like that. This is a haunting and dark tale that will not appeal to everyone but if you like to explore the darker sides of human nature then this book is for you!

It's 1873 in England and Clara Blackstone has just been released from an insane asylum into the care of her husband Henry. At the same time, the world is abuzz with the infamous Mary Ann Cotton who is supposedly a serial killer which Cotton denies but is nevertheless imprisoned.

Clara is encouraged to spend her time doing charitable deeds with the vicar's wife and finds herself drawn to Mary Ann Cotton and her story. They form a friendship in which each confides in the other. Despite being from different classes, these two women find they have quite a lot in common and that Clara is just as much imprisoned in her marriage as Mary Ann is.

For the most part I really enjoyed this novel but found the ending quite disappointing which always seems to cast a cloud over the whole book for me which is probably not fair to the writer. Bounds of credibility were stretched a little too far for my sensibilities.

Based on the real-life story of Victorian England's serial killer, Mary Ann Cotton, this book drips with chilling atmosphere, agonizing turmoil and utter despair. The dark intensity is so sharp, so close and so stifling that I FELT it. My goodness, the descriptions, the detail, the goosebumps...talk about mind blowing.

Clara Blackstone and her husband, though fictional characters, seem every bit as realistic as the true story. Henry had committed his wife to two insane asylums for a year as an emotionally unstable female for nefarious reasons. After dire humiliation, mental and physical torture, a doctor finally suggests she is better off at home. What Clara has seen and lived is unspeakable. She is desperate to escape but goes from one prison to another. Henry's insidious treachery and Clara's resultant hopelessness were infuriating! Interestingly, for something to do Clara begins to visit Mary Ann Cotton in prison which results in all sorts of consequences.

The author winds evil thread through evil thread, layer after layer as the story grows and festers. Ignoring dinner, I just couldn't put the book down. It was THAT arresting. I really like stories based on real characters and events with historical fictional twists...when done well, they are extraordinary, as this one is!

If you enjoy mental rollercoasters which will make you hold your breath and put you on edge, this book is for you. It's just...wow. Though I had read about Cotton before, this book prompted me to do more recent research into her story.

My sincere thank you to Inkshares and NetGalley for allowing me the privilege to read this mind blowing book. Am I ever glad to have discovered it!

3 STARS

This is the story of Mary Ann Cotton who is the first British female serial killer in Victorian England in the 1800s.

This book is based on Mary Ann Cotton, who was later convicted of and hanged for, murdering three of her four husband, apparently in order to collect on their insurance policies. It’s assumed that her total number of victims were around 21, as her crimes also included 12 children.

However, in this book, loosely based on Mary Ann Cotton, the horrific character is presented not as the villain of the story. It appears the author wanted to leave it up to the readers to decided so it was strange (to me) how it she presented in the book.

This was dark, tense, and psychological, but overall I enjoyed it.

Fans of historical fiction with dark themes may enjoy this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Inkshares for the digital copy in exchange for my honest review. This book publishes March 15, 2021.

This book had me hooked from the very beginning! The unlikely friendship between two seemingly quite different women that had in common the unfairness of being a female in a world that viewed them as mere breeding stock.

This was a bit outside the box for me. The synopsis really intrigued me and I’m glad I got to read a copy. I liked the setting, the time period and gloomy feel of the book. I imagined Durham with grey skies, a lot of old, cathedral like buildings, and sinister characters. I couldn’t help but feel everyone had an agenda back then. I wouldn’t have trusted anyone. Clara’s past was devastating to read about. All of the character’s stories from the asylum were. It was most interesting though, the connection that she and Mary Ann Cotton formed. You could almost sympathize with what made her do the evil things she had done- or did she? The sensationalism of her case and the reactions of the people, the hunger with which they seek revenge even if it wasn’t personal, isn’t so different from today, unfortunately. The scheming had me on the edge of my seat and the horrific things that happened in asylums and within marriages back then turned my stomach. Barbaric. This was well written and I would read more from the author. I thank Netgalley and Inkshares publishing for an ARC copy of the book.

Actual rating, 3.5 to 4 stars.

I love historical fiction and true crime, so a book inspired by Mary Ann Cotton immediately caught my interest. I had heard of Mary Ann Cotton but wasn't too familiar with her case. But while Mary Ann is defintiely an important figure in this story the majority of it lies on Clara's shoulders.

Clara is a great protagonist and I really enjoyed reading from her perspective while also getting angrier and angrier with each page. And that had nothing to do with the writing or the story but simply the fact how cruelly and barbaric women were treated during that time.

There are many instances when we learn about women's destinies, not just Clara's and Mary Ann's but those of countless other women, who each represent the countless women who suffered by being labeled hysteric, insane or mad. Still, just thinking about some of the scenes described in the book makes me angry and axious.

There were very few male characters in this book that I liked, most of them I've come to completely despise, which just shows how common this misogynistic worldview was during that time, for men and women alike. Since we also see a lot of female characters that support it, even if it's unintentionally.

Despite all that, I really enjoyed the book even if it started out a bit slow in the beginning.

Book Review for The Savage Instinct by Marjorie DeLuca
Full review for this title can be found at: @fyebooks on Instagram!

CW: Clara is abused, drugged and raped by her husband. There are some suggestion to and descriptions of self harm and child abuse. There is a very descriptive miscarriage. The ‘treatments’ Clara is subjected to in the asylum can definitely been seen as torture.

I wanted to request less books through Netgalley, but I couldn’t let this one go. And I am so glad I didn’t, because I loved it. So much so that I read its 380 pages in a single sitting.

We follow Clara who after having a stillbirth is put into an asylum by her husband. We start the story a year later when she is released (against her husband’s wishes), and moves to Durham to let the fresh air restore her. At the same time Mary Ann Cotton is admitted to prison awaiting her trial, pregnant. Clara is fascinated by this woman. Why can she not have children, but is Mary Ann blessed with another pregnancy even though she is said to have poisoned her children. Clara joins a charity to visit the women in prison to get closer to Mary Ann. What develops is a strange friendship as they give each other strength to deal with the unfair trail of Mary Ann, and the abusive husband of Clara.

The writing in this book is absolutely stunning. It isn’t overly flowery or poetic, but still beautiful and very capable of painting the picture. It completely sucks you in and makes you feel all the feels. The way the ending has been interwoven into the story in the form of interludes is done very cleverly. We know how it is going to end, yet don’t know why. In this way the author has managed to keep the intrigue going to the very last page, yet also still manages to put in a surprising and very satisfying twist. Yes, I did finish this book at 3 in the morning…

You form a very strong connection to Clara early on in the book. I definitely felt her frustration, loneliness and desperation. I wanted to kill her husband myself, or at least give him a good kick in the nuts. He is such a despicable person, yet far from alone in his views. He genuinely believed that what he did was his right as a man, and society keeps confirming this for him. It is saddening that this book reads like a thriller, yet these things did happen.

Mary Ann isn’t the villain we think she will be at the start of the book. She does stay an intimidating person that keeps you slightly uncomfortable, but the author does also show other sides of her, and her past, making the reader at least understand some of her motivation. It is left to the reader to decide for themselves if she was guilty or not, so be aware of that if that is something you find annoying.

So yeah, I loved this book. It gives a nice commentary on what ‘evil’ is, whilst dragging you into an utterly compelling story that makes you feel all the feels. Highly recommend!

YES. What an excellent story to base a historical fiction on - as someone who just binged Bridgerton, I was frequently shocked by how much women had to put up with during the 1800s. Honestly, I'm surprised there weren't more female serial killers (I know, I know, socialization and gender roles, but still). Anyways, both Clara and Mary Ann are fascinating, compelling figures, and are very much so the product of their time. This book was hard for me to put down and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys strong women leads and historical fiction.

This novel melds the best of historical fiction with the insight and pacing of top-tier psychological thrillers. Intriguing characters, The exploration of Victorian understandings of "mental health" and the inhumane treatment of institutionalized women is fascinating and resonates to this day. Novels about abuse often can tip heavily into what I think of as misery porn, and this novel avoids that pitfall deftly. It doesn't pull punches about the severity of what the women are enduring, but it doesn't wallow in it either.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced reader's copy provided in exchange for an unbiased review.

I was prepared to really love this book, especially when I saw it compared favorably to Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. Unfortunately, it fell somewhat flat for me. The characters of the husband and mother-in-law were just too cartoonishly evil and lacked depth. Also, the theme of genteel middle-class ladies imprisoned by marriage is a little stale. I appreciate the historical basis of these stories, but here it was presented very one-dimensionally and not much new was added to the portrayal. The final twist was not all that suprising, but it was one of the books more original moments. I did like the author's writing style. The pacing was good, and overall the plot works. 2.5 stars -- somewhere between "It was okay" and "I liked it."

Savage Instinct takes on a really interesting feminist perspective of the woman and events surrounding Mary Ann Cotton, a tried and convicted English serial killer from the mid-late 1800s. The story is told through the perspective of a fiction character, Clara, whose husband is really absolutely everything that any self-respecting woman would completely despise: he's misogynistic, abusive, manipulative, and self-seeking. His marriage to Clara is simply a means to an end; she is to be a doting, perfect wife and fulfill all her wifely duties with obedience and without complaint, and when her grandmother dies, he'll come into a large inheritance and his life will be perfect as he climbs the social ladder. Any actions on her part that are contrary to this vision, and she's accused of being mental unstable and threatened with the asylum.

At the start of the story, we discover that Clara has suffered through her own kind of trauma and reacted in a way that anyone would. As she arrives home from a few stints in a couple different asylums, her carriage is greeted by a crowd which, in turn, is welcoming the arrival of Mary Ann Cotton, a woman who supposedly killed many of her own children and husbands in an effort to claim insurance money and thus better her life. Clara's curiosity gets the better of her, and in the guise of being charitable, begins visiting with Cotton. Clara's husband's actions and manipulation come to light, and she begins to embark along a path that she won't be able to turn back from (with the guidance of Cotton).

What I didn't love:
- The first part of the story was a little bit bumpy, writing wise; it could've used an editor's hand in smoothing out some of the disconnect and disjointed descriptions. I continued to read though, and as the story moved along, it seemed the author had found their groove and the writing flowed a bit more naturally.
- Clara's character was also a bit bumpy at the start -- we see her as a very delicate and meek woman at the start, very traumatized by her experiences, but there are times throughout the story when her actions are contradictory to the character we were introduced to. She seems to go from meek to courageous in waves and I think her development could've been better written over the course of the story.
- There was a small blurb towards the end about Victorian England and Mary Ann Cotton but it was very brief and followed by a list of recommended reading, which is great, but I would've appreciated a bit more on what aspects of the story truly were historically accurate (including general historical information on the inequality of women, the role of asylums in society, etc.) and what things were written with a bit of liberty.

What I did love:
+ I did know some about Mary Ann Cotton before diving into the story and really enjoyed seeing this historical character from a different perspective.
+ I enjoyed how Mary Ann Cotton's character fed us information that led us to really doubt what was true, what had really happened, and what was just lies and manipulation.
+ I, for the most part, was able to envision this Victorian London decently well and, though I find myself fuming at the male characters and the things they said and did, this remained true to the time period. (I would never wish to ever travel back in time to this time period - I don't know how it could've been anything but miserable for the vast majority of women or anyone really who wasn't a wealthy white man).

Mixed feelings (Spoilers!)
~ I had some mixed feelings about the end of the story. I didn't love this cyclical nature of the ending ... finding ourself in the same place we were to begin with. Clara tried to do what she could to escape under an authoritative husband and live as a free woman in society, but instead, she ended up in the same position as she started: in need of a husband to provide for her. I was hopeful that Clara would be the one to get out, to truly be free. Her husband's death felt a bit like a cop-out. Part of me thought, "Well, that was sort of nice (?) of Mary to sort of 'help out her friend, Clara' even after she was gone, in her own way." But then I also thought that this was just an easy way to dispose of her husband so Clara could free herself, sort of, without having to also resort to murder ... but then we find ourselves at the end where she's basically set her mind to resorting to murder. I sort of liked that twist, but then at the same time just felt sad for her. Like I said, mixed feelings.

Overall, this was a fast-paced and I think an interesting read. I'd probably rate it anywhere between an arbitrary 3-4 stars.

Thank you to Inkshares and Netgalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I received this from Netgalley.com.

Based on historical fact, Mary Ann Cotton—England’s first female serial killer—accused of poisoning nearly twenty people, including her husbands and children.

Good story. I liked how fictional character Clara Blackstone is woven into the history of Mary Ann Cotton.

3.75☆

4.5*
I just took a half* off for a lag in plot action in the beginning. Once it picked up, I couldn’t put it down. Not only was it an insightful reminder of the just how limited the rights of women were during the time period, but the story was compelling in itself even without this historical teaching moment. This was a really fabulous book!

I was really looking forward to reading this book, but i struggled to get it into and stopped reading half way.

The Savage Instinct is an exhilarating book about women, murderer in specific, during the Victorian era and how they deal with mental illness. Diving into this book, in my opinion, was terrifying. There was a lot I expected when I first read the description for this one and I was not disappointed.

Set in England, 1873, Clara Blackstone has just gotten out of the asylum after her hysterics over her miscarriage. Her narration during her stay in the asylum was heartbreaking--how people with mental health issues were treated then. Being in her head, in totality, was unnerving. Clara is such a complex heroine that one would have mixed opinions on. Unconventionally, that was also the time of Mary Ann Cotton's imprisonment. These two women are the main attraction of the book, the bond they created throughout the book compelled me to continue on reading. I have to say I couldn't blame Clara for her actions towards her husband, Henry,
who kept on gaslighting her every chance he had. It was the downfall of their marriage.

The writing of this is impeccable, the scenes felt very real to me. The sequence of how things started and fell apart was remarkable. Other than this, it is clear how much research was done in writing this book. The accuracy of the events gripped me until the end. I had to pause every once in a while to research Mary Ann Cotton's background. I didn't want to miss a single thing. I have to give DeLuca my sincerest appreciation on writing this book with such objective views.

Recommending this to anyone who's into historical fiction and wants to read through the point of view of someone out the ordinary.

Thank you to Inkshare and Netgalley for sending me an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

believe I picked this up because it was billed as being similar to Alias Grace, but I should have known that Atwood is hard to beat. Don't get me wrong, I quite enjoyed this, but its only a 3.5 to Alias Grace's was a solid 5 (for me).

DeLuca did her research, I can't fault that, there was just something about the way that Alias Grace was written that had a greater feel of authenticity. Perhaps DeLucas was aiming for sparse and I'm just a sucker for detail.

Character wise I don't have any real issues, what I would really have appreciated is some insight into the protagonist's marriage before the events in the novel. A marriage of several years, with several miscarriages I feel would surely have marked the couple, and yet they still seem like strangers. I didn't need for them to love each other, just some sense that they had been marked by their time together.

I was a tad confused with the odd chapter being prefaced with a date, if trying to delineate two distinct periods I feel all chapters should have been dated for clarity. And as is often my complaint with all novels in general (amateurs and old hats all have this issue for me) is that the ending felt rushed and a tad Deus ex Machina for my liking.

Promising writing, just needing a bit of work in my opinion.

The Savage Instinct is based on the true story of convicted serial killer Mary Anne Cotton, hanged for her horrific crimes in Durham County in 1873. It is also a terrifying look into the world of mental illness in the Victorian era. There is no such thing as post-partum depression, or anxiety, you are simply branded insane and you are locked away. There is no place for hysteria in society.

It’s the late 1870’s and women’s roles are very simple. Obey your husband, keep a clean and orderly house, produce a brood of children and wile away your hours nattering with other women of the same social incline as yourself. All sounds easy enough……..hmmmm.

What happens though if you have a mind of your own, free will? What happens if you are unable to bare children, or lose a child at birth? Clara Blackstone is about to find out in the most horrifying of ways. Committed to an asylum by her supposed loving husband for being unable to cope with the grief of losing her baby, there she spends a year in the most unimaginable of conditions, subjected to the most degrading and barbaric treatments in order to “fix her”.

Now supposedly cured and on her way home with her husband Henry, they are startled by a mob of locals in the street yelling and screaming as prisoner, Mary Anne Cotton, is dragged into custody. Charged with murdering her stepson, and suspected of murdering husbands, lovers, and her own babies and children by arsenic poisoning, Mary Anne Cotton is one of the UK’s first ever serial killers.

Clara quickly becomes obsessed with Mary Anne, visiting her in prison as a volunteer and spending many hours talking with her in her prison cell. As it becomes painfully clear that Henry doesn’t have his wife’s interests at heart, but instead is merely after her sizeable fortune, and with the ever increasing threat of being re-committed to the asylum hanging over her head, an unlikely bond is formed. As Clara’s life starts to unravel it is Mary Anne she turns to for comfort.

It’s a truly heartbreaking and terrifying read of the injustices and brutality of this era and I honestly couldn’t put it down. As a lover of historical fiction and thrillers, with its Gothic undertones, this ticked all the boxes for me. Beautifully written, with strong characters and the perfect mix of twists and turns, The Savage Instinct is definitely a book I would highly recommend.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Inkshares for the opportunity to read this wonderful book.