Chris Panatier’s The Redemption of Morgan Bright is a fantasy-horror novel with a patriarchy reminiscent of The Handmaiden’s Tale. In a world where men can have their wives admitted for psychiatric care against their will, all under the guise of “domestic psychosis,” Morgan Bright goes into Hollyhock Asylum with a secret.

< 1x
book cover: The Redemption of Morgan Bright.
The novel is told from the perspective of Charlotte and Morgan and is interspersed with excerpts from police interviews and text messages. As the story unfolds, we learn that Morgan desperately wants to understand what happened to her sister, Hadleigh, who died while wandering alone along the road outside the asylum.

All in all, I felt the novel moved at a very slow pace. There’s a lot of character development and narrative twists throughout. However, the supernatural aspect of the horror elements didn’t do much for me. Additionally, the police interviews and text messages, while important to the story-telling, felt forced and intrusive.

If supernatural novels with an evil patriarchy are your jam, you might like this more than I did.

⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 2.5 out of 5.
Thanks to NetGalley and Angry Robot for an advance copy in exchange for sharing my opinions. All opinions in this review are my own. Links in this review are affiliate links, and I may earn a commission from qualifying purchases.

This is not my usual type of book, but I was hooked!

The format is quite interesting, having chapters where the action is presented from the FMC POV mixed with police reports, text messages and flashbacks.

I don't want to spoil anything, but there is a lot about mental health, how to asylums treated the patients in the past, especially women. With unreliable narrators, you will really feel like a part of this horror story.

I can't say that I loved every single moment of this book, but I surely am glad I gave it a chance.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

P.S. The cover is absolutely gorgeous

Hello again dear reader or listener, buckle up, this is going to be a tough one. Let’s take a moment to drool over the beautiful cover though.

With thanks as always to the Angry Robot team for approving my NetGalley request for an eArc of this book, allow me to try and unravel my complicated thoughts about it.

You may have noticed that I kept this rating-free and the simple reason why is because I cannot for the life of me decide on a numerical rating, for a variety of reasons. In very short, Panatier certainly succeeds in what he sets out to do with this story, but in getting there, unfortunately, he somewhat lost me along the way for a while. Purely from an entertainment point of view though, cause intellectually I was vibing. Let me try to explain.

At its core, Redemption is a book about the true horror that is the loss of bodily autonomy and mental health. Something that women have faced (and, depressingly, continue to), in societies that have arbitrarily decided any deviation from certain gendered templates is grounds for taking over their free will and guilt-tripping them into oblivion. And, as I said, from an intellectual standpoint, Panatier carried this very important theme across brilliantly. His writing is evocative and the narrative style he employed for the novel, worked perfectly well to deliver the dizzying, disjointed, and progressively more horrific plot. Some of the imagery was truly chef’s kiss. Stylistically, it strongly reminded me of the first season of True Detective, with a past plot unfolding while interspersed with present time police interrogation transcripts, among other types of evidence. These various change ups actually helped me to read the bits of this book that were written in present tense, which I normally struggle with, but that’s a personal caveat.

This book is what would happen if elements of True Detective, The Alienist S1, Split, and Don’t Worry Darling (and I’m told AHS Asylum by Anna) had a chimera spawn that brought and discarded at your feet most of the injustices that patriarchal societies impose on women, the way a cat proudly presents its owner with dead vermin. It even goes a step further in exploring the deeper horror and hypocrisy of those crimes being enacted by a woman. That is a whole other level of betrayal we don’t have time to unpack here but oh so good and nuanced.

Since researching the beginnings and atrocities of early psychiatry is one of my more morbid hobbies, I was instantly hooked by the premise of a woman going undercover in a psychiatric hospital to discover the truth about what happened to her dead sister. The author even used real events to inform his story. As such I was so ready for psychological horror, and I even welcomed the body horror elements or the tact with which Panatier explored some of the more harrowing aspects of asylum “care” that I expected to find. That is also one of the most bewildering aspects of this novel perhaps: the fact that it is supposed to be set in our current times yet everything that happens within Hollyhock is reminiscent of the 50s and before, from the diagnoses reminiscent of female hysteria to the gaslighting and manipulation perpetrated by those supposed to protect the patients. As for the supernatural elements within, a part of me would have enjoyed more concrete definitions of what they were but at the same time a bigger part of me could appreciate the point of them being as abstract and abstruse as they were, as it fit within the confused and disoriented point of view. We don’t always get the answers we want or hope for and it can work if it’s done well.

This is where you’ve probably begun to wonder then what is it that has me so conflicted, dear reader. Well, here’s the thing. I’m very jaded when it comes to this genre but so long as there is a mystery to solve, I’m hooked and even curious to see what kind of weirdness the author will come up with to evoke the various states they wish in the reader. Just because I don’t necessarily feel all the feelings of disgust from body horror myself for instance, doesn’t mean I can’t be appreciative of the work that’s gone in it since I know it’ll affect others strongly. And as I said already, Panatier’s writing definitely wins in that department. His pacing is good, the reveals well timed and working within his planned disorientation of the reader, to accompany the confusion, denial, and terror that the protagonist is going through. In fact, I read 80% of this book in one sitting during an afternoon.
I got to the last 20% the next day and I was ready. I had all my questions that demanded answers, I had my theories, and I had my deep appreciation for the overall themes and messages. But then came the downfall of what had been up until that point really solid storytelling. I’m probably being a little dramatic here for silliness, but the truth is that in that last buildup to the end, the author went too heavy handed with the metaphors, the imagery, the meandering, hell, even the abstract supernatural that up until then I had been ok with just became too much. For lack of a better phrase, it killed the mood. The point had been made, 99% of the reveals cleared up, and I felt like a horse overbeaten into indifference, so I just mentally checked out hoping the end would finally get here. Had this book been about 50ish pages shorter it might’ve worked better for me.
Even then, through that, call it a stumble, the final scene is a powerful final gut punch, so it’s not like the author just lost himself entirely and dropped the ball completely. Just took a few turns too many to get to the destination.

This book isn’t for everyone, that much is true, and maybe the way the author went about that climax will work for others in the ways that it didn’t for me which is perfectly valid. I am still very interested in reading his other books because I enjoyed his overall writing style and I would surely enjoy reading more of it.
Plus, any author that takes the time to try and work through the themes that Panatier did, with the tact and grace that he did, deserves the attention.

In fact, what is perhaps most aggravating/infuriating in the end is nothing strictly to do with the book itself, but with the knowledge that such a horrific and prolonged metaphor might be needed by some in order to even only begin to understand the terror and pain of the real women whose bodily autonomy is horrifically in the hands of others.

Until next time,
Eleni A. E.

This book is so hard to talk about without giving anything away. From the description you can expect that this is one where you cannot trust the sanity of the main character, and that’s done really well. This also delivers on being creepy and strange, and really kept me curious throughout. Overall this was a really compelling read that I’m glad I picked up.

Note: ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Redemption of Morgan Bright was bleak. It was a reminder of what can happen to women when their health and choices are taken from them. It was a disjointed read to keep you as unbalanced and confused as the characters in the book. This book is exactly what it was advertised to be and it stays with you.

The Redemption of Morgan Bright by Chris Panatier
Published by Angry Robot
4/5 stars!!

This was my first book that I have read by Chris Panatier and I was not disappointed! There were so many twists and turns in this storyline that I was completely and utterly hooked until the end. Morgan Bright enters Hollyhock Asylum after her sister, Hadleigh is found dead on the road leading to the asylum. However, to investigate what happened Morgan presumes a false identify of Charlotte Turner, a troubled housewife. But Hollyhock is not what it seems as Morgan finds her persona Charlotte is taking on a life of its own.

I highly recommend this book to anyone into mystery and a story which will keep you hooked. I will definitely be picking up more books by Panatier.

Thank you to Chris Panatier, the Publisher and Netgalley for this amazing arc!

The Redemption of Morgan Bright is a complex exploration in unreliable narrators, of mental health and of the truth.

Set in the psychological nightmare location of Hollyhock Asylum, the mysterious death of Hadleigh Keene kickstarts the story. Because of the circumstances surrounding her death, her sister Morgan, infiltrates under the alias of a housewife named Charlotte Turner.

While this could be a straight-forward mystery and resolution, Chris Panatier has turned this upside down as the lines between sanity and reality start to cross. Panatier has that unique gift of creating an atmospheric horror story at the asylum. The asylum haunted me far longer than it needed to, leading to a few sleepless nights.

I finished this book a few days ago and yet, I'm still thinking of the masterful writing and terrifying tale.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Would you check yourself into an insane asylum if it meant you could find out what happened to your sister? With a false identity, Morgan head on in, but when her false persona Charlotte starts to take over, is there something very wrong here?

This book is unique, creepy, and has a great setting- a mental asylum. The asylum has unique goals and types of treatment.
For me, this book was really hard to get into. The Redemption of Morgan Bright is a slow-revealing book and the only way to make sense of it is to keep reading. The first 30% was confusing. and I wasn't sure what I was reading. I was tempted to DNF here, but I'm so glad I kept reading, it's worth it!
I ended up loving t5his book. My favorite parts were the kitchen scene with the soup cans and how Charlotte is her own entity inside of Morgan.
Thank you to NetGalley, Angry Robot and Chris Panatier for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

I was SO excited to read this, because it has great ratings and I love a book with interviews and documents and the like, but for me this one just missed the mark. First I had a terrible time figuring out what time period this was supposed to be set in. One minute I would think it was modern day, the next I started to think maybe it was back in the 40's or 50's (in case anyone is wondering it IS modern day). I was also very confused for the first...50 to 100 pages (I was reading on my kindle, so it was a little hard to quantify pages there, eARCs just have "locations"). Perhaps I would have enjoyed this book more if I hadn't read the synopsis, but I had, so it just left me scratching my head for the longest time. The ending was also just a little much. We kind of figured out what was really happening here, but we were also handed so many more things going on and for me it was a little too much. That's not to say this book was all bad. There were some interesting twists, and I don't think anyone could argue this book wasn't unique. It also brings to light some of the horrible things that happened decades ago in these mental institutions, as well as the injustices that are still being done to those who are in one way or another unable to speak up for themselves. While the paranormal element here is obviously fake the underlying themes aren't, and that is something important to realize. In the end I think this was a bit of a miss for me, but I do appreciate what it was trying to do, and I have to give it points for originality. At the moment I seem to be in the minority here, so if this sounds like something you would be into by all means do check it out. I may not have meshed with this particular story, but it certainly made me curious about Panatier's other works, which I may end up looking into a later date. As a side note there are (unsurprisingly) a handful of things in here that might be rather upsetting depending on any triggers you might have, so please do check those out before you proceed if you feel the need to!

Haleigh died on the road from Hollyhock Asylum but the reason why is unclear. Her sister Morgan is so wracked with guilt that she concocts a plan to admit herself into the asylum under a false name so she can get some answers.
Women were regularly diagnosed and sent to this asylum for “domestic psychosis.” 😡 What? Oh that really got to me. If women were not living up to their wifely duties then they were sent there to be “fixed.”
Hollyhock is so misleading, confusing and challenging that Morgan starts to lose herself to Charlotte, and the lines between the personalities starts to blur.
I questioned her sanity, the hospital staff and everyone involved. I questioned everything!
The story didn’t grab me as much as I would have liked but I did love the question of what was true and what was imagined. Those who love a twisty psychological horror will love this one!
Thank you to Angry Robot for the copy!

So this is a fun unique book it has the traditional chapters but each chapter is interrupted texts messages and transcript recording from police interviews trying to figure out what happen at the mental Institute, It’s fun to see something new and the story was promising, It definitely plays into the Handmaids Tale with the treat meant of women. I did however like the relationship between the women and how Morgan/Charlotte was portrayed. I thought I was a fun little sister story with some unique twists and turns,

This book was so creepy and executed so well.

This story does follow the traditional insane asylum horror story, but mixes in criticism of how women are treated by psychology and society as a whole. It addresses the concerns a cult can have, the dangers of private and unregulated clinics, and even how women can sometimes be the ones who cause other women the most pain. The story is told in an unreliable narrator and switches POV frequently, and includes cool writing choices such as transcripts, text messages, etc. The only thing I didn't like about this book is I felt like the trigger warnings should have been included, as there is a pretty graphic description of SA that bothered me and I wish I had know about going in.

4.5 of 5 stars
My Five Word TL:DR Review : Still Thinking About This Book

This is one of the most unusual books I’ve ever read and I’m still thinking about it even now whilst writing my review. Of necessity, I think this will be fairly short because I don’t want to give away any spoilers and there’s a lot of potential to spoil this for others.

So, this is a gothic horror story, a story of asylums at their worst, a story of having choices taken from you in the most insidious way. It’s also a psychological thriller with a good dose of mystery that keeps you literally glued to the page. On top of that it’s the most curious mix of possibly slightly futuristic setting offset by the oddest 50s style feel to the asylum. I couldn’t help thinking of a curious mash up of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (a female only version) and The Stepford Wives.

This is a tale of two sisters. Morgan, the surviving sister feels guilt over her sister’s death and is determined to get to the bottom of it, so much so that she dons a new persona in order to infiltrate (by which I mean she intends to have herself committed) to the asylum where her sister spent her last months. Morgan has a troubled background of substance abuse and her sister Hadleigh usually rallied to the cause. The two were close until Hadleigh became involved in a relationship and their easy going banter dried up leaving both feeling a little stranded.

The setting is predominantly Hollyhock Asylum, a privately run institution that uses an impressive and modern facade to showcase its work whilst behind the curtain lies a totally different and much more sinister story. The place has a long history and ghosts and spirits of the dead definitely play a role. On top of this the director, Althea Edevane, is a very unusual character. Sinister in her calmness and with her own ulterior motive. The asylum has this weird (as I mentioned above) 50s feel. There are home rooms and craft rooms where the women are encouraged to clean and knit and undertake other domestic duties while wearing headphones that provide a strange diatribe that runs on a constant loop.

In terms of the characters. We pick up a picture of the relationship between the sisters through text messages and the odd flashback of events. On top of this we have the character of Charlotte. Charlotte is the fake persona that Morgan assumed in order to be admitted to the asylum. This is a facade that she has been wearing for a good year and is about to become problematic. Given Morgan’s past she is a somewhat unreliable character in some respects and her addictive nature perhaps leads this double identity she’s living to lead to a real crisis with Charlotte becoming the more dominant player. This aspect of the story becomes a central focus with Morgan frequently being unaware of her own actions and learning of events in retrospect.

I loved the writing and the style of story telling using police reports, text messages and flashbacks. This is a style that works really well for me although I would advise patience because it takes a little while for things to play out and I would say that for the first quarter of the book I felt as though I wasn’t grasping everything totally, but you need to press on in that respect.

I would also say that this book might not be for everyone. There is a good dose of horror and also the underlying corruption of the asylum and what the director is trying to achieve could be triggering for some readers.

That being said this is a fascinating story but it’s not the type of book that you put down and say it was fantastic because it’s so mind bending and also a little worrying. I found myself putting this down and having a long hard think about the underlying message here which for me revolves around women’s rights and the current trend that seems to be one of regression. Here we seem to have flipped back to a more Victorian state where husbands could have their wives committed on a whim if they were becoming troublesome. That’s why these inmates are force fed this banal domestic routine whilst being served up a dose of brain washing at the same time. It makes you stop and really think. The author isn’t trying to bash you over the head with this, you can simply read this for the story it delivers but for me it was so much more and I think I will probably continue to think about this for a good long while.

Gothic goodness, creepiness aplenty, mind bending psychosis, horror and gore and a strange story involving the mystery of two sisters.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

Wow! What the hell did I just read!?

This was such a wild ride, part mystery, part horror I had no idea going into this what I was in for.

Morgan Bright blames herself for her sister’s untimely death and believes Hollyhock Asylum had something to do with it. To say she gets in over her head is a bit of an understatement.

The exposition in this was masterful, it appears to take place in multiple eras and the way the story unfolds is SO appealing. Definitely some WTF moments as well.

This is definitely a book that, once you get into it, is impossible to put down. It’s told through prose, interviews, and text messages and I loved how all three came together.

Get this one on your radar!!

3.5 stars

Thank you to Angry Robot and NetGalley for my review copy.

This book was fun. Straight away, it drops you into a place where you can't quite tell what is going on. Hollyhock is a weird place, with an amalgamation of decades leads you to be unsure when this story is set.

It's slightly slow to start to unravel the mystery of what exactly is going on, but I found this compelling as it was intertwined with breadcrumbs as to what is happening and I really enjoyed trying to pierce together what exactly was happening from what I had read, and what information I got in the blurb.

The horror in this is a mix of body horror, psychological horror and kind of almost eldritch horror and to me, it is a brilliant mix of the three.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would and it was a very engaging read.

A big thankyou to NetGalley and Angry Robot for my Arc of this book!

Fewer buildings hold the levels of mystique and terror than that of the abandoned psychiatric hospital. It is no secret that the methods involved in mental health treatment have drastically changed for the better over the years, and it is also no secret that the majority of treatments administered to past patients are utterly unfathomable today. Old treatment methods are dark relics of the past, held within the asylum, and thus old asylums exist today as a conduit for the unimaginable… until they are on the page. The innate horror of ‘The Redemption of Morgan Bright’ is multifaceted. Through dredging up and breathing terrible life into the horrors of the past, Chris Panatier masterfully draws attention to very real horrors in our present.

Chris Panatier’s novel follows Morgan Bright, a woman who infiltrates the asylum in which her sister Hadleigh was at first committed, and then fell victim to. Morgan takes on the fake name and persona of ‘Charlotte Turner’, but as the mystery of Hollyhock asylum grows and mutates into something unexpected, so too does the personality of Charlotte. The doubling of identities and personas is not a new phenomenon in horror, and there are various previous examples of this being exploited. The same cannot be said for Panatier, who I found to be careful and respectful. Morgan and her constructed persona Charlotte are diametrically opposed, and this manifests itself in fears that I had never really considered. In particular, the idea of acting in a way so inherently different to your core values but then later having no memory of it, and the heightened effects of imposter syndrome in a place that strips you of your core identity. Hollyhock asylum is a place of disorientation and exploitation, and this acts as fertile ground for conversations around autonomy and personal identity.

The novel falls into three distinct and interchanging formats: Morgan in the asylum, investigative transcripts involving Morgan and detectives following the destruction of Hollyhock, and text message transcripts between Morgan and her sister Hadleigh that take place months and years before the events of the story. Sometimes I struggle with alternating character perspectives or timelines, but I felt that this worked particularly well with this novel. Our time spent in the asylum begins in mystery and slowly devolves into madness, and these interludes give much needed missing information and/or respite from the asylum.

Hollyhock is a woman-only asylum and without going into spoiler territory, the gendered aspect of the hospital is front and central. Many of the women incarcerated are held with a condition known as ‘domestic psychosis’, an indiscriminate illness based on ‘delusions’ and ‘hallucinations’. The likeness to hysteria, an archaic ‘condition’ used purely for the control and manipulation of women, seems obvious and deliberate. Even while science and medicine progress for the better, the misogyny infused in the politics of it all remains as present and rampant as ever.

Indeed, the novel’s relevance to the world today is perhaps the most frightening aspect of the novel. We would all love to lock away the dreadful experimental treatments that patients have endured, we would all love to move past how mental illness has been weaponised as a method of manipulating women and their autonomy, but this is not the reality. Panatier exposes the dreadful reality of our present by releasing the ghosts of the past, showing that redemption is still far far away.

Okay, this book was amazing. It was just... unputdownable, frankly. I was so curious about so many things! None of which I can tell you about! So I will do my best to highlight what I loved that I can tell you about:

►The format! Oh, how I love when authors change things up. In this one, the story is told through typical storytelling fashion, but also through the use of interviews, which I dig. A lot. Especially considering the mystery element.

►The setting and atmosphere were perfectly on point. I mean, we all know that the midwest can be a little... iffy, especially in the middle of nowhere. But add an old, sketchy "asylum" to the mix and you know it is going to deliver.

►There is a website in the book that is a real website you can visit! You have no idea how happy this made me. I'd read the book first for context. But it's kind of the best.

►The commentary is fabulous. I mean, sure, come for the mystery and creepiness, but very much stay for the extremely relevant real talk about... actually no it might be spoilery to give you the details, just... it's going to make you stabby but that is the point.

►I really, really felt for Morgan. I mean, she has been through it. Both her past and present pull at the heartstrings, and she is a surprisingly complex and well developed character, especially considering the genre, and the fact that we spend a chunk of the book with not-Morgan at the helm!

►There is just so much absolutely bananas stuff going on, I just could not stop reading! There were a lot of twists and surprises and "oh shit!" moments that made this book so, so readable.

There may have been one or two tiny points I had wished had been expanded on a bit at the end, but that is me being way too nitpicky, honestly. I can't even take off a half star for it, so yeah.

Bottom Line: This book needs no redemption, for it was awesome.

Well okay then. That was a RIDE! Trigger warnings: all? Most for sure. This is a dark, twisting, madhouse of a book and appropriately so. I didn't like any of the characters, and yet I loved every second of watching them play out this story - proof that you don't need likeable characters to make a truly great story. Panatier has won a new fan with this story and with his moving afterword where he explains his reasons for telling a tale so female-centric (which he does remarkable well I might add). I had to read this in small bites to digest everything that was happening, and I never had any issues picking it back up. I gave a daily synopsis to my partner just to try and talk through the insanity and genius of the storytelling. Seriously, if you can handle the content, pick this up. It's amazing.

**Thank you NetGalley and Angry Robot for the eARC**

A huge, huge thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC!

The halls of Hollyhock Asylum house secrets of the darkest variety, including the truth of what really happened to Hadleigh Keene. To uncover these truths, her sister Morgan voluntarily commits herself to this place that seems to covet so much darkness. Only, to do so, she cannot be Morgan, she must be Charlotte Turner, a woman who suffers from a seemingly perplexing condition in this day and age. Of course, nothing is as it seems, a reality that becomes glaringly obvious as Charlotte becomes more than just a cover, and Morgan must fight tooth and nail to keep herself grounded in reality.

At first glance, The Redemption of Morgan Bright sounds very much like a psychological horror novel given the key setting is that of an asylum. However, as events transpire, it becomes abundantly clear that the horrors of Hollyhock exceed this plane of existence by tapping into fears of the abstract. Questions of identity, presence, and culpability thrive in the treatment of patients at Hollyhock, which are unorthodox, to say the least. While horror surrounding mental health is not a new endeavor, Panatier manages to exaggerate our mistrust of unconventional mental health institutions, bringing the terror to a whole new level.

All of this is possible through the use of repeated disorientation. The structure of this novel is formed through a series of interview transcripts and recollections of events at Hollyhock from the witness being questioned police. While we may think we understand who is being interviewed and the various elements of the setting, our expectations are frequently subverted, breeding room for copious amounts of unease and uncertainty. This disorientation makes each scene of gore, inhumane treatment, or cruelty infinitely more frightening given that the reality of Hollyhock remains elusive. Compounded with this very active, external conflict, Morgan battles inner strife; her past is filled with trauma that also calls into question how reliable of a narrator she really is, especially through the creation of Charlotte. As Morgan’s disorientation and distrust of Hollyhock grows, so does her mistrust of her own mind. What is more frightening than a self you no longer recognize, know, or trust?

While all of these aspects of internal conflict, external conflict, and confusion create a mysterious narrative, the defining feature of this novel is the encapsulation of sheer, unbridled fear that women face in the present day. With Morgan losing her grip on reality, we also experience her loss of autonomy. She can no longer make sense of the world around her yet is subject to various acts and practices that ultimately revoke her sense of choice. These ideas are explored through scenes of visceral horror, exemplifying just how terrifying the loss of control over one’s own body, one’s own mind, can be. Give Chris Panatier his flowers now; Morgan’s plight for truth and survival reflects the deepest universal fears women in this country share now and our greater fight to remain in control of our own selves.

A novel that delivers on the deepest of corporeal and psychological terrors, The Redemption of Morgan Bright is a masterful achievement in fear that exceeds that of the individual. Morgan’s search for the truth functions as a compulsive mystery that descends into sheer madness as she comes to understand the bleak reality of her situation. The effort and research Chris Panatier has devoted to Morgan’s story is not only evident but profound, especially in a time such as this, where the fears exemplified in this novel are synonymous with the fears of our own reality.