When my request for Bridget Collins’ new novel The Silence Factory was approved I was positively thrilled. I had never read any of her previous novels, but the synopsis the book sounded fantastic - a gothic thriller/horror told in two timelines featuring magical spiders.

The first is told through the diary entries of Sophia Ashmore-Percy who is on a journey with her husband as he frantically searches for a rare, mysterious species of spider on a secluded Greek island in the 1820s.

The other is set a number of decades later and told from the viewpoint of aurist Henry Latimer as he attempts to help Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy's (Sophia's great nephew) hearing-impaired daughter. Along the way he gets swept up into Edward's burgeoning silk business, the supernatural qualities it possesses, and obsessed with Edward himself.

It sounds great, right? I couldn't wait to start reading.

Until I did. My first thought upon seeing pages and pages filled with flowery, wordy, overly verbose writing, was oh hell no. You know the kind I mean - like the author wanted the book to sound as if it was written in a different era.

On top of that, the beginning was utterly confusing. The prologue reads more like an action scene in the middle of a book - you're just dropped right in.

The rest of the book (or what I read of it, yes I happily DNFed this one at 45%) was slow...slow...slow. It was a slog to read. It felt like I was being punished every time I read it.

Reviews for this book seem to be all over the place. Some love it, others hate it. And I know there is a lot of talk gong on about the author being a TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) and some have given low ratings based solely on this.

While unfortunate, the author's beliefs didn't influence my opinion of this book.

Overall, fantastic idea, great theme (the price we're willing to pay for things), weak, weak excution.

Still, it should appeal to gothic and historical fiction fans, but it did not live up to its promise for me.

Thank you to William Morrow, Bridget Collins, and Netgalley for an advance digital copy. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own and given voluntarily.

One and ½ Stars rounded up to Two Stars

For Readers of:
Gothic Fiction and Historical Fiction

Ahoy there me mateys!  The spiders, magical silk, and historical setting made me excited to read this novel.  Unfortunately, the annoying characters, bizarre plot, and real lack of use of both the magical spiders and silk led this book to walk the plank!  The premise was very interesting but the author failed to use the existing elements satisfactorily.  I also expected a fantasy book and this barely fit the bill.

The book has two timelines.  The first is set in 1820 where a scientist and his wife are on a remote Greek island to look for rare spiders.  The second takes place several decades later.  A silk is made from the rare spiders and it has unusual properties.  An audiologist is introduced to the silk and gets involved with the factory owner to make the silk world renown.

The majority of the plot focuses on the second timeline.  Henry, the audiologist, is the the main point of view.  He was extremely frustrating.  A lot of his plot involved queer longing for his employer which got tedious.  He is incredibly self-absorbed and willfully ignorant.  He makes excuses for the factory owner's evilness over and over again.  The other viewpoint deals with the scientist's wife in the form of her diary.  She is a more sympathetic character but also excuses her abuser husband repeatedly.  There are annoying viewpoints on how the husband is always right, non-white people are superior, and self-absorption in her obsession for a child.  There is also an uncomfortable lesbian relationship due to its build up and resolution.

Besides the awful characters, there are too many unnecessary or odd plot elements.  ***Here be slight spoilers.***  Henry's audiologist background is used to get him to the factory town and never really touched on again.  The factory owner's deaf daughter and governess appear periodically but to no real purpose.  The town is also filled with deaf factory workers as a plot device for attempted murder.  There is a factory manager with a secret laboratory that is used as a side plot towards the end of the book with the real use of the silk i.e. total mind control and/or torture.  But how the mind control worked was nonsensical.  There is a flood subplot to remove the evil factory.  There is a dead character who turns up magically alive at the end. Ugh.

Then comes the spiders.  The silk mind control subplot was awful enough.  However the silk was supposed to cause psychosis or deafness or pain when facing one side and complete silence when facing the other.  It may also cause birth defects.  But the author failed to explore the uses of the silk on any practical level.  Basically the main use was curtains.  The bad effects never seemed consistent and seemed used only to shock the reader i.e. torture. Some people get headaches and can take a medicinal pill.  Some lose their minds.  The majority go deaf.  Henry never seems overly concerned with these elements of the silk.  Why was he so mesmerized by the silk other than as a plot device?  Also if the spiders were gods on the Greek island with seemingly magical properties, why did that disappear in England with them just regular spiders?  These spiders and their silk had such possibility and sat in the background.

Ultimately, I do not recommend this book for anyone.  The major ideas that could be explored i.e. capitalism, classism, industrial conditions, treatment of children, white-savior complex, use of sign language etc. are not discussed or used in any compelling or engaging way.  This walks the plank and good riddance.  Arrr!

Thank you to Bridget Collins and William Morrow via NetGalley for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I was excited to read this book as I’d thoroughly enjoyed Collins’ previous two adult novels. However, I found this one very had to get into and less compelling than her previous works. My main issue was how horrible everyone is! There are only a few characters who aren’t awful, but their storylines are still depressing to follow. I found the plot interesting. The idea of spiders that produce silk that provides absolute silence is compelling, but ended up being a struggle to actually read through.

There were some parts I did enjoy. Mainly I like the secondary timeline that followed a woman, Sophia, in Greece with her husband who was searching for the spiders. I loved those parts, but they were still extremely depressing!

I would recommend this book to people who are looking for some Dickensian bleakness mixed with magical realism.

Thank you Netgalley & William Morrow for an eARC ♥️


I haven't read Bridget Collins' previous books (yes, I know, I'm late to the party!), but this book has definitely made me a fan.😍

I have to admit, the cover of this book immediately caught my eye - it's stunning! 🔥The design, the colors, the eerie vibe... it all came together to create a visual masterpiece that drew me in like a moth to a flame. I was hooked from the very start, and I just knew I had to read it. And boy, am I glad I did!

The story is expertly woven, jumping between Sophia's journey in 1820s Greece and Henry's obsession with the Ashmore-Percy family's magical silk. It's like getting two stories in one, each with its own unique voice and atmosphere. I loved how Collins seamlessly blended historical fiction, mystery, and magical realism to create a narrative that's both captivating and unsettling.

The writing is gorgeous, with a lyrical quality that immerses you in the world of the story. Collins has a way of making you feel like you're right there with the characters, experiencing their joys and fears, their triumphs and failures. The atmosphere is creepy and immersive, perfect for a gothic suspense novel that'll keep you up late at night, turning pages with a mix of fascination and trepidation.

My only gripe is that some of the supporting characters felt a bit one-dimensional at times. But honestly, that's a minor quibble in an otherwise fantastic book. The main characters are well-developed and complex, with motivations that drive the plot forward in unexpected ways.👍🏽

Unsettling. I didn't like that it wasn't predictable and frankly going into it was anxiety producing. But I have to say, to provoke that kind of feeling, it is indubitably well-written. Very long. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a digital arc. This is my own words and thoughts.

3/5 Stars

TL;DR - Evocative, atmospheric prose and a tale of the ills of capitalism, of grief and queer longing — this should have been exactly my thing, but the story is ultimately dragged down by a slow pace and two vastly different POVs that aren’t cohesive. It’s also barely magical realism, definitely not the fantasy it was billed under on NetGalley.

Big thanks to HarperCollins, William Morrow, and NetGalley for providing the ARC for this book in exchange for an honest review!

***Trigger Warnings for: spiders, ableism, mentioned death of a spouse, mentioned death of an infant, mentioned death during childbirth, racism, sexism and misogyny, mentioned death of a sibling, ON-PAGE MISCARRIAGE, mentioned animal abuse, blood, mentioned death from cancer (uterine or ovarian), mentioned forced institutionalization, mentioned domestic abuse, human experimentation, mind control, on-page hanging in first person POV, being caught in a flash flood, and drowning.***

‘The Silence Factory’ by Bridget Collins is a historical fiction novel set at two different points of the 19th century, one on a remote Greek island, and the other in England. We follow two points of view, one from Henry Latimer, a grieving, widowed aurist looking for a new start in life, and one several decades in the past from Sophia Ashmore, a young wife accompanying her husband to the Mediterranean in his search for an elusive and semi-mythical spider. We watch their tandem stories play out, and see how both their lives are affected by the siren call of the spider’s silk, for better and for worse.

I don’t have much to say about this book, other than the fact that, while the prose is beautiful and the premise is fascinating, it ultimately was a disappointment in its execution.

As I said, the book is well-written from a craft standpoint. The prose is very Victorian in style, which I enjoy, but it is a tad on the wordy side, even for me. I think the author does a good job of creating a sense of place and time, and of writing in a way that’s very immersive.

That said, this book suffered from a very slow plot, and, as I said in the TL;DR, two conflicting POVs that were connected only through the common thread (badum tss) of the spiders. I vastly preferred Sophia’s POV, and I really wish that this book had been solely about her and her life on the island. That’s not to say that Henry’s POV wasn’t good, it was just a lot less interesting. I really think having two opposing POVs hurt this book more than it enhanced it, because ultimately, there was too little time to fully explore all the possibilities of Sophia’s story *and* cover all the ground that Henry’s required. I almost think this could have been better if it was split into two separate books, one for each POV, but for how it all came together as-is, it left a lot to be desired for me.

I’m also decidedly not the target audience for “sad man slowly goes insane”, nor for “sad man allows injustice repeatedly and is only peripherally involved with the rightful downfall of the villain”. Henry, while he was written in a way that made me feel for him and his suffering, was not a fun character to follow around. It was bad decision after bad decision, and while that’s a perfectly acceptable story to tell, it’s not the kind I enjoy reading. I was much more invested in Sophia as a narrator and character, but we get so little time with her that I was left wanting so much more than I got.

And my last gripe is that I requested the ARC of this book under the pretense that the mythical spiders and their magic silk would play a much larger role in the story than they actually do. The blurb makes it sound like this is true magical realism (enough so to be shelved under “Sci-Fi & Fantasy” on NetGalley) but in reality, the “magical” aspects take a regrettable backseat to a tale of greed and human suffering — which is all well and good, but I was here for fantasy and I didn’t get it. The true nature of the spiders and their divine connections are never explained, and as a diehard Greek mythology girlie, I was extremely disappointed in what felt like a squandered opportunity for some really cool re-imaginings of Greek myth. This book is 99% historical fiction, which, if that’s what you come into it expecting, I think you’ll like this book — but if you, like me, are going into it for magic and mysticism, you’ll leave empty-handed.

I *do* appreciate that both POVs were from queer characters, I’m always down for that. However, I regret to inform you that neither relationship really pans out, and one does technically end with a variation of the “Bury Your Gays” trope. Sigh.

Final Thoughts:

A perfectly passable historical fiction novel, but a disappointment for the kind of reader I am, and for what I was expecting given the blurb. Will not be purchasing a physical copy.

Huge thanks to William Morrow and NetGalley for an advance e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review!

Oh boy. They really had me in the first half. This is such an intriguing concept and there were some tense and eerie scenes of Henry’s first encounters with the silk made from some mysterious spiders (arachnophobes need not apply to this story, btw) but by the book’s end I found no one to be redeemable and some really problematic messages about abusive people and relationships.

This is mainly Henry’s story, with some interstitials between chapters from a woman named Sophia telling the tale about how the spiders came to be here. Both of these people find themselves in abusive relationships and I HATED seeing Henry constantly covering for and supporting his abuser. At first I was very uncomfortable with myself that my main critique was victim-blaming the main character for defending their abuser (because of course they would! They don’t see the abuser for the absolute garbage heap of a person they actually are!) But as Henry’s present day actions continue to reveal increasingly flawed morals and his true past comes to light I came to realize: this man does not deserve my pity.

I’ll hide these flaws in spoiler tags, as they’re in the book’s second half/conclusion:

<<<SPOILERS>>>
- A flood *conveniently* destroys the factory in the book’s final chapters and Henry battles a confessed psychopath who confesses to killing several women and enjoying it, as well as relishing his human experimentations. Henry feels regretful that he cannot save this man in the flood and spares barely a thought for a woman who is TIED UP IN A ROOM FULL OF PSYCHOTROPIC SPIDERS WHO ALSO DROWNS (and whom he failed to listen to/help earlier because she opposed his abuser)
- It is revealed in the last few pages that Henry’s daughter - whom we’ve been led to believe throughout the story died while being born, in turn killing her mother - is not dead, but in fact simply abandoned by Henry to cousins because he couldn’t handle the grief.
- In the final pages, Henry gazes longingly up at the failed factory, wishing he could see Sir Edward again and REMAIN FRIENDS with someone who has:
- Allowed his wife to be locked into a room with psychotropic spiders while heavily pregnant
- Mentally and physically abused him
- Willfully permitted and actively engaged in human experimentation
- Employed children in his factories and ignored the mental and physical abuse the endured
- (This isn’t about Henry’s morality but it also rubbed me the wrong way, so I’m including it in spoilers alongside the others) In the excerpts from Sophia’s diary, it’s revealed that she is also trapped in an abusive relationship. We come to find out that she died horrifically without getting out of said relationship. She also shares a moment with a woman but the story tarnishes this too when a psychopath uses the diaries to develop a device that robs a person of their autonomy, suggesting that Sophia didn’t willingly have said encounter.

The Silence Factory is an incredibly interesting concept. We are following two different stories that are intertwined. One is the journal entries of a woman living with her researcher husband on an island in Greece. He is seeking to learn more about a special species of spider with a silk that seems to effect sound. The other story, told in 3rd person, follows a young widower who is working in his father-in-laws shop selling hearing aids. He gets the opportunity to go on a journey to a town called Telverton where he is hoping to help a wealthly businessman's child gain the ability to hear.

These stories are connected though many years apart drawing you back and forth building a full story of the spiders, their silk, and the power and possible curses held within that silk.

I was intrigued to continue the story and unravel the mystery of the silk and its impact on the world. That being said, I found it at times hard to bring myself to read with the story being a bit slow and very dark. I severely disliked our lead character, Henry, though I imagine that was by design.

This story is told in dual timelines in 1820 when Sophia Ashmore-Percy accompanies her husband James to a remote island in Greece where he relentlessly searches for an elusive spider that he is betting his family’s future upon and decades later follows Henry Latimer, a widowed audiologist who is engaged by Sir Edward, the great-nephew of James, to find an auditory solution for his deaf daughter.

Henry is quite intrigued by a sample of silk that Sir Edward gifts him. The silk, which is made by the spiders brought back to England by James to start the Telverton Silk factory, has interesting audible properties. On one side it provides perfect silence to the listener, and the grieving Henry experiences the first good sleep since the death of his wife. However, the other side of the silk gives quite a different, contraindicative experience.

Upon Henry’s arrival to Carthmute House, it’s quicky evident that things are not quite as Sir Edward represented. Sir Edward is quite enigmatic, warm and affectionate one moment and coldly demanding the next, but Henry has fallen under his spell, seeking to please him with ideas for promoting his silk when his audio technology fails to help Sir Edward’s daughter.

There were times when I was quite frustrated with both the main characters in this story. Henry for his blind loyalty to Sir Edward despite the red flags popping up all over the place and with Sophia for putting up with the mansplaining James (yes, it’s a modern term but perfect for him), though I suppose a woman with any kind of intellect was expected to put up with men talking down to them in 1820. They both acted just as I was at the tip of exasperation. Perfect timing.

Henry is given the journal of Sophia and must work out what happened with her, James and the spiders all the while investigating the intriguing happenings at the house and factory. All is not as it seems, in either storyline. It all culminates with a disastrous event that propels the story quickly to its conclusion leaving me both satisfied and still slightly baffled, but happy that I enjoyed this ride.

This is my third book by this author. I loved The Binding and was disappointed by The Betrayals. This book falls neatly between with a gothic atmosphere that I loved, intrigue that drew me in, and creepy, mythological spiders with mesmerizing abilities that I still don’t fully understand, but it may prompt me to pick it up and read it all over again.

Thank you to Netgalley and William Morrow for a copy provided for an honest review.

"From the acclaimed author of the #1 international bestseller The Binding - a captivating story of Gothic suspense about a powerful family, the magical and dangerous silk their fortune is built upon, and the exploitative history they are desperately trying to hide.

1820: Sophia Ashmore-Percy reluctantly accompanies her husband James to a remote Greek island, where he searches for rare biological specimens. Once there, however, she sets on her own voyage of discovery - stumbling across the very creature he is looking for, making an unexpected connection with a local woman, and ultimately reconsidering her marriage, life, and own desires.

Decades later, audiologist Henry Latimer is sent to the home of industrialist Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy and tasked with curing the man's young daughter, Philomel, of her deafness. But Henry, eager to escape a troubled past, quickly becomes obsessed with the fascinating nature of Sir Edward's business: spinning silk with a rare and magical breed of spiders. The extraordinary silk shields sound, offering respite from bustling streets and noisy neighbors. The result is instant tranquility, as wearers experience a soothing calmness. Yet, those within earshot of the outward-facing silk are subjected to eerie murmurs that amplify with proximity. Bystanders suffer the consequences of this unnerving phenomenon, manifesting in physical and mental afflictions ranging from headaches and drowsiness to severe cases of madness.

As Henry becomes entangled in the allure of the silk and Sir Edward's charm, he glimpses a more sinister family history. The closer he ventures into the inner circle of Carthmute House, the more he unravels the horrifying underbelly of the silk business.

With Bridget Collins's signature, stunning prose, The Silence Factory is an equally enthralling and unsettling Gothic story about complicity, desire, and corruption - a novel to lose yourself in."

Oh my, silk capable of inducing insanity? How soon can I visit the looms?

I never quite connected with the storytelling or the writing style in this one, despite the plot sounding really interesting. It wasn't a good fit for me, but I think others will have a better time with it.

The magical element, while a unique concept, didn't lead to anything particularly interesting for me.

Another sweeping, beautiful gothic fantasy where you weirdly want to be part of the world, but are also a little afraid of it. With a lovely undercurrent focused on what happens when natural resources are overused.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for this arc which will release wide on 8/20/24

I…. The writing was beautiful. It truly was but this gothic suspense set in 1920s Greece was not fun for me to read. It was clunky and unmoving. I felt like I was punishing myself to finish it. I do believe there is an audience for this prose-y work but it was not me.

Thanks for the opportunity to review. Interesting premise around the price we're willing to pay for some things -- ultimately I didn't click with this so ended up setting aside/DNF.

Bridget Collins has fallen off my list of authors to watch for several reasons (TERF allegations among other things) but also because The Silence Factory is confirmation that every book of hers since The Binding has been a miss! Her latest novel, a gothic horror suspense, is thankfully more comprehensible than the unholy mess that was The Betrayals but follows in its tradition of trying to cram 50 themes into one book without fully committing to any of them.

The story follows two characters: the unhappy wife of an 1820s Victorian naturalist trapped on a remote Greek island, and a grieving aurist (early precursor to audiologist? idk) who ~80 years later gets wrapped into a nefarious silk industry by her descendant. Both characters had enormous horrible wet blanket energy and spent basically the whole of their stories being massively depressed due to Repressed Homosexuality whilst making horribly decisions on account of their baseless feelings for the objectively atrocious men in their lives. Super fun to read, obviously! The tiny glimmer of light of the story was the budding relationship between Sophia (unhappy Victorian housewife) and her housekeeper Hera (exoticised local) but even this was undercut by the colonial undertones and the VERY OBVIOUS fact that this part of the story is set in Greece and not somewhere else solely so Collins can dodge racism allegations by exotisicng Spicy White People instead of people of color. There is SOME attempt to reckon with the reprehensible actions of Sophie & her husband in stealing indigenous ritual as a method of financial and social advancement but unfortunately I ALSO just finished Sofia Samataar's The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, so this jab at a political commentary fell especially flat.

Onto Henry, and the other 35 themes! Henry as a character is 1000x worse than Sophia and caused me psychic damage with his nonstop blind ignorance and utter lack of class consciousness. He is a character defined utterly by his poor decisions, and while their is certainly something classically Gothic about watching a character completely torpedo his lives and the lives of those around him it was utterly unfun and uninteresting to read. I realize all of my discussion thus far has utterly ignored the central plot, which is essentially Special Spider Silk That Gives You Psychosis: Good or Bad? Collins is clearly trying to make a point about late stage capitalism and the commodification of basic human needs but knuckling down on silence as this particular human need was comically hard to sell and made the stakes feel week. I won't even begin to get into use of deaf folks as a plot device as I don't know much about those experience but am interested to see if any folks in that community have thoughts.
I didn't know about the TERF business until reading some of these reviews but does explain some of the weird bioessentialist ~female body mysticism~ vibes throughout the book....bad vibes all around!!!

The writing is beautiful and the characters are complex, however, I kept waiting for something to happen that would justify all of the time I spent reading. It is very slow and the pacing is uneven because each time when I got to a section that felt like it should be a ramp up I was left sorely disappointed.

This next comment did not influence my rating/review: It was brought to my attention that the author engages in problematic discourse online under their professional accounts. If I hadn’t discovered this before I posted about this book I would’ve opened myself up to backlash, and it would just be nice if these authors and their publishers could for once consider the much wider implications of their decisions.

From the acclaimed author of the #1 international bestseller The Binding—a captivating story of gothic suspense about a powerful family, the magical and dangerous silk their fortune is built upon, and the exploitative history they are desperately trying to hide.

I hated it. Mostly because the author is a known TERF but also because she's not a good writer.

The Silence Factory is a gothic tale, with elements of thriller and horror genres. It is told along two timelines – (1) the 1820 diary entries of Sophia Ashmore-Percy wherein she describes her biologist husband’s search for a rare spider specimen on a remote Greek isle; and (2) decades later, within the same family, a business built by Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy based on producing silk from the same rare spider. The second timeline is told from the point of view of audiologist Henry Latimer as he attempts to help Sir Edward’s deaf daughter to hear and gets caught up in the family’s risky silk-producing enterprise. It is an intriguing story. The silk contains unreal qualities – one side in particular offers near silence to those within its boundaries and has nearly unlimited potential applications. But the second side produces eerie, echo-like sounds that drive those around to madness and/or deafness. As Henry becomes closer to the silk, including being charged with its promotion, he finds himself with unhealthy attractions to the business and Sir Edward.

While intriguing, the Silence Factory never quite reached the potential of its cover, which drew me in immediately. With the exceptions of Philomel (Sir Edward’s daughter) and her governess, the characters were largely unlikeable and one-note. The protagonist, Henry, is gullible, falling for the silk business and its businessman despite clear warnings against them. His attraction to Sir Edward, in particular, is baseless and reads as very unbelievable. So, while this book IS well-written and has an interesting premise, it doesn’t quite hold up to its promise. Others have loved it, however, and mine is just one opinion…

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow Books for providing me with this e-ARC in advance of it publishment.

Henry Latimer is an aurist unhappily working with his father-in-law and grappling with grief when he meets a peculiar gentleman with a scrap of odd silk and a proposition. Henry takes him up on the offer and finds himself with renewed purpose at the front of a new business venture working with the man he’s slowly becoming obsessed with. But of course things aren’t what they seem at the factory and with Sir Ashmore-Percy himself. What ensues is a story of delusion versus reality, capitalism versus indigenous culture, and the toxic effects of patriarchy on society.

I don’t know if I’d call this fantasy or horror like it was advertised. Maybe historical speculative fiction, but it is a great, gothic read with some strong themes. Henry as a main character is written to be passive while still being engaging, sometimes making frustrating decisions but always being led by his past and clearly defined morals. He’s an interestingly spineless protagonist towards the beginning and his arc to finding himself through his grief is particularly compelling, but the twist towards the end is a little weaker than I expected. The story-within-a-story element is a great choice to lend a female perspective to the story, and I think Sophy’s chapters were my favorite parts of the book. There were some slight pacing issues towards the middle but once I pushed through I don’t think it was that detrimental to my reading experience.

Huge thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and author for this Advanced Reader Copy! This review is my honest opinion and offered voluntarily!