Whoa. This was pretty wild! Winifred Notty is hired as a governess for the Pounds family, even though she’s really not qualified. The two children are horrible, but Ms. Notty is worse. Her character is a "true" psycho. She is unable to cry or feel any real human emotions. She refers to the evil inside her. She says and does horrific things, but there’s a witty, lighthearted tone to all of it. There were a couple scenes where I audibly gasped out loud.

This is a bloody, gruesome read. Somewhat a slow burn up until the violent finale, in which I was fully satisfied. This is a totally unhinged book and I can't wait to see the film adaptation.

Thank you to Netgalley and Liveright Publishing for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

a most magnificent comedy horror.

i loved the fast pace, the narrator, the jokes, the climax, the punch line of the entire book. i believe the ending was too short, maybe another chapter before the last would be good BUT i still loved it.

This book is a thrilling plunge into the demented mind of Winifred Notty. She has been hired by a family in the country to be a governess but has nothing but disdain for children and everyone in the house. She has a captivating darkness to her, and her violent and odd delusions have you questioning her state of mind. The Victorian setting adds a layer of macabre charm. This book is not for the faint-hearted. It has an unapologetic embrace of carnage, brutality, and comedic elements. It's a gothic satire with morally dubious characters that welcomes the grotesque.

I received an ARC ebook for my honest review. Thank you, NetGalley and W. W. Norton & Company, Liveright

3.5 rounded down to 3.

Thanks to NetGalley and Liveright Publishing for an advanced copy of Victorian Psycho in exchange for an honest review.

Victorian Psycho follows Winifred Notty, a governess for the Pounds family at Ensor House. However, she isn't a typical governess, due to some of her violent quirks...

I had trouble rating this one. On one hand, the story revolving around Winifred was very intriguing. Through various flashbacks, we learn more about her upbringing and why she is the way she is (to an extent). The author did not hold back with the violence and gore, either - lots of animal and child deaths (in detail), so this one is definitely not for everyone. The writing style was also very literary and I felt like it really put me into this period in time, which was pretty neat. It was gory but beautifully written, which was a jarring contrast that I enjoyed. The ending was also perfectly fitting for this story, and there were a couple little twists I didn't see coming at all, so it ended for me on a high note.

On the other hand, a lot of the writing was a bit on the difficult side for me to follow at times - I'm not familiar with some of the terminology used, so the dictionary was extremely helpful. However, having to do that took me out of the moment because I had to stop to figure out what some of the wording meant. And although there was a lot of darkness and violence, I found myself kind of bored. The flowery descriptions for mundane everyday activities were a little bit much for me, personally. I think about 60% in, I was hooked because that's when it all hit the fan and everything came together.

I truly wish I could give this a 3.5 rating, because I don't think it warrants 3-stars, but it's not quite a 4-star review from me either. Overall, this was a unique and dark story. It reminded me a bit of Lizzie Borden in a way, but very vaguely. It also has a Shirley Jackson vibe, with the gothic horror aspect and writing style. I do think it's worth a read, however I advise that readers be aware of how violent this story is. I'm not sure if there were any content warnings listed but just be aware that nothing and no one is safe from the violence of Winifred Notty.

*out February 4, 2025*
Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito 4.5/5 💫 (CWs near the bottom!)

This book was wild from the start and I loved almost every second? I found Victorian Psycho to be dark, demented, low-key hilarious, and a bit gory.
Winifred is an excellent unreliable narrator—her visualization of what she wants to do to the people around her are fascinating! Near the end I started to question what was real and what wasn’t, but in a way that I enjoyed.
I haven’t read a lot of Victorian era governess novels, but this makes me want to pick up a few. I’m not sure what that says about me 🤣

I think my favorite part was the ending around 12 days of Christmas.
Thank you to Liveright/W. W. Norton & Company, NetGalley and the author for an Advanced Reading Copy. I loved it!

CWs:
Graphic: Violence, Child death, Gore
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, Self harm
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Fatphobia

Victorian Psycho
By: Virginia Feito

4 Stars

Winifred Notty is a governess like no other. Arriving at Ensor House to take care of her new charges, her imagination begins to work against her. Her real reason for being there is soon revealed in a dark way.

Wow. This book can be described from macabre to brilliant. It's dark and had a legitimate spookiness. At times, I did find myself a bit confused, but I enjoyed it. It seemed to have a bit of a comedy aspect. I found myself shocked most of the time while getting a good giggle every now and then.

Overall, this story was dark, funny, gruesome, and completely captivating.


*I want to thank Netgalley and the author for this book in return for my honest review*

Stormi Ellis
Boundless Book Review

Oh bloody and gruesome hand of death, thy name is Winifred.

Oh boy. What a story this turned out to be. It’s unhinged, crude, steeped in dark humor, and unapologetically violent. And Winifred is the epitome of antihero masquerading as a demure governess. Her inner dialogue teeters on the edge of violent explosion, and the Darkness she feels at her core compels her hand into grotesque acts. As a child, she embraced, and accepted, her darkness. As an adult, she tries, but fails, to curb her compulsions. And as the novel progresses, you’re not necessarily surprised how she turns out, or by what she does. You are, however, surprised by how extreme the ending is.

Feito gives us in Winifred a “shatter the norms and give no sh*ts” protagonist, and her story isn’t for the faint of heart. She is brash, and more than matched the vulgarity of her employer, and his family and friends. And throughout everything, she never apologize who she is and what she does. She is the Victorian psycho.

I love a novel that can keep me on my toes, and shock me. It was well-written, engaging, and absolutely insane. It won’t be for everyone, but fans of unhinged stories will eat this one up.

Eh, this is almost precisely what I thought it would be from the synopsis, aside from a small twist at the very end that I did very much enjoy, but for some reason I feel vastly underwhelmed. I don't think Feito's work is for me.

This one surprised me. Much more visceral and disturbing than expected but incredibly well written. It’s difficult to discuss without getting into spoilers, but I’ll try..
Miss Notty is a nightmarish figure—intelligent, capable, un-repenting, and violent character. Told entirely through her point of view, readers are never quite sure what’s real and what’s hallucinations or daydreams (once even chastised by the narrator for believing a particularly gruesome moment possible). Breadcrumbs of the future are laid out explicitly—letting readers know the fates of those in the house fairly early on, and adding to an ever growing sense of tension and suspense.
It’s hard to call a read like this “good” or “enjoyable” but it’s extremely well-written and I’d definitely be curious to read more from this author.
Trigger warnings for: blood, body horror, violence against children, violence in general

I thought this book was very well done and I will certainly be reading more from Feito. This was a very eerie but delightful book, and it would've been more perfect to read in October to get a more fun spooky vibe but I loved this book so much.

Two of my favorite books are Jane Eyre and The Turn of the Screw - classic Victorian governess stories - and Victorian Psycho is a new classic for me. It’s much darker than either of those, and while neither of those lacks humor, Victorian Psycho had me literally laughing out loud. The narrator-governess, Winifred Notty, reads (in the Paris Is Burning, insult as art kind of reading) every person she meets, starting with the carriage driver to her new post.
Victorian Psycho is a perfect satire of the classic Victorian governess novels, Feito’s language at once faithful to the style but with a modern cynicism such as when the housekeeper tells Miss Notty that she has given her a small room in the back of the house as she was sure that Miss Notty would “disapprove of the unnecessary finery of the large front chambers.”
Miss Notty is an unreliable narrator, and there are times where we are not sure if what she sees is real or imagined, and she admits that to us sometimes, but Victorian Psycho isn’t about relaying the facts of the story, it’s about showing us through the lens of a disturbed mind the horrors that lie just beneath the facade of the height of polite Victorian society. And I’m here for it.

This is definitely not a story for everyone, but it was surely a story for me. It’s very dark & violent with children murders so please be aware of that going in.

I really enjoy books that focus on female characters that seem to be off their rocker so i loved this. The author did a great job at connecting everything together at the end & Winnifred, while insane, was such an interesting character.

ARC by NetGalley and the publisher.

I’m so disheartened to say because I really wanted to start 2025 off with a great read but this one did not work for me. In the beginning I was intrigued by the darker version of a 1800’s governess gone wrong but the farther I read the more it became clear this wouldn’t be a recommended book from me. Don’t get me wrong I love a good vengeance filled female ragey book however the minuet the FMC took this said rage out on a young innocent child (an infant no less) I just couldn’t bring myself to care any longer about her motives or support her in anyway. The story as well as a whole just had too many plot holes and inconsistencies, making the gorey deaths and horror just there for the sake being shocking . I truly hope this book when published has content warnings applied to it.

Victorian Psycho comes out February 4th, 2025. Thank you NetGalley and Liveright for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This was fun! The bleak moments interspersed with humor worked for me in this one. Despite her actions, Winifred still come off as a likable character that I was rooting for. Would recommend.

Boy, does this book live up to its title! Highly entertaining read. Dark and twisted af. Fred is such a fascinating character. She's so psychopathic, there's no equivocating about it. No excuses made. The Pound family and their dynamics with each other and with her were very interesting to see her navigate. Also, I love when a book gives me a great "I KNEW IT!!" moment and I had one with a twist that happens. It's so satisfying when that happens. Ending was great. Saw that this is also being made a into a movie and can't wait to watch it when it is.

I would say the formatting is a technical issue, but my guess is it is a standard file upload? I do not know the backend of Net Galley.

Please note: THIS RATING DOES NOT REFLECT THE BOOK, IT IS A REFLECTION OF THE INACCESSIBILITY OF THIS FILE. I still want to read the book but am very frustrated with the formatting, it was a big enough issue this time that I couldn't just be quiet about it.

The formatting was a problem for me (I have a Kindle Paperwhite, not an obscure ereader, so this should not have been an issue?) but there are also capital letters in words that should not have any capital letters. I want to blame this on a technical issue but it seems a bit deeper than that? I am unable to read this file at all. I've been able to troubleshoot formatting issues in the past by reducing the font size, but even when fully reduced, this wold not be readable if I had it on a Word doc in front of me. This is not an accessible ARC. I will likely not request ARCs from this publisher anymore to avoid this in the future, because this is extremely frustrating.

Still want to read this book once it's published but it's going far lower on the priority line because this was a bad experience.

This is going to be one of my favorite books I read in 2025. Everything about it is eerie and captivating. I can't wait to read more by Virginia Feito.

I included this in my wrap-up of top reads of the year on my blog, which is also publicized on social media, in my newsletter, and in my writing community of 500+ people.

This book delivered exactly what it set out to deliver — a quirky, witty, gruesome romp, American Psycho style. It was a wild read with a great atmospheric setting for the holidays, weird characters, and a scathing killer at the center.

I would have liked just a few more flashbacks to understand how our victorian psycho got that way — but, also enjoyed that it was a shorter, quicker romp. It didn’t necessarily NEED character development, given the context. Overall an intense, fast-paced read for fans of horror!

Virginia Feito’s Victorian Psycho is a darkly delightful dive into the mind of a woman untethered from morality, drenched in the oppressive atmosphere of Victorian England. Written in an authentic Victorian style, complete with woodcut illustrations, this novel immerses readers in the era while unraveling the chilling story of Winifred, a governess whose psychopathy knows no bounds.

The Story
Winifred Notty is hired to care for two children at Ensor House, a sprawling estate brimming with secrets. On the surface, she seems like an unassuming caretaker, but as the story progresses, the depths of her disturbing nature become impossible to ignore. Winifred’s intrusive thoughts escalate to horrifying acts that send shockwaves through the household, culminating in a Christmas Day bloodbath no one could have predicted.

What makes Winifred so compelling—and chilling—is the slow unraveling of her past. Through carefully placed flashbacks, we learn about her troubled childhood, marked by rejection and a sinister darkness that set her apart from others. Her memories reveal an unnerving pattern of deviant behavior, like the time she poisoned her classmates with bits of a decomposing crow, leaving you both horrified and grimly amused. There’s a quiet determination behind her every action, an unsettling sense that her time at Ensor House is part of a larger plan.

Atmosphere and Themes
Feito masterfully evokes the Victorian era, offering readers a visceral glimpse into the customs and hierarchies of the time. The masters overindulging at a Christmas party while the servants gather around the hearth to tell ghost stories in the next room underscores the rigid class divides that defined the period. This contrast not only adds depth to the narrative but also sets the stage for the story’s exploration of oppression and power dynamics.

But Victorian Psycho isn’t just a story of oppression. It’s also a twisted revenge tale, one where trauma, familial neglect, and societal expectations combine to create a truly unhinged protagonist. Winifred’s actions—while appalling—are rooted in a need for validation and control in a world that has denied her both.

Feito’s writing is razor-sharp, capturing the chilling atmosphere of Ensor House with a precision that pulls you deeper into Winifred’s unraveling psyche. The Victorian authenticity isn’t just a stylistic choice—it’s a tool that amplifies the tension and immerses you fully in the story’s dark, twisted world.

The Experience
Let me warn you now: this book is dark. Seriously, check those trigger warnings because Feito does not pull punches. What makes it work, though, is the humor. It’s dark, it’s sharp, and somehow it keeps you hooked even when the violence makes you want to look away. From the eerie, almost supernatural way Winifred sneaks around the house to the chilling humor of a doll box hiding a terrible secret, this book knows exactly how to toe the line between horrifying and absurd.

I started reading this intending to check out a chapter or two, and before I knew it, I’d finished the whole thing in one sitting. It’s compelling, unnerving, and impossible to put down.

Conclusion
For fans of gothic horror and those who enjoy exploring the darker recesses of the human psyche, Victorian Psycho is a must-read. It’s a hauntingly sharp critique of societal structures, wrapped in an engrossing tale of madness and mayhem. I was horrified, delighted, and completely hooked from the first page to the last.