Reviews tagging 'Torture'

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito

64 reviews

dark sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

A quick, atmospheric, and captivating read. I love reading books where the main character is the "villain." If you're going into this book expecting to like these characters, brace yourself, because they are not likable.

The POV of this book offered an interesting and more intimate perspective. The reader got to see directly into the mind of psychopathy.

Please check the trigger warnings before reading this. I cannot stress this enough. There are brutal animal and child deaths within this book that could be triggering.

For being such a quick read, I thought the story was well done. The characters didn't feel underdeveloped to me at all and the writing was wonderful.

Goodreads Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7258234843
Fable Review: https://fable.co/review/0a3ff88d-5483-417f-8ecc-5cc25b4ec4d7/share

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dark funny fast-paced

Very very dark. Less than 200 pages but this book will stay with me for quite a bit. Unbelievably dark horror (with many TW). The dark humour of the narrator kept me hooked and intrigued throughout, even thought the ending is told within the first few pages!
With strong feminist themes and an array of awful characters this delved into the victorian time but from an unusual perspective.
I gobbled this up (helped by the impending library return date) and will read all of Virginia's future work.


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dark funny medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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dark funny fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark funny medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

It was a good gnarly book, just not my vibe

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dark funny tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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dark tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This story is told from the perspective of Winifred Notty, a governess who arrives at a remote stately home to begin educating 2 children. 
As the story progresses, Winifred, traumatised by her childhood & a desire for revenge, slips into a spiral of psychosis and commits mass murder in a truly spectacular, bloodthirsty way. 

This book is so unique in many ways. I loved the short chapters, I enjoyed Winifred’s wit and sarcasm-at the beginning it gave me ‘Fleabag’ vibes with her winking at the camera and breaking the fourth wall. Irreverence is the general tone of her inner voice. It’s also very shocking in a lot of ways and not just the violence (which is pretty grim). She is in a lot of ways a heroine, many of the other characters in the book have much worse morals and behaviour than her. I also felt desperately sorry for her as flashbacks to her childhood are revealed during her psychosis-and it made me cheer her on to murder in some of the chapters. Although you knew what was to come there were twists and reveals which kept the pace up. The way the writer conveys the spiralling of her madness too was very clever. 
The only flaw for me was that it was too short, I would have liked a bit more backstory fleshing out and for a piece of gothic fiction, a little more creeping tension. 

A very unique, gory and fast paced read.

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dark emotional funny fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Was this top tier horror? Yes 
Did this book emotionally scar me for life? Maybe 
Will I read it again to see if there was anything I missed? Eventually 

Oof. This is a HEAVY book with intensely graphic death scenes that is perfect for people who prefer their horror along the lines of gore vs suspense. The suspense is there, but the gore in the last few chapters greatly over shadows it. 

PROS: 
🩸 Nature VS Nurture
🦷 Is she really a psychopath or is she just what everyone made her? 
🩸 Familial psychosis 
🦷 The Gore 
🩸 The Twelve Days of Christmas 
🦷 Every murder has stuck in my mind like a stubborn stain I can’t remove 
🩸 World and Character Building and Backstory are ALL solid 

CONS: 
🦷 The Nanny deserved better
🩸 Lots and lots of child death and reference to previous off the page child deaths 
🦷 There is just a lot of death 
🩸 Misogyny 
🦷 Phrenology 

👶🏻👶🏻👶🏻👶🏻👶🏻 out of five babies mistaken for baby dolls 

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adventurous dark funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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