Wildthorn by Jane Eagland

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Release: September 6, 2011
Pages: 352
Source: Netgalley
Age Range: Young Adult

The seventeen-year old Louisa Cosgrove is a girl living in Victorian England. She has a very strong opinion for a girl her age during that time. She wants to step in her father's footsteps as a doctor and she wants to pursue this by going to the London School of Medicine for Women. But her family has other thoughts of this. They think this is not normal behaviour for a girl: a girl like her is expected to find a husband and have children and be obedient. One day her older brother Tom tells her she is send off to the house or rich people in a landhouse to work for them. But when the carriage stops and deliver Louisa at her destination, she is dropped of somewhere else. She is dropped at Wildthorn Hall, an asylum for the insane. This is the start of a cruel period for her: They strip her naked, of everything—undo her whalebone corset, hook by hook and they take her identity: she is now Lucy Childs. They play just sick mindgames with her that drive people insane, and no one at Wildthorn can be trusted it seems. Only the maid Eliza seems to be an exception to this, as she helps Eliza with sending illegal letters to her mother back home and helps Louisa with her escape plan. But will she get out? And who send her to this madhouse, who was behind this insane plan to lock her up?

The book is separated into two parts. The first starts with Louisa’s arrival at Wildthorn and then alternates with flashbacks to her childhood leading up to what made her decide to leave home in the first place. As we are introduced to the people in her life suspicion keeps switching around as, in present day, Louisa begins to understand the inner politics of Wildthorn Hall and finds she isn’t the only one who has suffered an injustice in being sent to Wildthorn.

This book was just fabulous. I expected to be good but it really was better than I thought it would be. I loved how the author created historical characters and scenes that where so realistic! One of the most amazing elements of this book is the setting, the madhouse Wildthorn Hall. Freaky, weird side characters surround Louisa, and she seems trapped and locked up and the author really makes the reader page turning with one question in mind; does she get out, or does she go insane too?
One thing that really surprised me was the romantic element of Wildthorn, I didn't expect Louisa to be a lesbian, as a reader I don't read that often in book set in the Victorian timesetting. But I think it was original and a funny twist. Overall this was a great and amazing read and I hope to read more books by this fabulous author!