Wildthorn

By:  Jane Eagland

Publish date:  Sept. 6, 2010

Seventeen year old Louisa Cosgrove thinks she's on her way to her new job as companion for a new family, but instead she arrives at Wildthorn, an insane asylum for women.  Her traveling chaperone is there to make she she gets admitted.  She's told she's no longer Louisa Cosgrove, that her name is Lucy Childs and that she has to stay there to get well.  What makes Louisa so crazy?  In Victorian England the problem is that she wants to be a doctor, she reads too much, she learns too much and it makes her family uncomfortable.

I found this book to be very good, it starts off right away at her arriving at the asylum and is told through a series of flashbacks which I thought was really effective.  I felt very bad Louisa, she couldn't do anything to get out of the situation she was in and she didn't do anything wrong to get herself into the situation she was in. 

There's a very mild lesbian theme throughout the book, which wasn't graphic by any means at all, but if that offends you this book might not be for you. 

This book is also classified as Young Adult, but don't let that deter you grown ups, it's worth the read I think.

I got an ARC of this book from Netgalley