A review by kellysmaust
The Darlings of the Asylum by Noel O'Reilly
2.0
I was only a few chapters into this book and the extremely NLOG protagonist had already hated on "other" girls making "accurate botanical drawings" and the hot art teacher had dissed Edmund Blair Leighton! My initial thought was that no offense but they both belonged in the asylum, however, I did keep reading and the rest of the story was basically a blatant rip-off of [b:Alias Grace|72579|Alias Grace|Margaret Atwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1298545436l/72579._SY75_.jpg|2069530] complete with an About 75% of the main character's dialog is basically sound bites pulled from a Feminism 101 class, and everyone else, when they take a momentary break from their mustache-twirling villainy, basically exists to dump effusive praise for the heroine about what an amazing and innovative artist she is. Violet is basically a dramatic 24-yr-old woman who wants to spend a lot of time alone angsting and drawing thirsty mermaid pictures (literally) instead of getting married. Unfortunately, this being the 1880s, rather than just being obnoxious on Tumblr and DeviantArt as she would have been in the 2010s, she is sent to an asylum. This truly is a horrific fate that many real women went through; however, it was really difficult to care about this protagonist and her struggles when she had spent the entire first half of the book being A Feminist Written by a Man, completely self-absorbed, caring only about her dad and brothers' approval, and having absolutely nothing good to say about her mother or any other women.