Rottenheart

by Kat Dunn

From the author of Hungerstone comes a stunning new gothic horror novel set in Victorian Era London, inspired by the ghostly world of Hamlet.

It is the time of night when only the dead are abroad.

1898 Hampstead, Odette’s mother is dead. Before the funeral rites have concluded, body not yet buried, her once-estranged aunt, Claudine, takes over as the family’s matriarch. Not long after, she is announced as Odette’s new step-mother and the household reorders itself around Claudine's every command. As Odette reckons with this betrayal, a sinister presence begins to make itself known—and it is desperate for revenge. 

Odette’s childhood best friend and lover Cecilia is caught in the middle. As Cecilia’s affections are tested in the face of Odette’s spiraling madness, so too is her duty to her family when they find themselves bound to Claudine by a buried secret. 

Telling a story of love and grief, mothers and daughters, death and madness, Rottenheart reimagines Hamlet with a fearless queer love story and a world full of ghostly hauntings.

Genres: Horror, Gothic, Lesbian, LGBT, Queer, Historical Fiction, Adult

Kindle Edition

First published June 4, 2026

About the author

Kat Dunn is the author of HUNGERSTONE (2025), BITTERTHORN, and the Battalion of the Dead trilogy:
DANGEROUS REMEDY, MONSTROUS DESIGN and GLORIOUS POISON.

She grew up in London and has lived in Japan, Australia and France.

She has a BA in Japanese from SOAS and an MA in English from Warwick. She’s written about mental health for Mind and The Guardian, and worked as a translator for Japanese television.

Reviews

[ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

thank you so much to netgalley for this arc!!

this is my first book by kat dunn, and it definitely won’t be my last! this was such a fun concept, and was almost a ‘meandering’ plot? which i don’t say in a negative way, it really worked for me. this is also sapphic which immediately made me fall in love with it. the writing style was gorgeous and very very atmospheric - i would say this is more of a gothic/despair/grief-driven story, as opposed to a spooky/scary horror, and i think that suited these characters well. i very much fell in love with both odette and cecilia (although odette specifically was definitely frustrating at a lot of points).

my only teeny tiny issue i had with this book was the time jumps - in and of themselves, they are fine, and added to the plot, but we jump back and forth between different months of the same year and it can get a tiny bit confusing in places. i just flicked back and made sure i understood exactly where we stood, so not exactly a hardship.

i would definitely recommend this book if you like more atmospheric, gothic stories, as opposed to high stakes spooky stories. the ‘romance’ was very sweet, the story was engaging, and the characters were really interesting to follow. very much enjoyed!

[Lala BooksandLala]

sapphic and Shakespeare inspired. say less.

[The Pastel Bookshelf · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75⭐️

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Future Lea here: From now on I can promise you, if there is a sapphic Kat Dunn book, you can be sure that I’ll be around somewhere. Another feast of sapphic yearning,female rage and some light horror and sprinkles of gothic aesthetic.
I am a bit disappointed by the ending though. Like what happened to the original plot of the movie?!?

Past Lea: Oh hello, what are you ?? More sapphic gothic books from Kat Dunn !? 👀

[bri]

Sapphics with mommy issues, gather round!

Kat Dunn transports Hamlet into the tail end of the 19th century in this queer, gothic retelling. Aesthetically, Dunn pulls from 19th century illustrations such as the infamous painting of Ophelia, Victorian ghost stories, and fairytale imagery—an eclectic concoction that somehow all find themselves tethered together by the source text: Hamlet. Narratively, Kat Dunn explores the family dynamics and insular interpersonal conflicts of the source material. Cycles of revenge are zoomed in on and dialed up to focus on cycles of familial revenge. Hamlet’s role as an extension of his father (through name, through task) bleeds into this world through themes of mother/daughter entanglement and codependency, bordering on incestuous as Hamlet (Odette)’s relationship with her mother parallels Ophelia (Cecelia)’s relationship with Odette. As secrets unfold and tensions shift and grow, roles and selves become twisted into one unending knotted loop of revenge.

This book is About a lot of things: inherited trauma, the definition of the self through and by another to the point of losing oneself, the idea that madness is nothing more than a declaration someone uses to assert themselves as reason, image—to violate, to preserve, to perform. Its themes are interconnected and cyclical, an ever-spinning web of parallels and codependency and projection between mother and daughter, sister and sister, aunt and niece, husband and wife, lover and lover, over and over. ROTTENHEART is ripe with rot: memento mori and gothic imagery, fucked up dynamics and toxic behavior, and bleeding with heart: full of love for stories and women and love between women, determined to break the cycles at hand.

Kat Dunn is a favorite author of mine, queer Hamlet retellings are my favorite subgenre (yes, really, ask me any day), and this book was certainly no disappointment. I highly recommend this gothic story: rich with ruination, tangled with toxicity, and blooming with brilliant character work. I especially recommend this book for fans of THE LAST TALE OF THE FLOWER BRIDE, the Millais Ophelia painting, and GHOST QUARTET (for those who know GQ: I can’t emphasize enough how many plot and theme similarities this book and GQ have! If I didn’t know for sure that it wasn’t intentional, I’d almost pitch this as a Ghost Quartet retelling nearly as much as a Hamlet retelling).

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a finished copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

CW: grief, death of mother, toxic relationship, suicidal ideation and attempt, dead body, hallucinations, gun violence, sexual assault, drowning, murder, misogyny, child death (off-page), animal death, blood & gore, body horror, abusive parent (emotional and physical), fire, emesis, adultery

[Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had huge shoes to fill after Hungerstone ended up being one of my favorites books of 2025 and of all time. While I still really enjoyed this, it didn't give me quite the same feeling as Hungerstone. Kat Dunn will likely forever be an auto-buy/auto-read author for me since Hungerstone seared her into my brain (and heart). I thoroughly enjoy her writing. I think she can weave together beautiful stories and her prose is everything I could hope for.

I think what dragged my rating down a bit for this book was that I was expecting much more in terms of horror. This book ended up being more about despair, grief, and interpersonal relationships. The horror didn't come through in the way that I was expecting. Which is fine. I don't need every book to turn out the way that I was hoping, but I also wish that this book had done a bit more with Odette and Cecilia's relationship. Again, I just expected more than I ended up getting. This overall led me to a feeling of being a bit underwhelmed. It didn't take off much from my experience though as I still thought this was a solid 4/5 stars for me. It simply wasn't Hungerstone level though.

As I mentioned earlier, Dunn's writing is superb. I love how she depicts her characters and the emotions that she evokes. Dunn really knows how to write a gothic tone into her novels which gives a fantastic atmosphere. I also want to mention how Dunn is turning out another stunning cover. Her books are gorgeous works of art.

Although this didn't quite live up to Hungerstone, I would still recommend diving into this book. I've already preordered my copy and can't wait to see what books she releases in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley and Zando for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

[Nancy ☾.⋆ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not a very empathetic reader when it comes to books about the difficulties of parent-child relationships since it's a universal truth that no one is perfect. Yet, I'm all too familiar with the resentment simmering underneath a daughter's polite and dutiful surface because the foundational blocks of setting healthy boundaries and self-regulating are actually a pile of cinder dust. And there's nothing quite like having a frayed-tempered mother and a disinterested father that makes a daughter want to flee the nest. Odette is such a young woman in the 1890's, who doesn't have privileges outside what is granted to her by her family then eventually a husband. When the act of seeking autonomy is a disease among women, even the privilege of attending university is temporary.

I think it's clever that Odette and Cecilia are the most autonomous with one another because they seek pleasure out of the marriage bed. But they can only put off marriage for so long before they are coerced into an arrangement, which is why their desperation is palpable on the pages.

After some revelations, Cecilia's faith is shaken, and in spite of that, she tries to hold onto a future for both of them while Odette remains lost in grief and madness. Their dynamics are so well-written because Cecilia is the appeaser, mirroring Odette's role with her parents; a father who is extreme avoidant and a mother who is over reliant, so she tries to be the child they need rather than confronting their failures as parents.

Their communications easily break down when there is outside pressure, but I give Odette and Cecilia so much grace for their actions. They are quite literally the products of their parents and are ill-prepared to face the worst of tragedies. And I don't make a habit of bringing up other reviewers' opinions, but I think it's an unfair assessment to headline the passive aggression between women when Rottenheart is a layered story of love that is eclipsed by betrayal and revenge.

However, I do seem to be in the minority that when the plot finally picked up traction, the big emotional arc wasn't a satisfying payoff.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.




1st update: I've been approved for an ARC, but this must be a mistake 🥹😵‍💫 So excited for this!

[ellie · Rating 1 out of 5]

all that build up for the most unsatisfying pay off i have ever had the displeasure of reading ???

i want a refund on the hours i wasted reading this eurgh.

[Tanya]

New Kat Dunn book? More sapphic Gothic horror? I can't wait!

[elysia ☕️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

“she loves and is loved in return” oh my sweet haunted lesbians

[.]

This review is based on an arc, and will contain spoilers.

To say this right off the bat: I didn’t care for King Lear when I was in high school and I hated Private Rites, I didn’t care for Hamlet when I read it, and I ALSO have a few issues with this book. Area Woman Is Shocked To Learn She Doesn’t Like The Retellings Of Plays She Also Didn’t Like. This is not exactly Dunn’s fault. She has a way of getting you to sink into the mood and feeling of an era. I found myself being riveted by Cecilia’s story early in the book, and Odette’s once the story gets going. But the thing about a Hamlet retelling is that, as the tweet goes, the Hamlet figure hesitates for reasons they can’t articulate even to themselves, and, as my friend says, this inaction leads to the death of the wrong people. Though, in this book, “wrong people” is a stretch. While they may not have been directly involved in the death of Lydia, Odette’s mother, they weren’t exactly rushing to bring her justice. (They had their own reasons, and it was Fun… until….)

The structure of Rottenheart is non-linear. It opens with a scene between Odette and Lydia in the Summer of 1898, and then flashes forward to late September 1898, in the immediate aftermath of her death. The book continues to alternate between the months leading up to Lydia’s death and the main timeline which is September 1898-December 1898. I feel two ways about this. One: I think it’s very hard to do this well. Often I feel people use this structure as a way to add tension that wouldn’t exist otherwise. In this case, there wasn’t anything we learned in the Summer 1898 section that we couldn’t/didn’t learn in the aftermath of her death. Two: On the other hand, it’s a great way to contrast the personality of Living Lydia vs the personality of Ghost Lydia.

This does not work for me, however, because Dunn couldn’t decide what she wanted the ghost to be. Was it real? Was it a hallucination? Both? There’s a section during the confrontation at the end of the book where Odette thinks that her living mother wouldn’t want her to do this and wonders what’s actually pushing her on. The way it was phrased made me think that the ghost was real, but was possibly the spirit of a random person. A few sentences later, she describes it as a manifestation of her own guilt, grief, anger, etc and thinks that her mother would never want this.* But I disagree with this, this is the same woman who made her pose for a nude that she later sold without her knowledge, this is the same woman who, as described by Claudine, always made things about herself, who could not allow anyone to have something that she didn’t also want. I’m a very firm believer in “you cannot steal somebody who doesn’t want to be stolen” and the book shows that George was a weakwilled person, but the George/Lydia/Claudine/Penelope storyline also shows how vindictive Lydia could be. The book opened with Lydia basically saying to Odette “you’ll never leave me… will you?” But we’re supposed to believe that Lydia *wouldn’t* want them both to die together?

So this ghost isn’t real. It was a manifestation of Odette’s grief, but later, when she goes to see Cecilia, the ghost is looking at her “softer,” it touches a hand to her cheek, and says “You will live a happy life, won’t you? Promise me?”* Now you could say that this doesn’t mean either version of the ghost is real, and once Odette puts aside her anger, it would change how it appears to her, but another reason why this doesn’t work for me is the fact that Odette was right: Claudine DID kill Lydia. She WAS murdered. So are we supposed to believe that Lydia would want her to know this but she took it too far? Or are we supposed to believe that none of this is real and Odette only finds out on a technicality? From the way Claudine tells it, and let’s take it with a grain of salt, Lydia was possibly poisoning herself, pretending to be sick, and even though she was starting to get better, she would still need assistance for the rest of her life. And who would be that assistance? Claudine. So she “stole” George before by getting pregnant with Odette, blackmailed Penelope into taking her side against Claudine, and then once Claudine comes back years later, she makes herself sick enough that Claudine would have to be her caretaker for the rest of her life, but I’m supposed to believe she WOULDN’T want Odette to get revenge? Putting aside that the timing is suspect, it’s just not realistic. Especially because the ghost makes Odette act out the smothering which we later find out DID happen. You could say that this was just Odette taking a shot in the dark, but I don’t believe it.

This is what I mean about this ghost storyline making no sense, and the non-linear structure adding tension that doesn’t exist otherwise. But it’s a Hamlet retelling and I’m sure the things that I don’t like here were things that I didn’t like in the original.

To speak on the structure, another thing I didn’t like was when we would find out something in the past timeline and suddenly the POV character is thinking about it in the next chapter even though it hadn’t been mentioned before, or when something would happen in the main timeline and then in the next flashback they’ll be reacting emotionally to something that hadn’t taken place yet. It’s very tricky to tell a non-linear narrative without feelings and thoughts bleeding through where they shouldn’t.

But the biggest reason why I didn’t care for the structure was because the past timeline didn’t do enough to build up the tension/relationship between Claudine/Odette, Claudine/Lydia, and Claudine/Lydia/Odette. I don’t think the book had a single on-page scene between the sisters. In Claudine’s intro scene, when Odette mentions them being estranged, Claudine replies “is that what Lydia says?” On first read, I got the impression that Lydia was the one who refused to speak to Claudine, but when Odette goes to her mother’s studio and mentions that she didn’t know they were speaking, Lydia says “I have always been willing to speak to her.” Okay, so it’s ambiguous. We never actually find out how Lydia feels about it. Again, we never see the sisters speak to each other on-page. Odette and Claudine, themselves, only have a few scenes together in the past timeline before they stop interacting with each other, at all. When I read the sentence: “there has been no further conversation between them since her father took her into the orchard and explained her flaws to her*,” I started throwing bricks. Obviously, Claudine was never going to like Odette because of who she was, but my philosophy is that you can always get more toxic, so show Odette growing to dislike Claudine as well and then Lydia dies and makes it WORSE.

I’m most likely asking for a different book, but there was so much here that could have been interesting and just didn’t follow through. I have thoughts on the ending (BAD!) and, as I said in my Hungerstone review, the last line was ATROCIOUS.

*Line in the finalized book may be different.

[Dali Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kat Dunn is one of my favorite authors, which is why this was such a disappointment.

I picked this up expecting the same feminine rage, wickedness, tension, and deliciously dark atmosphere that I loved in Hungerstone and Bitter Thorn. Instead, I got 430 pages of grief, misery, and characters repeating the same emotional beats over and over again.

The revenge plot which was the main reason I wanted to read this book doesn't truly happen until the last twenty pages, and the payoff wasn't nearly satisfying enough to justify the long build-up. If you're looking for a story centered on grief with occasional glimpses of horror, this may work for you. If you're looking for revenge, rage, and catharsis, you might leave feeling disappointed.

The novel felt far too long for the story it was telling. At least a hundred pages could have been cut without losing anything important. The constant timeline jumps also disrupted the flow and made it harder for me to stay invested.

I also struggled with the characters. The romance lacked chemistry, the cast felt stuck in the same emotional state for most of the book, and there was very little character development. The overwhelming focus on grief made the story feel emotionally repetitive, dense, and relentlessly bleak.

As always, Dunn's writing is gorgeous. Her prose is lush, atmospheric, and beautifully crafted. Unfortunately, beautiful writing wasn't enough to make me care about a story that felt repetitive and emotionally one-note.

I wanted to read about grief a little then dive into “The Ultimate Revenge “ , feminine rage. I wanted wicked women. I wanted tension. Instead, I got a LONG, heavy meditation on grief, and it simply wasn't what I was hoping for.

[Salomé · Rating 3 out of 5]

« Lydia is lost at sea, and Odette is the life raft. »

The book featured very lush prose that initially drew me in, but I soon found myself feeling bored. While the themes of grief and sadness were beautifully articulated, I felt the plot itself left much to be desired. I appreciated how the toxic nature of Odette's parents, Lydia and George, was depicted in two distinct ways, showcasing the complexities of her relationship with them. It was compelling to see Odette trying to please them by shifting her own personality. Additionally, I was deeply attached to the romance between Odette and Cecilia, which added a lovely layer to the story. However, despite these strengths, the overall plot felt rather dull, and I couldn't help but think that the book might have benefited from being shorter.

Thank you Bonnier Books UK | Manilla Press for the digital arc.

[Dee Hancocks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rottenheart is sapphic and gothic, I enjoyed it so so much. The plot is a slow pace and draws you in slowly, the underlying horror and emotion comes through beautifully creating atmospheric scenes. I loved the unique take on a Shakespeare classic and the prose lived up to him in my eyes. It’s haunting and covers every human emotion. What more can you ask for in a read? Saying that the time transitions at times brought me out of the flow but I shouldn’t complain as this created more tension and kept me interested. This is definitely a book for the gothic lovers and those looking for complex characters. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader audio. This is a voluntary review of my own thoughts.

[Sophie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just a bunch of women complaining and being passive aggressive. DNFed around 50% point because absolutely nothing was happening.

Enjoy Dunn’s prose. Just find some whingy sapphic tales a bit boring and this is one of those tales.

[sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m gonna be honest - I have no prior knowledge of Hamlet, nor do I know what it’s about, so I went into this blindly and purely for my love of Kat Dunn.

Rottenheart was an immensely enjoyable read, tearing my heart out from grief at one moment, and then from pure and utter yearning from Odette and Cecelia the next. I felt myself connecting so deeply with the story during many moments as someone with a mother just like both Lydia and Penelope. Being so full of anger and wrath towards someone, but also love and understanding - it just consumes you at times, and confuses you all the same, and you wonder why your life is shaped around their happiness. It’s almost like I could hear her muttering the words they were saying.

I’m not sure why I chose late at night to read this each time, as the horror elements were genuinely terrifying at times. Kat Dunn was able to describe the ghastly Lydia so well that I was able to picture everything so vividly and so clearly, which I find a lot of authors have a hard time doing.

This is a book I will be RUNNING to buy when it is released, such a haunting, sorrowful, insanely messed up sapphic tragedy that made me feel like my heart is bleeding.

Thank you NetGalley and Zando for the ARC!

[Paula (lovebookscl) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Como gran fan de Hungerstone de Kat Dunn estaba muy emocionada por su nuevo libro y lamento decir que fue un poco decepcionante.

El inicio del libro me atrapó rápidamente, pero eso se perdió igual de rápido. Y uno de mis tantos problemas con el libro es su ritmo. Estás en una parte entretenida y luego una parte aburrida, y así durante todo el libro. No me gustaron los saltos temporales.

Las partes del pasado y todos los POV de Cecilia (tanto presente como pasado) fueron un tortura de lo aburrido que son, y no ayuda que eso es la mitad del libro. No ayuda que no pude dejar de encontrar detestable a una de las protagonistas.

Para mi, la mejor parte del libro era el misterio entre lo que pasó con Lydia y Claudine, y Odette cayendo en la locura. Si el plot se hubiera enfocado en eso, hubieran sido mil veces más entretenido. Pero entremedio metieron un romance sin pies ni cabezas, sin química, sin sentido entre Odette y Cecilia. Y que quede claro que mi disgusto es por sobre todo con que Cecilia es tan aburrida, sobre explica todo, es egoísta pero es la eterna paloma blanca, y no la aguanté.

Y aunque estoy de acuerdo con que todos los personajes son egoístas en su propia forma, Cecilia no se ganó nada de mi simpatía. Cada que aparecía su POV quería dejar el libro en DNF, y solo seguí porque quería saber el secreto de las hermanas. Y aún así, fue decepcionante la forma en que contaron todo, me hubiera ahorrado tiempo en sencillamente leer los últimos capítulos y ya, siento que perdí mi tiempo.

Y aunque me gustó el plot de Odette y como va quemando todo a su paso, y es ella quien entrega el horror gótico que estaba gustando, creo que sigue siendo una protagonista plana (creo que el único personaje no plano es Claudine y coincide que fue mi favorita en el libro). Nunca entendí su romance con Cecilia, tampoco su relación con su madre, y eso que eran los puntos protagonistas de la trama.

El final… ni siquiera merece mención ¿qué rayos fue eso?

[Kari · Rating 5 out of 5]

“There is an anger in her that feels like a sickness. Her skin fits wrongly; each breath is a task around this great boulder of sorrow and rage and injustice that has swelled and swelled, a great boil that is close to setting her howling.”

Vivid and velvety, grotesque and visceral, emotional and nuanced; the madness of this book threatens to swallow the reader whole. This book is about mothers and daughters. About grief and obsession and revenge. About love and the many complicated emotions that come with it. While this book is a sapphic reimagining of the Hamlet story (where the characters are run-of-the-mill women rather than powerful men) it’s so much more than a mere retelling.

Dunn does such an amazing job of portraying so many different sides of grief. How someone in the depths of grief might hold multiple perspectives on the one they have lost, how others might view one’s grief as uncomfortable or inconvenient or even as a performance, and how debilitating and all-encompassing grieving can be… especially when one feels so alone in their anguish that the vengeful spirit of the person who died could bring a sense of comfort to the one left behind.

There is so much nuance to the characters that (for most of them at least), the line becomes quite blurred between victim and villain. The slow pace and damp heaviness settling atop the family make for such an atmospheric and almost claustrophobic tone, and the house itself almost seems to fester along with the main character’s mental health and the ghost’s physical appearance. The relationships are messy and flawed between all of the characters, and I loved the exploration of all of these.

I loved Hungerstone and may have loved this one even more! Thanks so much to NetGalley and Zando for the advanced copy!

[MaryannC Victorian Dreamer · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off thank you to author Kat Dunn and NetGalley for a copy of this in an exchange for an honest review.

Oh, I really struggled to rate this one and I had to let this marinate in my thoughts before I could review it. This is a re-imagined version of the Shakespeare classic Hamlet set in Victorian England. Odette ( love that name since Swan Lake) is mourning the death of her mother who dies suddenly leaving Odette consumed by grief and unanswered questions. Lydia, Odette's mother is a frail and tortured artist of sorts who often uses her daughter and her daughter's friend Cecelia as models for her much sought after paintings. When Lydia's sister Claudine appears for a visit the two women's relationship is fraught with tension and resentment a fact that does not go unnoticed by Odette and Cecelia. Odette's father George is an emotionally distant man who prefers not to take sides when Claudine takes charge of the household after Lydia's death and proves rather useless in comforting his daughter as she struggles to cope with her profound sadness and Claudine's decisions. When her mother's ghost appears to Odette seeking revenge and uncovering the truth about her death Odette has one task and that is to fulfill her mother's request but will her quest affect her relationship with Cecelia and her sanity? At the risk of not detailing anymore of the plot here is where I begin to have a conflict in rating this, the book has the dark, gothic feel that I relish in a good book. The storyline is laid out nicely and I could feel Odette's deep despair so consumed with grief as she was, perhaps I could get a good feel of it since I recently lost my own mother a few months ago and could relate to the pain and sadness she felt. The conclusion here did not leave me satisfied maybe for another reader they will feel differently about it but for me it's a 3 star rating.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC received in exchange for an honest review.

Holy god. I am a Shakespeare lover, and Hamlet is a particular favorite (I’ve watched as many adaptations of the tale as I can find). There is a dark magic woven into the tale of a prince driven mad by his father’s ghost to get righteous vengeance against his uncle…so what happens when Hamlet is not royal? What happens when Hamlet is a sapphic woman of mediocre standing in a world where women are dismissed, when the consequences play out on a much smaller board, but with repercussions every bit as painful? Enter: Rottenheart.

It took me some time to comprehend the flow of time in the novel, but once I got hold of it, I was engrossed. Odette and Cecilia are a beautiful, demented mess. Lydia’s ghost spends much more time with Odette than King Hamlet’s ever does with his son, and this allows for a chilling, deeper exploration of the idea that even the vengeful spirit of a lost parent can bring some twisted comfort to a grieving child. The villains are victims and the victims are villains; there is so much nuance injected into the story that I came out of it with some amount of sympathy for everyone involved (except George. I do not like George). The ending is at once sweet closure and a door thrown open. I’m so glad I have Hungerstone waiting at my library already…I need Dunn’s prose tattooed on my heart.

[Karolina · Rating 5 out of 5]

”How is it possible to love and to hate the same person so completly?”

Nie czytałam Hamleta, ale to bujało. Na początku miałam lekki problem z zaangażowaniem w historię, ale pod koniec nie zauważałam, jak czas leciał

“Is it possible to be homesick for a person? A time?”

Sercem opowiadania są Odette i Cecilia: dziewczyny, które kochają się pomimo tego, że ich miłość nie ma przyszłości: czy to ze względu na płeć, nadchodzące studia, czy śmierć matki Odette. Ich relacja jest wiarygodna, łamiąca serce, a los jeszcze bardziej ją spacza. Było creepy, było smutno, było głęboko, było też murder mystery i nawiedzanie, ale jednak czegoś mi tu brakowało. Patrzę na książkę w kontekście Hungerstone, ale może przeczytanie Hamleta zadecyduje o tym, że książka będzie pełna

“Stop looking for me because I’m not here.”

Rottenheart swoim tytułem może nawiązywać do paru postaci, a relacje matka-córka są naginane do granic możliwości (córki matek, łączmy się)

4,5⭐️

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is difficult for me to rate. It is a story about grief and holding onto anger until it poisons the soul. I had hoped the sapphic relationship would carry me through the heavy subjects, but it was still a hard read. The author continuously jumps timeframes throughout the book. Perhaps this was to demonstrate the chaotic nature of grief, but it left me wondering where we were in the story and what the point was of all the back and forth. The plot was good and the relationship between the two protagonists was strong.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Harriet · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

[Lucia]

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC!

[Chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️
I’ve been stung by Shakespeare retellings before but I should never have doubted you Ms Dunn.

[Rhonda Perky · Rating 5 out of 5]

A saphhic retelling of Hamlet set in Victorian England. Dunn's prose is immaculate and evocative.

[Gabby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sadly a little disappointed with this one. I didn’t love it.

To start off with what I did love

• The depiction of grief. Raw, angry, uncomfortable. Grief isn’t something pretty and perfect, tidied up with a bow and out in a box. It’s life altering and messy, and too often people are found criticised for how they grieve. It’s either too much, a performance, or perhaps it’s not enough. Dunn portrays grief in many of its multitudes, and in that I found comfort.

• The complex dynamics between all the women as they try and navigate their society and each other. The societal standard and pressures played a very strong role in what happens to these characters.

• This links back to grief, but just the female rage of it all.



I think I was just let down by this book because it quite often felt so slow, with no real getting anywhere. I also wasn’t a massive fan of the structure, with the timeline skipping to the time where Lydia was alive and then to the aftermath of her death.

I also felt like Odette and Cecilia's POVs could sometimes blend together. Despite being quite different characters, often when reading their perspective I would forget whose point of view I was reading from, as often they didn’t felt quite distinct enough. I can’t work out if the books attention being divided between the two worked to flesh out the story, or hindered it in its sameness. Neither character felt particularly strong.

While this isn’t a romance and we weren’t promised the typical conventions of one, I would've liked to have been a little more sold on the chemistry between Cecilia and Odette, because largely I just didn’t care, unfortunately.

Dunn is an excellent writer, this one really just fell flat for me. Not quite sure how else to sum that up or why I didn’t quite like it.

Thank you to Bonnier Books UK | Manilla Press for the e-arc

[Ava Maguire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally gave this a 4.5 ⭐️ but very quickly changed my mind and realised this is 100% a 5 ⭐️ read. Everything you could possibly want in a gothic Victorian novel!! A haunting, insanity, love, murder, grief. A truly perfect story.

[Siân · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️s

[Helena Winter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit disappointed after how much I enjoyed Hungerstone!