The Unsuitable is the strange story of a Victorian-era woman who believes her mother, killed giving birth to her, now resides in a scar on her neck. Marketed as a "gothic ghost story", this tale probably falls closer to the My Chemical Romance side of the gothic spectrum than to Rebecca. Huge quantities of self-harm and blood abound as a cast of unlikable characters largely do nothing over the span of almost 300 pages. The ending is macabre but unfortunately telegraphed within the first few pages so it doesn't come off as a surprise.

I would probably have enjoyed this a bit more as a taut short story, but it doesn't quite work for me as a full length novel. Also, as previously noted by other reviewers, readers with certain triggers may want to avoid this one, as nearly every chapter involves some sort of self-harm.

**I was given a copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Henry Holt & Company**

First things first, trigger warnings: so many. Self-mutilation, suicide, blood.

The Unsuitable is an odd book. I did not dislike it, but I also am not sure that I liked it. It's weird, super gross, and very out there. It is more visceral than standard gothic, too.

Overall, 2.5 stars. The plots twists were not shocking. The characters were not overly well-developed. And truly, it is a really gross read.

**Trigger warning: self-harm, cutting, suicide**
Iseult is probably the most interesting character that I have encountered in a while. She’s very shy and self-conscious and unable to function on most days. You can’t help but feel bad for her though. She was raised by her father who despised her and never had a female role model. It’s sad that Mrs. Pennington, her housemaid, didn’t try to teach her more. I do blame her father for that. I believe that Mrs. Pennington was afraid of him. His words toward Iseult angered me and I can see how she would fear him.
Jacob Vinke is the sweet gentleman who agrees to marry Iseult. Although his skin is silver due to a treatment for a skin condition, he is still kind and thoughtful. He has lived shunned by society like Iseult, but has handled it much better, possibly because he has both parents who have helped him. I really liked Jacob. I think he really liked Iseult and he treated her so well. He never talked down to her or made comments about her odd behavior.
The ending has a shocking twist and a sad outcome. It wasn’t rushed though. The scenes played out and explained many things.
The only issue I had with the book, and I hope it gets fixed before final printing, is the conversations between Iseult and her mother. The dialog was choppy with no punctuations. It really made it hard to read. I do like how the author changed the font during the conversations so the reader knew who was talking.

This is 3.75 stars rounded up.

Did I know this was Victorian Gotchic horror going into this novel? No. Did I appreciate it? YES! Who even knew this genre existed? (Don’t answer that, I’m probably very late to the game).

My one biggest gripe about this book is that it would have made such a better short story than it did a novel. With just under 300 pages, this was by no means a lengthy book, but I can’t help feeling that it would have been even more insidious and dark if it were 50 pages. Some portions of this did really drag which led to the loss of the feeling of uneasiness at parts.

This book is about Iseult, a 28 year old unwed woman (practically a crime for the time period) whose dead mother lives inside her. Throughout the book we see Iseult grapple with the sinister voice of her mother and her own voice and intentions. We watch as Iseult is presented with a number of shifters before she is officially set to wed someone near her own age. The only problem Iseult has? The man is silver. As in Tin Man from Wizard of Oz silver. Can she make the marriage work out despite all oddities against her?

Please be warned there is self mutilation in almost every chapter of this book, and if that is a trigger for you please beware. It is quite graphic in its depictions.

An unsuitable life lived by a different kind of character as she faces many unsuitable events during her short life. A very good descriptor for this book is Different, with a capital D. It's easy to lose track of the story if you do not pay close attention to the dialog between all of the characters. That being said, the story and characters are fascinating in a weird way. At no time did I lose interest in the book, I had to back up a few times, but at the end, felt the story was well worth my reading time.

This was a fascinating read about the psyche of a tortured young woman in Victorian England. There isn't a lot of plot, but rather the novel serves as more of a character study. There's some pretty heavy-handed, but well-integrated, feminist themes. I enjoyed it and it's a fairly quick read, so I recommend to anyone who likes a good Victorian quasi-ghost story.

I wanted to love this book as the description sounded right up my alley, but ultimately, it just wasn't for me. I think the combination of antiquated subject matter and somewhat experimental literary fiction made it too difficult for me to fully connect. With these sorts of books, it seems the challenge is to really set a hook at the outset or to modernize the protagonist to a degree that she is relatable, so that we are then fully on board. I feel like I am the target demographic here (late 20's, with two degrees in English/Creative Writing, from Ivy+ schools, and a penchant for the macabre), so I'm not sure who I would recommend this for instead-- perhaps someone who is exclusively interested in Victorian-era horror? Or maybe you just have to be British to fully appreciate this novel. Either way, I'd say it's a 2.5 for me, rounding up because I do appreciate the outside-the-box thinking, and the fact that the publisher took a chance on an odd little book.

I don't even know where to start. Be warned lots of self harm, blood and other things in this book. I like for my stories to have a semblance of a beginning, middle and end. This book was just one long and weird diatribe between a daughter and thr mother stuck in her neck. I chose this book because weird doesn't bother me but emotional abuse does. I understand that things like that happen so I read on hoping for something but alas there was nothing. I kept reading because once we met Jacob I thought she was at least going to make a friend or something. The whole book is like I picked up the diary of a sad, possessed girl.

Uncomfortable read about a young woman who believes she is responsible for her mother's death because it occurred during childbirth. However, the mother is still alive "inside" of her and the only way to stop her mother's voice is to self-mutilate herself. Meanwhile, her father hates her and is trying to marry her off to get her out of his life. The writing is good but the mutilation is just too gross and the character of the daughter and father are completely unlikable. It was a relief when the book was done.

Pohlig creates a very different take on the Victorian ghost story. Iseult, a young woman of good breeding who is approaching the age of settled spinsterhood, is dressed in mourning for her mother and has been for her entire life. Her mother died shortly after her birth, and her father has never forgiven Iseult. He means to marry her off so he will be free of her, presenting unsuitable candidates in a seemingly unending parade. But Iseult has no intention of marrying anyone. Iseult is haunted by her mother in a very peculiar way; she believes her mother is living inside her in the scar on her neck, acquired during her difficult birth. Finally, Iseult is presented with a suitable suitor in the person of Jacob who has his own peculiar affliction, silver skin caused by some medical treatments. Iseult tries to reconcile her feelings for Jacob with her self loathing and her possession by her mother, pushing her into a state that promises disastrous results.

Partly historical fiction, partly a ghost story, Pohlig's novel is an interesting fictional concoction, with some disturbing self mutilation and madness mixed in for good measure. Readers who love Victorian fiction will relish this novel.

This book just got too bizarre and gruesome for me. The protagonist wasn’t likable enough for me to continue to read and the story didn’t feel believable.

3-4 stars. This was a good book, which was well written and characters developed flawlessly. With that said, I’ll say that it had some subject manner many might not like, borders a bit dark, so if it’s not your thing you will not enjoy. It was definitely creepy, but also strange, but overall I greatly enjoyed it. Will make sure I recommend to others.
I will make sure I buzz it around!

Whee! This was weird and super gross and also kind of hilarious in a way that made me feel a little guilty for laughing yet unable to stop myself.

Labeling this book gothic horror is a bit misleading. It’s a good deal more visceral than standard gothic. Stabbing oneself in the neck with sewing scissors is a good deal more, um, modern in its brand of horror than the typical Creepy Thing Stalking Around in Attic motif of the genre.

Still, that’s a publisher’s error, as I don’t think the author intend to write a straight gothic horror novel, but rather to play on the tropes of the genre to put together something more unique.

Weird and oft icky as this was, I enjoyed it and found the slightly wry tone to be an amusing counterbalance to the gory breed of violence involved.

Fair warning: I didn’t find the violence in this to be of an upsetting nature, but I don’t recommend this book if you have a self harm trigger, as some form of it takes place in nearly every chapter.

Unsuitable is much more than suitable. It is a well-written book with a hint of alluring wit. Iseult, the lead character, drew me in and held my interest. The author made me care about Iseult. I wanted her to succeed, to overcome her pessimism, and to end her intensely self-destructive ways. I wanted to reach into the pages of the book to hug her, hold her, and make her stop hurting herself. Her father was a different story. With characters so expertly portrayed that they evoke feelings of attachment, repulsion, and care, the author crafts an interesting read. But the family in Unsuitable is so dysfunctional as to become supernaturally strange. Unsuitable is summed up as one big weird, woeful tale.

This book was very different from most that I have read. Every time I wanted to stop reading something made me continue.
I’m glad that I did.
Many times throughout the story, my heart ached for Iseult but at the same time, I was tickled by the way the author wrote her sense of dark humor.
This was a very interesting read, and I look forward to reading more from the author!

This was a very strange and sad book. It was interesting, well-written, and thought-provoking, but I don’t know that I would necessarily recommend it to anyone unless I knew they were into dark psychologically challenging books. I didn’t really enjoy reading it but acknowledged while I was reading it that it was a good book. I was leaning toward 3 stars but ended up giving it 4 due to the writing.

I received a complimentary ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

First off, if you are sensitive to self-harm, suicidal thoughts or actions, or blood in your books, this isn’t the one for you.

I’m fine with reading about all of that business, so I just kinda went for it.

Iseult is a fairly interesting, although not particularly complex character. All of her motivations are pretty self-explanatory, so I didn’t have to do a lot of logic-leaping. She believes that her dead mother resides within a scar in her shoulder, and that she speaks to her. Sometimes so forcefully that it shuts out everything else. And her mother isn’t all that nice. Like, she can be quite cruel – she even physically assaults Iseult from inside her own body. Is she real? Is Iseult just imagining her out of some sense of misplaced guilt over her mother’s death? Does it really matter? For the purposes of this story, it doesn’t really. What I found so interesting about Iseult isn’t her inner mon(m)ologues (the style in which those were written was actually really off-putting, imo), it’s that she has a surprising amount of depth. She isn’t just the sum of her loveless relationships, her guilt, or her self-harm. She still clearly just wants to be loved – by her mother, by her father, by anyone really, but she’s so entrenched in her own self-abuse (and her inner mother/monologue’s abuse) that she can’t hold onto the reality that she is loved by Mrs. Pennington, at the very least. She can’t hold onto any real happiness or positive feelings because her mother/”mother” won’t allow her to.

It’s an interesting enough story. I wish that there had been a little bit more tension placed on Iseult’s internal battle with her mother. I mean, there was certainly some, but I feel like in order to truly justify that ending (which, in spite of the fact that it wasn’t particularly surprising, was nonetheless shocking in how it all played out), it would have been helpful to have just a little bit more meat to the fighting.

The Unsuitable by Molly Pohlig was a wonderfully creepy read for the Halloween season. While there are not a lot of events in the book, there is a never-ending battle going on between the main character and the dead mother she hears in her thoughts at all times. I was compelled from the very first chapter to find out the truth and, for all the main character's faults, I was rooting for her to find some sort of happiness.

The ending was a little rushed and unhappy for my taste and there were plenty of grammatical/spelling issues in the ARC that I hope do not carry over into the final copy.

Overall though, if you like creepy reads with unreliable narrators based in the 19th century, this is absolutely the book for you.

Major trigger warning for self-harm and suicide though.

A unique story —moody, gothic, gruesome at times, with a sad kind of bleakness throughout. Will make you so glad you weren't alive during Victorian times...

I’ve just read a book about a girl who believes her dead mother lives in the scar on her neck. And I liked it.
Most definitely a page turner, this one starts off weird. It finishes weird, too, but you’ve got the sense of and embrace the weird well before then. I liked the characters. Iseult, Mrs. Pennington, Jacob. As troubled as she was, I was rooting for Iseult and was intrigued by her plight.
I’m glad to have had the opportunity to read a copy before its release and recommend it.

And now someone please tell me how to pronounce Iseult as they would in Surry?