When We Lost Our Heads is a dark and twisted tale perfect for morbid booktok girlies on a cool autumn day.

When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O'Neill is an exploration of wealth and friendship. Set in 19th century Montreal, Marie Antoine and Sadie Arnett have an intense friends with a dark undercurrent.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

I expected historical fiction but I did not expect the feminist story I never knew I always needed.

This book is slow-paced, but I'm glad it was, because it enabled me to savor every word. I was horrified, delighted and endlessly entertained by these characters. Every woman will see herself in this strange, wonderful novel, and everyone should read it.

I was immediately sucked into the obsessive quality of this story, enjoying the fraught relationship between Marie Antoine and Sadie from their childhood friendship to their adult connection. I loved the funny tone of the story, the dramatic interconnected relationships, and the commentary on the industrial revolution and how labor exploits its workers. However, large chunks of the prose felt too on the nose, like the book assumed its readers couldn't figure out cleanly outlined plots and points. The story started to drag under the weight of this over-explanation and lost my interest by the end. However, this is definitely an author I'll seek more from in the future!

I was a highlighting fool for this books. There was SUCH AMAZING WRITING. There were sections that had me howling.

A few that won't spoil much:

"Every mother engages in an act of parenting they know isn’t a great idea. They allow something to slide. And this is the thing that causes the child to develop a personality and also all their worst inclinations and predispositions and habits. The mother’s neglect seals the child’s doom. Thus, we can safely blame all crimes on mothers."

"Marie was immediately smitten by the manner in which Sadie complained about things. Sadie analyzed everything. She found everything wanting. Her distaste for the world around her caused her to visualize and desire more. Marie had never realized how intelligent being negative made you."

"Later, Marie thought she would have tried stop Sadie if she had thought her friend was serious. If she believed Sadie was actually going to murder the cat. But she didn’t. She didn’t think it was possible. It was so out of the realm of what an ordinary girl might choose to do on a Thursday afternoon."

"She seemed as though she had run out of the house with the express wish to become a corpse."

This last one isn't funny, but it was still a gut-punch:

"Her shame was absorbed in every part of her body. She felt it in her toes. The female body was particularly absorbent when it came to shame. If you wrung out any woman’s body, you would discover it was soaked in shame."

Thanks to Riverhead and NetGalley for there review copy. I am definitely keeping my eyes peeled for future books by O'Neill.

When We Lost Our Heads
by Heather O’Neill
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pub Date: 8 Feb 2022

“Every decent friendship comes with a drop of hatred. But that hatred is like honey in the tea. It makes it addictive.”

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐞: A meditation on feminism, fair labor, and classism via the tale of two “friends” in old Montreal. Marie Antoine & Sadie Arnett form a girlhood friendship “so intense it threatens to destroy them” and ultimately it changes the trajectory of history—lives are lost, love is gained, and the pages are populated with characters whose moral compass is a bit grey leaving you to wonder whether you truly root for them.

“The female body was particularly absorbent when it came to shame. If you wrung out any woman’s body, you would discover it was soaked in shame.”

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝: O’Neill has a singularly simplistic style to her writing that I found unique and compelling. I found myself highlighting lots of quotable meditations.

“There is something that holds us like a magnet to the person who hates us the most.”

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐝: A couple surprises and twists in the last third may be predicted by some readers but I did not expect one of them that really got me good.

“Every family is a cruel, intransigent monarchy.”

Read if you:
🏡Have ever been jealous of someone you love
🏡Appreciate a sharp social critique
🏡Can handle explicit violence / sex
🏡Are ready for a heavy exploration of love, friendship, sex, class, gender & wealth

Thank you to @riverheadbooks for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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Delectable, yet grotesque. Straightforwardly written, yet loaded with nuance. Filled with powerful emotion and sexual energy. An exquisite book.

A fantastic Industrial Revolution era reimagining of the lives of the principal players of the French Revolution if their lives and ideals played out in a different time and place.

Marie Antoine and Sadie Arnetteare childhood friends whose lives take drastically different turns after a tragic accident separates them for a time.

Heiress to a sugar factory, Marie is going in some ways every bit the spoiled and clueless girl that her namesake was purported to be, and also the independent and wrongly vilified young woman whom Marie Antoinette was never given the chance to be during her short lifetime.

It’s easier to sympathize to an extent with the revolutionaries here than in reality, though the author does an exceptional job of showing that just like in the real life French version of the story, it’s not a black and white issue.

It’s interesting that the most likable character in the book ends up being the namesake of the Marquis de Sade (not someone who anyone thinks of fondly in reality), though Robespierre is nearly as unlikable here as history remembers him.

Interestingly, with the exception of Louis XV, all of the characters in the book who are based upon French Revolution figures are female here. It’s a fascinating an exceptional spin on the gist of the story, and the author does a magnificent job of using these characters to write an exceptional feminist novel.

The bits of humor are excellent and help lighten the tone and take the edge off of some of the more brutal sequences (TW: there is an on-page rape of a central female character, though it’s a tempered scene and not particularly graphic).

I loved the creativity of this retelling, and the wonderful recharacterization of famous and infamous historical figures with whom most of us are very familiar. Easily one of my favorite reads of the year thus far.

Wow WOW WOW this book is so good. The relationship between Sadie and Marie was so interesting and I loved that the author followed them through growing up. As a wlw myself, I think so many can identify with the all-consuming love/friendship/hate that their story hinges on. The real foundation of the novel though, and what set it apart from the other female friendship novels, was the background of the working girls and their plight. The exploration of class, gender, and desire was so well done and expansive, but the female rage simmering from almost every character's pov's was absolutely chills-inducing. I literally got chills several times while reading this novel. I have never highlighted more quotes in a novel than in this one. The writing was enchanting, weird, absurd, and one of a kind.

So many novels marketed as "examining feminism" recently don't undertake more than a surface-level examination of it. This novel really and deeply examines gender and how class and other oppressive structures play into it better than I've read in a while. I really cannot express how good this was and how much I loved it. I almost never rate books 5 stars, but this deserved it. This is a novel you could read time and time again and find something new each time. I did not want it to end.

I absolutely LOVED this novel, which had the witty, out-of-time feel of Sofia Coppola's MARIE ANTOINETTE. Sadie and Marie Antoine are terrible, juicy, love-to-hate-hate-to-love heroines plucked straight from a nineteenth century novel--shades of Daisy Miller and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, with a dash of Shamela thrown in for flavor. Set in stratified Gilded Age Montreal, the novel follows heiress Marie and her best frenemy Sadie, the black sheep of a family of social climbers. The social commentary is deliciously on the surface (Marie Antoine is an out-of-touch let-them-eat-cake rich girl, while Sadie is the Marchioness de Sade in miniature), and the building of class rage and feminist rage comes to an explosive, irresistible climax at the novel's end. A book that rewards rereading and is filled with easter eggs for Victorian lit nerds, WHEN WE LOST OUR HEADS is a novel not to be missed!

Disclaimer, I was sent a review copy of this book by the Publisher in trade for a fair review.

TW: domestic, sexual, class, and verbal violence. Child abuse, murder, abortion, sexual exploitation, parental abuse.

This is a 2.5 star for me.

Overall this was a disappointing read, the first 200 or so pages were quite entertaining and the first 100 in particular had a wonderful atmosphere of a sort of fantastical almost steampunk inspired aesthetic with sprinkles of the uncanny. It was compulsively readable until it wasn’t. I’m not sure who I could recommend this for, if you want to read about terrible things again and again until the loose their emotional impact, or if you just want sexual language about literally everything possible maybe you can overlook that even and just go for the vibes,but those don’t last long either.

SPOILERS AHEAD


What can I say about this book? Well first of all it is a very long book for only a 400 page novel. By that I mean, it is a book that could be half of its length.

We start with the two main characters Sadie and Marie Antoine, having a fake duel as pre-teens and accidentally killing a maid jn the process. From then until the point where we return to the scene the vibes are immaculate. You get this dark and uncanny valley feeling of a pseudo 19th century society where feminity is constraint except in these two little shocking girls that seem to be extremely dark in nature and are just plotting the most horrid things.

And then they grow up. Their obsession with one another never goes away even when they don’t talk to the other and have this constant forgetting even of the other’s existence and we are just supposed to believe they always pick back up where they left off. Even when it is explicitly stated they hate one another now or that the other has moved on.

This leads to a very unsatisfactory main plot. The main two characters at stop developing very early and become annoying and obsolete as more side characters get introduced. Plus those side characters which should actually been the focus not the two spoiled rich girls that think they are shocking because one of them cannot stop thinking of having sex with absolutely everything that moves, and the other is descried as an amoral business mogul whose nipples perk up and harden (yes that is literally in the page) when she meets her half sister for the first time. On a tangent here but seriously I get that part of the plot is that Sadie becomes a smut writer but like what a disservice, this book isn’t sexy at all its just horny and in the worst icky ways, like the sexual abuse is always looked like a distant unemotional thing and the rape of underage girls who have been forced into sex work is described as “love making” at one point. I understand the point of making pornography a empowerment thing in a 19th century For women writers, but what a terrible execution this writer had she just lost the entire plot of it by page 200 and just added as many shocking unrelated things as she could. It became so ridiculous I found myself cringing every two sentences with the sheer absurdity of it all.


On another point the side characters deserved so much more. Those were the interesting people, like George, Mary and the murderous pharmacist I wanted the book to be about them and they were so reduced and frankly at one point their narrative was rushed to the point of messiness like the writer just got bored with them and just wanted to write more about how shocking Sadie is. Like please give me a break about hearing about these women’s plump nipples for a second geez. I think the way to summarize this is that I had high expectations and I was given an underdeveloped plot, characters, and descriptions of female sexuality that read as if they had been written by a male YA fantasy writer trying to subvert the way “sexy female characters are written”

Ok rant over, lol.

On a last note I actually hope this isn’t a reflection on the authors overall work, which I want to seek out because I believe the base ideas were good just over stretched. So let me know if you have read something else they have published and you enjoyed it.

I absolutely devoured this unique novel. Set in Montreal in the 1870’s Marie and Sadie become fast friends. Marie comes from Montreal’s most influential family; they own sugar factories and she is want for nothing. Sadie’s family has scrambled to live in a nice neighborhood. Her family has had to struggle to survive in the upper echelon of society. One day, while playing a game of duel with real guns, the girls accidentally shoot Marie’s maid, killing her. Because the death would cause a scandal for Marie’s family and tarnish her father’s reputation, it’s decided that Sadie will take the blame. Her parents agree to this and as a punishment, she is sent to boarding school in England. Time passes and the girls grow into women and re-enter one another’s lives in remarkable ways. This is an inventive and absorbing novel about friendship, betrayal, class, identity, sexuality and gender and I think it will appeal to fans of Sarah Waters and Edward Carey. Thank you to Riverhead and to NetGalley for the advanced review copy.

To be published in the Historical Novel Society Review. Essentially a positive review but for mentioning that the two main characters are hard to like.

I was excited to see a new title from Heather O'Neill; I really enjoyed Lullabies for Little Children and The Girl Who Was Saturday Night. Very interesting subject.

Get ready for a wild ride. It's really hard to describe this book--it starts off with a darkly comic Victorian whimsical story about girlhood, then veers into a shocking murder (and coverup). This murder--and the ramifications--wind their way throughout the story. It's also an addictive foray into class issues, gender, sexuality, and so much more.

It is quite bawdy--and there are scenes involving sexual assault. Be forewarned if those are sensitive subjects that you try to avoid.

If you need to "like" your main characters, this might not be for you.

But--if you love Gilded Age stories and are looking for something quite unique and off-the-wall--definitely try this.

Librarians/booksellers: Your adventurous readers will definitely want to try this one. Be prepared for some strong opinions/feedback. I feel like this is either a story that readers will either love or hate--few inbetween!

Many thanks to Penguin Group/Riverhead and NetGalley for a digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

Phenomenal! Appealing! Gilded Age! Canada! Sexy! Again, Canada! Highly recommended for fans of The Blind Assassin, and that’s a truly gilt RIYL.