The Lost Girls of Willowbrook - Ellen Marie Wiseman

Author: Ellen Marie Wiseman

Narrator: Morgan Hallett

Genre: Historical Fiction, Thriller.

Rating: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: So, so disappointing! I expected an exposé, which is partly present and mostly accurate. What I didn’t expect was that exposé to be so poorly penned. Repetitive writing, poorly developed characters, silly plotting.

Story Synopsis:

1971. Staten Island. Sixteen-year-old Sage Winters has just discovered that her twin Rosemary, who Sage had been told was dead, has been a resident at the Willowbrook State School since the past six years. Rosemary is now missing. As their mother is already dead and their stepfather has no interest in their upbringing, Sage decides to travel to Willowbrook and join in the search efforts. When she reaches there, she realises that Willowbrook isn’t a school but a strange place that seems to hold deep secrets within its doors. What she also didn’t count on was that she would be assumed to be the missing Rosemary. The life she took for granted won’t ever be the same.

The story comes to us in the third person perspective of Sage.

The book combines fact (the Willowbrook angle), fiction (the Sage Winters experience), and an urban legend (Cropsey the serial killer.) The first was the only one that worked somewhat well.

Where the book worked for me:

✔ The conditions in which the ‘residents’ of Willowbrook were housed and treated would come as no surprise to those who know the true story. However, this will still not prepare you for the horrendous situation. This content is definitely not for sensitive readers. I thought the author went over the top in describing the filthy life, but online searches reveal her information to be accurate. The content made my stomach churn, but I valued learning so much about the institution and its inhumane practices. The author has researched this content well.

✔ It stays true to the era in which the story is set, right down the vocabulary which uses some words that won’t pass muster in today’s society.

Where the book could have worked better for me:

❌ The title suggests a greater focus on the girls of Willowbrook. However, this is primarily Sage’s story, with Willowbrook and Cropsey relegated to the background. I don’t think the title represented the story well.

❌ Willowbrook might have been a pathetic place in reality, but I am sure there would have been certain employees who did well by the patients. You don’t get to see them in this story at all. Everyone is portrayed as vile. It looks like a very one-sided portrayal.

❌ The real life whistleblower on Willowbrook, Dr. Wilkins, hardly gets any focus. One of the actual whistleblowers in the Willowbrook case was a resident named Bernard Carabello, who suffered from cerebral palsy (a developmental disorder) but admitted to Willowbrook as a patient with mental health issues. Carabello doesn’t even get a mention in this story. The “saviour” is Sage, the only “able-minded and able-bodied” person among the residents. C’mon!

❌ Sage’s story was highly unrealistic, and not just because of her experiences. She is sketched very inconsistently: too smart at times, too naïve on other occasions. She makes for a poor lead character.

❌ The character development is hopeless. Not a single person comes across as believable. The detective was the worst-sketched. I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why an experienced detective would take an underage girl and leave her alone overnight in a shady institution, that too with a serial killer running rampant on the premises!

❌ The writing is irritatingly repetitive. I lost count of the number of times Sage saw someone, gave us a soliloquy on that person, and then discovered that it was someone else altogether. Words and situations keep recurring at regular intervals. Scenes are stretched out like anything. The book has plenty of internal rambling, even though it isn’t even in first person!

❌ The book didn’t feel like adult fiction at all, except for the R-rated events occurring on the Willowbrook premises. The writing is quite YA in style, though the content makes it unsuitable to that age range. It might work as NA fiction.

❌ The plotting is so predictable that you can see upcoming events coming a mile away. Everything is spoon-fed to the reader; there’s nothing left to the imagination. This also ensures a very convenient paint-by-numbers kind of story. The few supposed twists are illogical while still guessable. There are also instances where the content misleads quite obviously on purpose.

(I can’t help compare this book to the one I read prior to this. ‘Wishtress’ was also conveniently plotted, but the writing was so smart that the twists were still a surprise and the loopholes, plugged effectively. This book, in contrast, ignores whatever can’t be explained and makes a mess of what it does explain.)

❌ The urban legend of Cropsey the serial killer is woven into the Willowbrook story. The real life Cropsey was supposedly an orderly at Willowbrook for a short term. The identity of Cropsey in this book does a huge disservice to those with mental health issues.

The audiobook experience:

The audiobook clocks at 13 hrs 13 minutes. While it was still a decent way of going through this book, I wasn’t a fan of the narrator. She read the book in a very flat way. Even when characters were supposed to be crying or yelling, she sounded the same. Expressive reading is a must for such a story, and that doesn’t happen.

Moreover, as usual, the author’s note was missing from my advanced audio copy. Other reviewers have indicated that this content is an eye-opener. I’ll never know.

Right from the second chapter, the poor and predictable writing disappointed me. I was hoping the story would get better but it gets more and more annoying as it progresses. I wanted an exposé on Willowbrook; what I got was a poorly-written historical fiction masquerading as a psychological thriller.

I am stunned to see this book get so many 4 & 5 star reviews. I peeked through some of them and saw that most reviewers are impressed by the light this book sheds on Willowbrook. I am, too; that’s the best part of the book. However, this story isn’t just about Willowbrook’s shenanigans, and other than that single positive point, there is nothing to redeem it. 

I do admire the author’s research and the intention to highlight this sad part of history. The stars are mainly for that. If you do pick it up, remember that it is a dark story based partly in reality; strengthen yourselves mentally before beginning it. Not to be read while eating.

My thanks to RB Media and NetGalley for the ALC of “The Lost Girls of Willowbrook”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook. So sorry this worked out badly.