The Bookish Mindset

Overview:

Title: Havisham
Author: Elle Machray
Published: May 2026
Genre: Literary
Themes: Revenge, Retelling

One sentence summary: You’ll know of Miss Havisham through Dickens’ Great Expectations but get ready to find out who she was and could be when women write their own stories.

One sentence review: One of my favourite reads of the year, a stunning reworking of one of literacy’s most ignored women.

Review:

Let me tell you, I’m obsessed with this retelling. Set before Great Expectations, Havisham follows Charlotte after she’s left at the alter and honestly, reading how Havisham could have been written is so utterly moving. Machray has given voice to a (granted, fictional) woman who is given so few look ins in Dickens work and dismissed and ridiculed.

Charlotte is full of rage and ready for revenge. She’s done with the world being sold stories of her through others lies, she’s ready to stand for herself and ready to make them pay. And oh she does it well.

While reading Great Expectations probably isn’t necessary prior to Havisham, I can’t recommend it enough. Machray has so cleverly woven in so many characters and you bet I squeaked in excitement when I read about them for the first time. It definitely made me appreciate Great Expectations more.

There’s beautiful female friendships, queer joy and so much more. I don’t know if this is a review or a yap but I loved it and I think you need it in order for when it’s out in May.

If you’d like to get yourself a copy, you can support local bookshops and my work while doing so on Bookshop.org with this link here or as an audiobook here.

If you like what you’ve read and would like to access more content, I’d love if you could take a look at my substack and consider supporting my content on there too. You can also find more content on my Instagram here.

And don’t forget to check out my other blogs and reviews – you can find books with similar themes in the same folder link below, or click back onto blogs to see the whole offering.

Last updated 28/04/2026