Book Hangover Thoughts: The Secret of Nightingale Wood

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An open letter to: Lucy Strange,
In The Secret of Nightingale Wood, the antagonist crossed several lines. Even if those who don't know about the early history of mental healthcare, would agree. So, I'd like to both stress-blog and congratulate you for this because honestly, that's how you should write a villain.
 First, Ms. Strange, your protagonist, "Dr” Hardy claims a woman who has recently lost her son and is clearly deeply grieving has mental health issues. Then he uses the fact that her husband has recently had to travel for work as an excuse to send false claims allowing him to not only prescribe unnecessary medications and separation from her two surviving daughters but actually has her committed to an early mental hospital, just because his colleague wants to try experimental treatments on a female patient.
The final straw that really sold him as a villain came when he managed to manipulate the father into allowing him to take custody of his younger daughter, Roberta, affectionately nicknamed Piglet, (which is adorable) even though she’s in perfectly capable care with her sister and their nanny. Fortunately, this only works for a few weeks

(Fun Fact: a few weeks is anywhere from two to four weeks), when the older daughter manages to convince them that Moth, an elderly woman she’s befriended, is her aunt who’s come to help with the baby so she can steal her back. (It’s not kidnapping if she’s taking her own sister away from someone who took her against both their wills).
     This isn’t because his wife wants a baby to replace the little girl they’d lost years ago, but because he needs stronger means of controlling the family and is aware of how much Piglet means to her older sister, Henrietta or Henry, for short, who is becoming suspicious.  

This is genuinely terrifying villain material because not only are the Hardys clearly out of touch with any type of childcare beyond the essentials, but you can’t use a child as a bartering chip! The Abbott family are living things! Using a grieving mother to test early electric shock “therapy” and separating her daughter who is suffering from PTSD from the loss of her older brother as a way to keep her from intervening is just cruel.  I’m so glad the father caught onto the scheme and came home. He’s more of a man than that “doctor” will ever be. He had the courage to admit he was wrong and apologize for not realizing sooner that his family needed him more than his office did, and no, Henry is not in trouble for lying to the Hardys, since Piglet is much happier and probably safer with her family. So, great job on the villain.
See? They tried to use an innocent baby as a bartering chip. Who does that?     

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