The condensed version of this rant review is on Goodreads. Hold onto your hats for this one, ladies and gentlemen, because this review is going to be very long.
If you picked up this book because you want to read a book about Jack the Ripper (or murder in general) that has a female lead who is strong and resilient and important to the case, that centers around the women who were murdered (their names are Mary Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Kelly, and in this book, Emma Smith) with a gripping plot and intriguing side characters, then please put this book back on the shelf because none of this happens in all 300 pages of this novel.
The author makes two egregious sins writing “Stalking Jack the Ripper”. The first is the literary kind. Any and every kind of mistake that an author can make when writing a book was made: telling instead of showing, poorly fleshed out characters, a dull and uneventful plot, historical inaccuracies, etc.
The second sin is much more egregious, but we’ll get into that later.
For now, a non-spoiler review would be that this book isn’t worth your time. For all that it claims to be feminist’s and progressive and woman centered, it falls flat mainly in those areas. The main character has very much “I’m not like other girls” energy on top of degrading a shaming other women for the things that they like to do. Men also dominate this novel. There are very few (alive) women in this book that have a reoccurring role, and most of them are treated poorly or are just as bland and unhelpful as the main female protagonist.
The romance is poorly done as well, with the male love interest being a knock off Sherlock Holmes who is insufferable and has maybe one good line in the entire book.
Under the guise of a dark romance, “Stalking Jack the Ripper” ends up being a sloppily put together plot with intolerable characters, riddled with plot holes, insensitive content, and incorrect history.
If you’re ready for an entire essay on why this book was so horrifically done (in my opinion), read below. I will cover the two major sins and then include at the bottom many of the other quotes I couldn’t fit in to the review but bothered me nonetheless and why they bothered me so much.
Spoilers ahead, beware!
The first sin is the lesser one in my opinion and that involves the actual writing in this book. The style is sloppy, the characters underdeveloped and flat, the plot riddled with pacing issues, and the research for historical context really isn’t there.
First, the writing style. Everyone has heard of “show not tell” when it comes to writing, except maybe this author. Almost every emotion that any character feels is told to us.
Some examples (non-exhaustive)
Pg. 197: “I was so mad I could scream some of the worst obscenities I’d heard at the docks at him.”
Pg. 198: “I was through with him.”
Pg. 214: “I could not comprehend what had just happened.”
Pg. 223: “I was sad to see her go.”
Pg. 280: “I placed my hand on the doorknob, allowing myself a few breaths to pull my emotions together.”
Pg. 161“I’d never seen him so unraveled. On the inside I felt the same, but hoped I was doing a better job hiding it.”
This entire fight scene was so poorly done. Because of all the telling, there was no sense of dread, no fear that they weren’t going to make it. I needed some longing glances between Audrey and Thomas. I needed some kind of fear for the other person that paralyzes them. I needed to read their emotions without being told how they felt, but of course, we weren’t given that.
Obviously, these are very few of the many examples, but this is what the entire book is like when it comes to Audrey Rose’s feelings. Not only is it frustrating that we aren’t ever allowed to feel anything for the characters, but it makes all of the surprises and twists fall flat, even if they are better described (which they’re not) because we’ve never felt anything for the characters before so it’s hard to start caring during the major climax.
Something that may be a little bit petty but I can’t get out of my mind is the atrocity of this sentence.
Pg. 92: “The curtains inhaled wet breaths-”
This is just a gross sentence and I can’t believe I had to read it with my own eyes.
The characters themselves are one dimensional, unbelievable, annoying, or a combination of the three. Some are written in for a few pages and then forgotten. We’ll do a quick rundown.
Audrey Rose: She’s in constant conflict with herself. One second, she’s all about science and skepticism and the next, she’s believing everything a mystic says without question. One second, she’s cold and unfeeling and the next she’s falling head over heels for a boy she just met. One second, she’s some kind of feminist icon and the next she’s tearing down women for putting up on more makeup than her.
Pg. 30-31: “I was thankful I wasn’t the kind of girl to lose my mind over a handsome face.”
- Shaming other girls for falling for guys with a handsome face. Very feminist of her.
- Note that this is page 30.
Pg. 87: “What he thought of me should mean absolutely nothing. But it did matter. More than I cared to admit.”
- Only 50 pages later, that very face that she supposedly isn’t going to fall for, she falls for. If women fall for guys because they’re handsome, that’s fine! If women don’t fall for guys because they’re handsome, that’s also fine! But Audrey Rose, please be consistent and don’t be a hypocrite while dragging other women through the mud, please.
Pg 149: “‘Why care about beauty and brains when they can have beauty over brains?’”
- This quote from Audrey is so frustrating because one of the girls at tea is just trying to ask her friend if the boy she likes will like her dress and Audrey pretty much calls her stupid. I hate her so much. Let the girl like dresses please.
Pg. 28: “I refused, absolutely refused to let this cruel treatment of a woman stand. I’d do everything in my power to solve this case for Miss Nichols. And for any other voiceless girl or woman society ignored.”
- Something like this is mentioned multiple times throughout the book. Audrey refuses to let the deaths of these women be in vain. She refuses to let the barbaric treatment of women in the 1880s continue.
Pg. 95: “Without the child marring her demeanor….”
- My favorite thing about this (and by favorite, I mean the thing I hate the most) is that if women want to bear children, they should be allowed to. In the rest of this sentence, Audrey Rose goes on to say how much younger the girl looked without holding a child. That was so easy to say without shaming her for wanting kids. I mean, seriously. I’m supposed to read this and think that the author or the narrator care about women’s choices at all? Hmmm.
Pg. 185: “‘Now, then, we need to figure out what Uncle was drugged with.’”
- There’s this entire maybe 5 chapter subplot of her uncle being in the asylum. During this time, instead of trying to do anything useful to solve the investigation or actually helping any of the women she claims to help, Audrey Rose goes on a side quest of trying to figure out what happened to her uncle in the asylum. I don’t really see the point, since he’s released not much later and the evidence against him being Jack the Ripper was pretty solid.
Pg. 35: “Forsaking the Holy Father was considered a sin, and I did it repeatedly. Each time my blade met flesh, I sinned more and welcomed it. God no longer had dominion over my soul.”
- This is a personal pet peeve of mine, but I hate that women aren’t allowed to be both religious and scientific in literature. As a Christian woman who is currently studying within STEM, I find it very, very irritating. Again, I know it’s a personal pet peeve but I’m putting it here anyway.
Another problem that I have with Audrey is that she doesn’t do a single thing this entire book, but I’ll go into that deeper later when we get to plot.
Let’s talk about Thomas Cresswell:
His entire characterization is pretty much being a poorly written Sherlock Holmes. It was so obvious that she was just trying to write Sherlock Holmes that if she explicitly said that he was supposed to be Sherlock Holmes in the narrative I wouldn’t be surprised. His personality is just Sherlock Holmes and there’s nothing else to him.
What’s worse is that he isn’t even well written. His flirting is atrocious and awkward and makes me uncomfortable instead of intrigued. He says the dumbest things that make me want to claw my eyes out.
Pg. 187: “Without hesitation, I split the skin wide with my blade, earning an appreciative whistle from Thomas.”
I would like to put it out there that if any guy ever whistled at me while I was doing something, I would be uncomfortable, even if it was someone who was sort of my friend. Especially since she’s cutting open a dead body, the whistle of appreciation is just weird.
SPOILERS
Pg. 310: “Thomas was offering my brother a chance at life. A chance to atone for his sins and still know the police would be looking for him. It wasn’t right, but it was a chance I was willing to take for my family.”
This one is on Thomas and Audrey. Audrey is all for justice for the women that were killed by Ripper until she finds out he’s her brother. The hypocrisy is unreal. It’s literally that mindset that protects criminals. Protecting family members instead of turning them in is what gets more people hurt. This is a very sensitive subject for me because I know people who have chosen their family over the men and women who came forward about any kind of misconduct. Some might say I’m reading too much into it, but it’s the same concept and I hate everything about it.
And Thomas is a part of it only because he wants good favor with Audrey and her family. He clearly doesn’t care about the women murdered and neither does Aubrey and this entire scene is a testament to that.
Nathaniel:
He’s not the worst. I actually don’t mind him too much. He’s pretty much the only character I don’t hate (which is ironic).
But then he’s also Jack the Ripper, which really sucks because like I said, I almost didn’t hate him entirely. I think he was actually pretty well set up. The mention of Frankenstien at the beginning and the fact that he was a medical student for a while. There were some things that were left out to be explained in the last two chapters such as: “Jonathan Nathaniel Wadsworth the first was a bit of an eccentric. He’d had more secret passageways built in the cottage estate than were in the queen’s own palace.” (Pg. 298)
Either way, he would have been such a better villain if the author hadn’t over red herring’d Father. By the time we got to the climax, it was so clear that it wasn’t the father that the only other person it could have been was Nathaniel, so it was pretty obvious.
SPOILERS OVER
Uncle and Father: (let’s be real, they’re pretty much the same characters with just very few differences.)
Uncle victim blames Emma Smith for what happened to her, which is disgusting, but other than that he doesn’t do much.
I don’t have much to say against them as characters because they’re not really around a lot, but the way they’re treated is kind of trash.
Both Uncle and Father are addicted to drugs at one point. And then they both get over it, as if nothing had happened. We don’t see any effects of withdrawals, we don’t see any residual effects at all. They’re addicted, they go away for a while, they come back, and they’re fine. That’s very frustrating. You don’t get over an addiction in three and a half weeks.
Other than that, we’ll come back to talking about Father in the plot discussion of this book.
We’ll do a much faster run down of the minor characters, because they aren’t really important.
Blackburn: Doesn’t exist. Added to the story for about five pages of angst between Thomas and Audrey. Erased Abberline, Reid, and some of the others who actually worked on the case. Doesn’t really do much except…well…I’m not really sure what he does.
Liza: She says a few dumb things about women in society (Pg 144 “‘No man has invented a corset for our brains.’”) and doesn’t really do much else. She tells Audrey that Thomas is in love with her despite never seeming to meet him, so that’s helpful I guess.
Aunt Amelia: Doesn’t really do much. Says some stuff.
Plot issues.
The most glaring is the fact that Audrey does literally nothing helpful this entire book. She and Thomas figure out that Emma Smith was a Ripper victim, but that lie of inquiry doesn’t really lead anywhere. She finds out about some guy that used to work for her dad, but that doesn’t lead anywhere because he’s already dead. She finds out that Blackburn is trying to court her, but that doesn’t really do much. She thinks she figures out who Ripper was and then was horribly wrong and still doesn’t do anything helpful in the final climax. You take Audrey out and I think the book would have gone perfectly fine. Especially without her butting her nose into everything. And because of all of this, the book is incredibly slow. Nothing important happens. No stakes are ever raised. It’s just a whole lot of side quests that never end up leading anywhere.
The entire circus scene didn’t really need to happen. It just felt like the author forgot that she made Audrey a quarter Indian and needed an excuse for putting in as much Indian culture into a chapter and a half as she could.
The final plot thing that I had a major is the psychic thing. That was the biggest clue to me that it was clear that Audrey Rose had done nothing useful. If she actually had evidence that any one person was Ripper, which she didn’t, she wouldn’t need the psychic. However, the psychic tells her one vague thing and she suddenly thinks she has it all figured out. Even though she very conveniently forgets some important facts.
SPOILERS
In this chapter, the psychic tells Audrey that Jack the Ripper had been there with her at the Catherine Eddowes crime scene and that she had been mad at him. On page 240 is Audrey’s response: “The only people I’d been angry with were Superintendent Blackburn and my father. Uncle had still been in the asylum and Thomas and I were not speaking.”
This sentence completely ignores the fact that she was enraged with Nathaniel after he turned her into their father. She called him “filthy traitor”. On page 221, she said “…but I was seething over my brother most of all….How dare he betray me…”
Audrey was in fact angrier with Nathaniel than she was Blackburn or her father. Either the author was trying to make her an unreliable narrator or she expected us to forget that little bit of information.
The whole psychic thing also frustrates me because it leads her in the exact wrong direction. Audrey claims to be a skeptic (Pg. 235: “I listened with the practiced ear of a skeptic. My mind was very much immersed in science, not religious fads and notions of speaking with the dead.”), but then she immediately goes and believes what this guy says, fixating on the wrong person. Because she’s so fixated on the wrong person, her father, Mary Kelly is killed and the real Jack the Ripper, her brother, is free to roam the earth for more than eight days (I don’t remember exactly how long it was between Catherin Eddowes memorial and the final confrontation, but there was at least a lapse of eight days).
END SPOILERS
Finally, the history and cultural context.
I think I’ll save some of the cultural context for the next portion, but I need to discuss the constant mentions of corsets fairly quickly.
Examples of “you’re wearing it wrong”:
Pg. 17: “…and my corset was tight enough to remind me it was there with each painful breath I took”
Pg. 106: “I’d like to see you carry on with a corset digging it’s bones into your ribcage….”
Corsets shouldn’t hurt. If they hurt, you’re wearing it too tightly. From my research that I’ve done on 1880s women’s fashion, they weren’t meant to be worn that tightly. They were pretty much fancy bras.
I would also like to include this sentence as “you’re wearing it wrong”:
Pg. 151: “My corset was pulled tightly over my silky chemise….”
This is pretty much like describing what kind of underwear a woman is wearing. The chemise and the corset go underneath all the other clothes. I really hope to high heaven that Audrey Rose is wearing clothes over her corset, unless wearing her underwear around town is her newest form of protest against the patriarchy….
On the subject of the patriarchy, can we discuss how corsets weren’t invented to restrain women? This book is so adamant that it’s the case, but it’s not.
We’ve already looked at Page 144 where Liza says “‘No man has invented a corset for our brains.’” which makes absolutely no sense, by the way, but let’s also look at this:
“‘Perhaps I shall spend my time, and your money, on new corsets to bind my will from my lips,’ I said sweetly. ‘Wearing something so constricting ought to tether my vocal cords nicely.’” (Pg. 223)
Audrey, honey, if you weren’t wearing a corset, you couldn’t go galavanting about in the streets without your boobs bouncing all over the place. Corsets are a great way to hold the girls up, they’re good for posture, and, if you wear them properly, they don’t smush any intestines or squeeze anything too terribly.
Other than corsets, the removal of people who actually worked on the case bugs me. I know, I know, it’s historical fiction, but I have a very deep, emotional connection for Frederick Abberline and Edmund Reid for some reason and they deserve more respect than that. I don’t know who Blackburn is.
***
Alright. So, now that all of the actually writing stuff is out of the way, let’s talk about why this book fails so horribly in portraying the five, in this case six, victims of Ripper, as well as the other East End women at the time (with some ableism and anti-semitism thrown in there).
PLEASE, IF YOU DIDNT READ THE TOP PORTION OF THIS REVIEW, READ THIS PART
We’re going to start with the easiest one to explain.
Pg. 92: “All my life I’d been interested in biological anomalies, like the Elephant Man….”
Some of you guys might not know this, and that’s okay, but the “Elephant Man” was a real person. His name was Joseph Merrick. Yes, he had a real, actually name because he was a human being not a biological anomaly. I don’t care that Audrey is a scientist. I’m a scientist and I would never, ever refer to a living person this way.
Joseph Merrick was a man who was deformed from birth. It was so bad that he couldn’t lay down flat in his bed or he might suffocate. He was villainized throughout his entire life. Because he was deformed and therefore “other” people actually suspected him of being Jack the Ripper during this time. Joseph Merrick was a human being and a very, very kind one.
He deserves so much better than this. He deserves so much better than being reduced down to a biological anomaly and having his real name redacted. I don’t care if everyone called him the Elephant Man at that time so it would be out of character for Audrey to call him anything else. I literally do not care. The author cares so little about history as it is that she could have changed this one thing. Or, better yet, left him out of this atrocity of a book entirely.
Now, we’re going to get to the women that this book is meant to empower.
In the author’s note, the author makes it clear that she wants people to think that she actually cares about the women that Ripper killed.
I’ll tell you why she doesn’t.
Elizabeth Stride. If you don’t know anything about Jack the Ripper and have only read this book, you probably won’t know who she is. Elizabeth Stride, known among her friends as Long Liz, was the first victim in the double murder. In this book, Audrey inspects Catherine Eddowes’ body, the second victim on that same night. Elizabeth was not mentioned by name a single time in this book. Catherine’s name was mentioned eight times and only in the context of the psychic who should never have been in this book in the first place. Mary Kelly’s name was mentioned twice. Emma Smith and Mary Nichols were both mentioned by name 17 times. Annie Chapman’s name was also mentioned 8 times.
This is how Elizabeth was referred to throughout the book:
Pg. 202: “Another body had been discovered a little ways down.”
Pg. 209: “‘Perhaps you’d like to join me for some refreshments? After we look upon the next body, that is.’”
To the author, Elizabeth Stride is just another body. This fact alone makes this book an absolute disgrace to feminism. Don’t you dare write about feminism and being a strong woman and pretend to care about the women who were murdered, not just by Ripper, but constantly since time has begun, and completely erase one of the victims. The author silenced her by never mentioning her name.
On that note, the author also rewrites Mary Nichols’ life. In her note at the end, the author says she wanted to change Mary Nichols’ story to show that she was more than a prostitute. But what she doesn’t seem to understand is that Mary Nichols was more than a prostitute even when that was her only occupation. Mary never served in the house of aristocrats. There was no way a woman of her status would have been allowed to at all. Mary lived most of her life as a prostitute and that’s okay. She still didn’t deserve to be killed. She was still a mother and a daughter and a wife and a friend even as a prostitute. The author seems to think that changing her life by adding a few months of servitude to a household who couldn’t care less about her somehow adds to her “character”. Newsflash, Mary wasn’t a character. She was a real person and you silenced her by erasing her real history.
Now, let’s talk about victim blaming and Emma Smith.
SPOILERS
Emma Smith had a vague history before she became a prostitute. Some historians theorized that she was well bred but fell from grace. The author took this idea and ran with it. No problems there. The author made Emma Smith friends with Audrey’s mom, dad, and uncle. Emma was betrothed to her uncle at one point. Still, nothing wrong here. Because her history is vague, there’s nothing changed so I don’t see any problems with it. What I do see problems with, however, is how she went from being an aristocrat like her friends to being a prostitute in East End.
On Pg. 229, Audrey’s uncle is finally revealing what he knows about Emma Smith. They were betrothed. She asked him to choose between her or science and he chose science. This is what he said after that.
“‘Emma could’ve carried on with her life, but chose not to. Said she wanted me to hurt as much as possible, though it’d force me into relenting.’ He shook his head. ‘Last I’d heard, she rented a room in the East End, refusing to take money from her family.’”
This is absolutely enraging. I’m not even sure how to put into words how angry this makes me. The author took a woman who she interpreted as well bred, fell from grace, and ended up murdered by one of the most infamous serial killers in history and made her some kind of spoiled brat who didn’t get what she wanted so she became a prostitute to spite some man that she was betrothed to.
Part of the reason why this makes me so angry is because of what poor women in the 1880s went through. These women didn’t want to be prostitutes. It was a lifestyle forced upon them. They had to survive. They did what they had to do to survive. After some dude at the beginning of 1888 decided to tear apart the brothel houses most of these women lived in, displacing hundreds of prostitutes and throwing them out to the streets, these women lived in dosshouses, paying for beds and food with what little money they had, or slept on the streets. They suffered, do you understand? They were suffering, but they were doing the best they could with what they had.
In comes the author’s version of Emma Smith, who had a home, who had a family, who was offered money but refused because she was trying to hurt someone? She became a prostitute, not out of desperation like everyone else, but because she wanted to. Which put her right in the pathway for Jack the Ripper.
This is why it feels like victim blaming to me. “Well, if she had just accepted the money….”, “Well, if she had just kept living with her family….”, “Well, if she….”
Shut up. It wasn’t her fault. Emma Smith did nothing to get herself killed by Jack the Ripper.
There were a thousand more ways she could have “fallen out of pleasant society” than just choosing too, but either in her laziness or her apathy, the author chose this way and it disgusts me.
END SPOILERS
Finally, I’m going to talk about Anti-semitism very briefly. I want to preface this by saying I am not Jewish, so I can’t speak over people who actually are. I have been researching Whitechapel and the culture surrounding it for the past three years. One of the major themes in London culture at the time, aside from misogyny and ableism, that have already been mentioned above, is anti-semitism. It ran rampant throughout English society, in both the higher classes and the lower classes.
The reason that I mention this is because it’s not talked about a single time in this book. It was a part of that society, a part of that history. It was, in my opinion, one of the reasons why Ripper was never caught; the public and some of the police were too busy hunting down Jews to actually look for the killer.
Leather Apron. If you’ve read the book, you already know how many times he’s mentioned. The man most commonly accused of being Leather Apron was a man named John, or Jack, Pizer. He’s mentioned in the author’s note, which means she knows who he is. John Pizer was a Jewish man. I’m pretty sure he worked in a slaughterhouse. He was villainized, just like Joseph Merrick was, mostly because he was Jewish. Aaron Kosminski, another Ripper suspect, was a mentally ill Polish Jew whose only crime was being foreign. Time and time again people then and people now point the finger at Jewish people. One book that I’m currently reading (I think it’s called “Jack the Ripper’s London”) mentions that most people at the time couldn’t imagine such atrocities being done by an Englishman, so they pinned it on the Jews. Anti-Semitism sky rocketed. There was a message on a wall written in blood, after Annie Chapman’s murder I believe, that even specifically mentioned Jews.
And this was the disgusting world that these people lived in. A place where Jews, women, neurodivergent, and disabled people were attacked for crimes that they didn’t commit.
And the author ignores it completely.
This is why you need to put this book down. If you like campy plots and poorly written characters and twists that aren’t very twisty, all the power to you, but please do not ignore the fact that the author simply does not care about the people she was writing about. She cared about Audrey and Thomas and that was it. Fake people that she made up, not the real people who were affected during this time.
If you read this entire thing, thank you. If not, I understand, it was wordy.
I want to finish this by saying that I’m not perfect. There are probably things that I got wrong. I may have miscounted in the numbering of the names, in some of the facts that I’m trying to recall. I may have missed context around some of the quotes I mentioned. I may have misinterpreted something. If you think I have, please let me know. I don’t claim to be perfect, but I want to be as accurate as possible when it’s something as serious, to me, as this is.
Now that all of that is over with, let’s get on to some quotes that I didn’t include (and some I did but wanted to talk about again) above that still make me very upset in some way shape or form. The regular text are the quotes, the bold are my commentary. It’s going to be a little sillier and less serious because if I let myself be too serious, I’ll get angry about it again, so it’s a little different. Enjoy (but be warned, it’s going to be long).
***
Pg. 17
“…how much my palms were sweating.” palms sweaty knees weak arms spaghetti
Pg. 28
“I refused, absolutely refused to let this cruel treatment of a woman stand. I’d do everything in my power to solve this case for Miss Nichols. And for any other voiceless girl or woman society ignored.” proceeds to silence the victims by not mentioning their names (Long Liz), victim-blaming (Emma Smith), and rewriting their stories (Mary Nichols). Oh, also barely mentioning the cruelty that women in East End endured aside from murder (and why they have to do it). Oh, and also bashing other women for their interests (religion, house wifing, bearing kids, etc)
Pg. 34
“Between my desire for Uncle’s approval and my connection to Miss Nichols, I was determined to help solve this case.” Aaaand…she does absolutely nothing helpful the entire book. I also love how it’s her desire for approval that makes her want to help solve the case not actually wanting to help people *insert pained smiley face*
Pg. 35
“Forsaking the Holy Father was considered a sin, and I did it repeatedly. Each time my blade met flesh, I sinned more and welcomed it. God no longer had dominion over my soul.” Over the whole women can’t be both a part of STEM and religious *pained smile*. Doing science isn’t a sin, ma’am.
Pg. 36
“Her skin was a beautiful honey, showing off her ancestry from India…” Can we stop describing the skin of people of color as food? Thanks.
Pg. 70
“…while I imagined what the insides of the animal would look like should it expire…. I saw the shiny metal needle I longed to slide into its body…” ma’am please, this is a Chili’s. Being a scientist doesn’t make someone cruel to animals. Get your act together ma’am.
Pg. 81
“I collected my thoughts like specimens to be dissected further” Insert that one quote from Finding Nemo where he goes “It’s like he’s trying to speak to me, I know it!” except I have no idea what she’s saying or why she’s saying it.
“He was likely goading me into a kiss” war flashbacks to “not the kind of girl to lose my mind over a handsome face” only 50 pages earlier (2 days?)
Pg. 85
“I was determined to be both pretty and fierce, as Mother said I could be. Just because I was interested in a man’s job didn’t mean I had to give up being girly. Who defined those roles anyhow?” I cannot verbally impress upon anyone how cringey this is. Who thinks like this? Certainly not anyone in the 1800s. Break those gender roles, baby, but this is just…not it.
Pg. 87
“What he thought of me should mean absolutely nothing. But it did matter. More than I cared to admit.” So, she wasn’t the kind of girl to go mad for a handsome face until 11 days after they’ve met. Good to know. Literally, don’t drag girls down for the exact same thing you’re doing. I don’t care if you fall for a guy instantly or it takes longer, but don’t drag the other girls who do the opposite, please. And be consistent. My major issue with the character is a lack of consistency.
Pg. 92
“The curtains inhaled wet breaths-” I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more unappealing phrase of words strung together. This is just bad writing.
Pg. 107
“Though I was secretly pleased he sought me out.” please save me from them I hate it here.
Pg. 108
“‘Or perhaps you could just kiss my cheek.’” This is flirtatious?? This is your champion of romance? I hate him.
Pg. 110
“‘Doesn’t your family know most of the aristocracy in Europe, Miss Wadsworth?’…’You come from equally good stock, don’t you, Mr. Cresswell?’” Ah yes, nothing like two rich children playing detective and achieving absolutely nothing while the poor people are dying. I still hate it here
Pg. 121
“‘…too old to be running around like a tomboy.’” So sorry, but this word wasn’t used for women until the 1950’s. If you mean the 16th century version, meaning an obnoxious and rude boy, then maybe make that clear because the average reader won’t know that (I had to look it up, not saying that I’m smarter than the average reader)
Pg. 123
“I enjoyed applying makeup as any other girl my age would, only I did so with a lighter hand.” 1. Why is this important. It adds nothing to the character. 2. I love shaming women for their interests (again). It’s so clear to me that you’re superior to other women because you don’t wear as much makeup.
Pg. 125
“We’d be kissing in back alleys before I knew it.” I’m- *sigh* I give up.
Pg. 126
“I couldn’t think of a more perfect kiss.” Where was the chemistry, the tension, the development? Hint: it wasn’t there ever. Walmart Sherlock Holmes and Miss Better-Than-Everyone-Else are blander than the sawdust she dumps on the ground to soak up the blood.
Pg. 127
“I needed no man to empower me.” You’re right! Now, show us. Oh, wait-
Pg. 129
“‘They say he’s…he’s Leather Apron.’” Full offense but they really left Leather Apron behind a while ago. Also, the accusations against Leather Apron, John Pizer, was 98% anti-semitism and ignoring that is absoutely ridiculous and stupid and horrible.
Pg. 135
“I had a terrible feeling, however, that this was only the beginning of a series of horrendous nightmares.” I think this is the only helpful thing she’s ever done in the entire book and still does nothing about it.
Pg. 137
“…before handing out homemade boondi ladoo treats to everyone in attendance.” author writing this book: oh right! She’s a quarter Indian! Can’t forget to throw that in there somewhere…ah yes, cultural food! Perfect. And then I won’t mention it again until she goes to a circus and sees a bunch of cultural appropriation and stereotypes.
Pg. 142
“Not to boast, but my stitches had been as good. Perhaps a pinch better.” Not to boast….instantly boasts.
Pg. 143
“Wasn’t I looking forward to sharing this sort of gossip with my cousin a few days ago?” I don’t know, were you?!?!?!?
Pg. 144
“‘You’re in love with him. And he’s most certainly in love with you.” Oh? Since when? How does Liza know? Who told Liza? Has she ever seen them together? I’m-
“‘No man has invented a corset for our brains.’” I’m going to lose my mind what does this mean
Pg. 145
“I thought of my mother and the saris she’d brought me to wear from Grandmama’s homeland….Mother used to dress us up and hire a cook to make savory delicacies for us every month, hoping to keep the traditions of India alive in us. Father happily participated in our worldly dinners, eating raita and fried breads with his hands.” There’s a lot to unpack here. Something about homeland puts me off. Worldly dinners? I don’t like that either. I am white so I can’t say anyone how an Indian person would feel about this passage, but it feels off to me. (to any Indian readers, if this commentary is uncomfortable for you, please let me know and I will change/delete it)
Pg. 149
“‘Why care about beauty and brains when they can have beauty over brains?’” Miss thing. Please. Give me peace. You’re not Belle. You’re not Mulan. Some women prefer beauty to brains and that’s okay. Get it through your thick skull please. She’s making fun of this poor girl who just wants to know if the guy she likes will think her dress is pretty. Audrey effectively calls her stupid. Please shut up.
Pg. 152
“He wasn’t sure if I truly was doing it to entice his affections or for my own purposes, and I suspected it drove him mad.” Petty, but I don’t like this. I actually hate it.
Pg. 157
“She said Grandfather had been the British ambassador to India for only a fortnight before proposing.” How to mention colonialism without mentioning colonialism.
“Naan and bhatoora with chickpea curry caught my attention straightaway. My mouth watered with the promise of one of my favorite savory snacks.” I… don’t know how many more times I can say I hate something without being as overly repetitive as this book, but I hate this.
Pg. 159
“‘Oh….I must have my palms painted before we leave.” -_- Oh, I must ask you to shut the heck up because you’re so annoying.
Pg. 165
“‘He was in possession of bloodstained gears we found near the bodies. Someone of his appearance was seen with the last victim. He has no alibi for either murder. Worst of all, he possesses the skill it took to extract organs.’…’For goodness’, sake is that all?’” I have a lot to ask about this. First, who is Blackburn? Where is Abberline and Reid? Where are the real actual detectives who worked this case? Oh, sorry, wait, I forgot. The author changed history to fit her characters better and couldn’t possibly include the actual detectives who worked this case because it wouldn’t work for the three page love triangle and angst that the author wanted to put in. Sorry. Also, that’s a lot of damning evidence, Audrey. He literally stole the murder weapons? And later, she damns her own father for so, so, so much less. Also, Audrey is so harsh on Blackburn for literally no reason. He’s doing his job, man. Just let him do his job.
Pg. 173
“‘What good are you, or do you simply excel at being terrible?’” Literally, Blackburn has done nothing wrong. He arrested a man who had a good amount of evidence against him. After that, he doesn’t really get to choose what happens to him. Blackburn is honestly one of the only tolerable characters in the entire story (future me coming in to say that these words come back to bite me because he is most certainly not a tolerable character later, in fact, he doesn’t really show up at all after the murder of Catherine Eddowes and Elizabeth Stride).
Pg. 177
“…some innate force whispered for me to remain hidden.” I don’t think that innate should be used here. It’s something that’s inborn and natural, like deep in your system for a very long time kind of thing and this just isn’t….it.
Pg. 178
“Cool fingers of fear slid down my spine, coaxing gooseflesh to rise.” This book has single handedly made me hate the word gooseflesh. I think this is the third time it’s been used and I’m over it.
Pg. 181
“I narrowed my eyes, tucking the fact he’d called me beautiful away for further inspection.” I’m so done. Ma’am, not a single scientist thinks like this. I get it. She’s supposed to be super smart and some kind of science-y woman and what not, but no one thinks like this!!!!! I’m so tired.
“‘Yet you follow me in the dead of night, with no hope of a chaperone to intervene should I try stealing a kiss?’” Thomas Cresswell, I hate you so much. Stop flirting like this it’s so weird and uncomfortable.
Pg. 184
“‘She’s pretty because she’s my sister, Audrey Rose. I’m referring to the superior genes we have in common.’” Okay. I’ll give it to him. This is kinda funny. “‘My heart belongs only to you.’” Aaaaand….you’ve ruined it.
Pg. 185
“‘Now, then, we need to figure out what Uncle was drugged with.’” I know it’s her uncle and she’s worried about him, but I thought she really wanted to solve the Jack the Ripper case? Did she forget about that? I mean, dude, I’m just so tired of her saying she’s going to solve everything when she doesn’t do anything helpful.
Pg. 186
“‘If you weren’t so taken with [Blackburn], you’d be more skeptical of his motives.’” Here is the author telling us something we didn’t know. I never knew how old Blackburn was, that he was an age that Thomas might think Audrey would be interested. We’ve never seen a single sign anywhere that she might be interested in him. Thomas bringing this up was just some dumb ploy at putting tension between to two of them that was so sorely lacking. This book sucks.
Pg. 187
“Without hesitation, I split the skin wide with my blade, earning an appreciative whistle from Thomas.” If I ever did something and got an ‘appreciative whistle’ in response, I think I would punch the person in the throat. That’s not cute.
Pg. 191
“‘In my spare time I flay open the bodies of the deceased. Two of whom are victims of Leather Apron.’” If the author kept to history, I’m pretty sure no one thought it was John Pizer anymore at this point. The rest of the quote is her being like “I can handle whatever you have to show me” and it’s just kinda dumb and falls very flat.
Pg. 192
“For all I knew, perhaps it [the Dear Boss letter] was written in blood.” I don’t think I marked the page, but later she confirms it was written in blood. No one ever confirmed this in real history. It’s believed to have been written in red crayon. But, I forgot, changing history to make the book better is fine I guess.
Pg. 194
“Handsome or not, [Blackburn] didn’t look as if he’d been sleeping that well since the last time I’d seen him.” Why include the handsome part? The poor guy is carrying this entire book as well as the entire investigation (because apparently, no other cops exist) on his back, of course he’s tired.
Pg. 195
“‘You heard the young man, Doyle. Hand over any evidence [Thomas] requests.’” Blackburn….why. I liked you and now you have to go and ruin by letting a literal child handle evidence? Why are Audrey and Thomas there anyway? They’ve done nothing to help. They’ve actually hindered the investigation. Audrey’s only been mean to him. There is absolutely no reason they should be there. And that’s why, ladies and gentlemen, the police never discovered who Ripper was because they let children play dress-up detectives. (context of this scene is after the discovery of the ‘Dear Boss’ letter, Blackburn brings in Audrey Rose and Thomas to read it. Thomas asks for some stuff and the guy refuses to give it until Blackburn says this.)
Pg. 197
“I was so mad I could scream some of the worst obscenities I’d heard at the docks at him.” This isn’t the first time that the author has told us what Audrey was feeling instead of showing us. You’ve heard of show not tell? Clearly the author hasn’t because every single emotion Audrey feels is told almost every single time. It’s just bad writing, luv.
Pg. 198
“I was through with him.” Really? Are you though? No, the answer is no. Also, again, telling instead of showing.
“A new, twisted thought made me smile; Jack the Ripper had done me a favor. His letter, whatever the motive, cast a glimmer of hope for Uncle.” G i r l. Please. Women are dying. Real people are being killed. You’re a psychopath.
Pg. 202
“Another body had been discovered a little ways down.” Her name was Elizabeth Stride and you didn’t mention her name a single time in this book. Even if Audrey was more than a walking “woke feminist” slogan, even if the writing was good, even if the others women who were killed were actually treated well, not mentioning Long Liz’s name alone makes this book a disgrace to feminism. Erasing a woman from the narrative who was brutally murdered because it works better for your fake, made up characters is disgusting. This is why I’m so nitpicky and being so rude about all of my critics. I have no respect for the author because she has no respect for the real women who died at the hand of a real killer. Literally, screw her. Her name was Elizabeth Stride and she deserved so much better than this.
Pg. 204
“‘You’re a lot like me.’ He smiled, pleased with my reaction.” Blackburn telling Audrey that she’s a lot like him is not characterization. We know nothing about Blackburn and very little about Audrey. This tells us nothing. I. Hate. It. Here.
Pg. 206
“….Especially when they already thought me handicapped by my gender.” Ma’am…please…this…I give up.
“Continuing with my inspection, I focused on what I could figure out.” which is conveniently…nothing.
“…understand what drove him to such violence so he could never do this to another woman again.” Proceeds to do nothing that will stop Mary Kelly from being killed.
Pg. 207
“‘’The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ear off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you.’’” Did she, like, memorize this? Does she have an eidetic memory? What’s going on? (Context: Audrey is looking at Catherine Eddowes body and quotes the Dear Boss letter where he wrote this quote).
Pg. 209
“‘Perhaps you’d like to join me for some refreshments? After we look upon the next body, that is.’” Two things. 1) I didn’t like Blackburn after this (even though he’s only in like one more scene) and 2) her name is Elizabeth Stride. She was not another body, she was a person.
Pg. 211-212
“Every male in my life felt it necessary to put chains on me and I despised it. Except for Thomas, I realized.” Lord, give me the strength to not hurl this book at the wall.
Pg. 214
“I could not comprehend what had just happened.” The pacing in this book is terrible honestly. And here we have another example of telling instead of showing.
Pg. 216
“I was grateful he paused, allowing me to absorb the enormity of his words. Everything else in the room stopped, including my heart.” I have never once felt a single thing that has been put in front of me in this book. This is supposed to be a huge reveal to both Audrey and the reader, yet it falls flat. This is why there’s a need to show what your characters are feeling. Ugh.
Pg. 220
“My cousin was smart, unabashedly feminine, and comfortable playing by her own version of society’s rules. Her clever remarks and cheerful presence would be missed.” Maybe I missed it at the beginning, but every time Audrey spoke about her aunt and cousin coming to visit, there was always dread in how she spoke. But now there’s not so much because Liza said some clever things about Thomas and corsets I guess. I think Liza is now the only character I can tolerate after Blackburn failed me and that’s just barely.
Pg. 221
“If only my wretched heart could shut itself off from him completely!” There’s something so tacky about using an exclamation point in the middle of narration. It doesn’t feel right.
Pg. 225
“I was through with things confining me.” How many of these kinds of statements has she made? A thousand. And nothing ever comes from any of them.
Pg. 226
“My new lack of tolerance extended to all Wadsworth males.” Except, you know, you psychopath brother who you were going to walk out of your house and back freely onto the streets of London where he could hurt more people. But no, your pride had been hurted and that means that all Wadsworth men are bad.
Pg. 227
“If only I could decipher [Thomas’] actions!” Again with the exclamation point.
Pg. 228
“‘Pardon me for not discussing something I find…difficult.’” Thomas is so valid here. She’s trying to dig into his life, taking the info that her brother told her, and weaponizing it against Thomas. She had no right to his past or his trauma. He got to choose when to tell her about his mom but instead, she bombarded him after learning stuff from her brother.
Pg. 229
“‘Emma could’ve carried on with her life, but chose not to. Said she wanted me to hurt as much as possible, though it’d force me into relenting.’ He shook his head. ‘Last I’d heard, she rented a room in the East End, refusing to take money from her family.’” This is disgusting. In the author’s note, the author claims that she wanted to give Emma a bigger role because her vague background was more interesting. So, she decided what a wonderful idea it would be to make Emma Smith, a real, living woman so broken up over a fake, fictional man (I think you’re noticing a pattern here) that she retired to the East End and prostituted herself. This is not feminism. This is not giving a mysterious woman an interesting and intriguing background. This is taking a real human being and making her a spoiled rich woman who decided that because her heart was broken, she was going to do the job that so many women had to do to survive. I hate that with every ounce of my being. The author doesn’t seem to realize that women didn’t prostitute for fun. They were left with no other choice. But not Emma Smith in the author’s eyes. No, Emma Smith wanted to hurt her ex so she started slumming it with the poor folks of East End. This is absolutely revolting and disrespectful to Emma.
Pg. 232
“A heavy mist shrouded a small group of mourners standing around the freshly dug grave of Miss Catherine Eddowes, the slain woman I’d inspected during the double event, blanketing them from the harshness of the day.” Well, in writing terms, this isn’t the worst sentence ever in the world. Also, yay, the author remembered that Catherine has a name! But oh? Who was the other woman? Who knows because her name is never mentioned. Her name is Elizabeth Stride.
“I’d worn it [the simple black dress] the night of Miss Annie Chapman’s murder. I hoped it wasn’t a prediction of worse things to come.” This isn’t foreshadowing or eerie. This is dumb. Write better gosh darnit.
Pg. 233
“‘Miss Audrey Rose Wadsworth. Daughter of Malina and-” The first time we hear Audrey’s mom’s name. On page 233. I know this is in first person, but c’mon man. We hear her father’s and uncle’s names enough times. But her dearly departed mom only gets one name mention? Lame.
Pg. 234
“I’d been admiring that locket, wondering where it was hidden….” Really? On page 74, Audrey mentions the locket in a picture but never once does she wonder where it is. Also, she’s clearly wearing it on the cover photo so idk.
Pg. 235
“I listened with the practiced ear of a skeptic. My mind was very much immersed in science, not religious fads and notions of speaking with the dead.” A lot of things bother me about this. 1) Audrey is so full of herself it’s revolting. 2) Again, no one thinks like this. 3) science and the supernatural are not mutually exclusive. I just need someone to understand that. 4) She’s done nothing scientific except cut up some bodies, so how am I supposed to know that she’s a scientific thinker. She’s not examined any evidence except for her uncle and Emma Smith, she’s not formed any hypothesis that weren’t already disproven (Leather Apron), she’s not tested any theories because she never had any. That is science. I’m not sure what she’s doing. 5) He tells her one (1) thing and she instantly starts pointing fingers at her dad so hard that she literally ignores all the evidence that it’s her brother. It was a lame attempt at a red herring that was pushed so hard if I didn’t already know who the killer was, I would have figured it out right then.
Also, I hate this whole thing with the psychic. It’s just a useful plot device used so that Audrey doesn’t actually have to do any work. Which is lame. It’s so dumb and overdone. Stop sending psychics who suddenly have all the answers just so your main character doesn’t have to do any hard work.
Pg. 240
“There was a small tattoo on her left forearm that had the initials TC.” Really? Cause no one told us. That would have been nice to know beforehand.
Pg. 244
“Eight days had come and gone since we’d last spoken with Mr. Lees, and it had been even longer since I’d last seen my father.” Eight days and what has Audrey accomplished? A whole bunch o’ nothing.
Pg. 250
“If Father was Jack the Ripper….the thought of having slept in the same house where this kind of horror could have been taking shape a few rooms away was too much.” Two things. 1: She says she’s not into non-scientific things like mystics and then believes a mystic about her father without a second guess. 2: “was too much” what does that mean?? Too much for what? How did it make her feel? What did she do? Stop telling me and show me for once.
Pg. 251
“‘We’ve done things your way for three solid weeks,’ I reminded him. ‘Earning us nothing but mounds of frustration. Enough is enough, Thomas.’” This is so frustrating because she’s done things her way (going out to see Thornly, walking around at night, seeing the mystic, inspecting bodies, etc) and nothing has come from her either. So she really has no grounds for this.
Pg. 255
“‘I imagine the women who lost their organs thought themselves quite above being slaughtered as well.’” I am very angry about this. Stop joking about these women being murdered please and thank you.
Pg. 259
“I wondered briefly about their lives before prostitution. It was such an unfair, cruel world for women. If you were a widow or your husband or family disowned you, there were few avenues available for feeding yourself. It hardly mattered if you were highborn or not. If you couldn’t rely on someone else’s money and shelter, you survived the only way you could.” A couple of very frustrating things about this. She says she wondered briefly. She wondered briefly about everyone’s lives except Emma Smith’s and Emma’s was even muddled and ruined by victim-blaming. She says she wonders about their lives before prostitution but then doesn’t talk about it. Here, she’s talking about the pains all women suffer, but the pains that the women of the East End went through were very different from the rich women. Drastically different. This was a chance to go into the hardships that they went through specifically that led them to where they were that got them killed. It was a chance for the author to show that she actually researched the lives of women in East End, Whitechapel specifically, in the 1880s. But she didn’t. She showed none of that. She shows us time and time again that she didn’t care enough to include the truth of their existence. That shows me she didn’t care about the women who died at all. Adding to this, rich women at the peak of Ripper’s killings were known to wander around Whitechapel dressed as prostitutes for the thrill of it, essentially mocking the women who died, knowing that they could go back to their houses, safe and sound, with a full belly and a warm fire and blankets and a new dress the next morning. Yet, East End women had to work the streets those nights for food. They had no choice. No home to go back to, no food to rely on, no warmth. Long Liz and Catherine Eddowes were working the night they were killed not because they were playing dress up but because it was a toss up between dying of starvation because they didn’t work that night or dying at the hands of Ripper. It’s also hard because one of the women, Mary Kelly, was able to go home and she was still murdered. Women in the East End weren’t safer inside than out. This statement she’s made is a broad, vague, blanket statement about all women but I think this case requires being a little more selective because of the content and the context. Not to say that rich women at this time didn’t have problems, because they did, but this is sensitive for so many people. This harms people. The rich women then profited off of the murders of the East End women. Their pain is not comparable and a blanket statement about “all women” doesn’t cover it.
Pg. 261
“Remembering Thomas’s lesson on dealing with an attack, I lifted my foot and stomped down with all my might.” I don’t like this. It’s too telly. Also, yay, finally some action! They’re doing something other than talking and flirting horrendously.
“Springing to his feet, Thomas grabbed hold of my hands, racing us through the twisted streets as if Satan himself was chasing us down.” ‘Springing to his feet’ is ugly. Too faced pace. Fix it all.
“I’d never seen him so unraveled. On the inside I felt the same, but hoped I was doing a better job hiding it.” Also bad. This entire fight scene happened in two pages. That’s too fast. Give us time. Slow it down. Show us the fear and the anxiety from both of them. Give them longing gazes. Show Thomas trying to reach her, even as he’s getting hurt. Have Audrey trying to reach him even though there’s a knife to her throat. Raise the stakes. Make it take longer. Please.
Pg. 262
“‘You must know what you mean to me? Surely you must know how I feel about you, Audrey Rose. The thought of losing you….’” Would have been nice to see that before now lol. But I guess the readers don’t get that privilege.
“There was no Jack the Ripper or midnight attack. There was just Thomas and me terrified of losing each other.” Welp, there is still Jack the Ripper. He’s still killing people. So…um…get to work.
“Thomas’s eyes twinkled with a mixture of amusement and incredulity. ‘You’re truly magnificent. Smashing bones and fighting off attackers in abandoned alleys.” Still not a fan. They’re relationship is so weird and underdeveloped and I don’t like it.
Pg. 263
“‘We are stalking Jack the Ripper,’ I pointed out. ‘I’m already putting us in danger.’” I’m all for name dropping titles, but this was so pathetic. Just so poorly done.
Pg. 268
“The young woman singing her sad song would be safe tonight. The monster was heading home.” If Audrey wasn’t so obsessed with the idea that it was her dad, just because of something a psychic told her and no other real evidence, Mary Kelly might not have died in this book. And that makes me very angry.
Pg. 269
“[Uncle] dismissed Father’s involvement with a flick of his wrist, saying to keep searching for clues.” He’s the only one with any sense. There is no evidence against her father at this point, aside from the fact that he was gone and there were no murders and he came back and then there were murders. That’s it. That’s hardly evidence at all.
“I was both sick with worry about who’d been murdered, and fighting the dark curiosity of wanting to know what remained of the woman.” Ugly. I hate this. I’m pretty sure Audrey is the real villain in this story.
Pg. 271
“I wanted to stand on my tiptoes and press my lips against his again until I forgot about Jack the Ripper and all the gore.” I know this is a YA romance novel, but I hate that she does this every single time. Some serious stuff is happening. Women are dying (which is shocking that I have to mention again). I understand this desire of hers to escape all this bad stuff, but she’s the one who put herself into the situation. She butted her head into the investigation and now she has a problem with all the grief and gore. Also, she’s contradicting herself from the last quote. She wanted to see the gore of what happened to Mary Kelly then, but now she wants to forget about it?
Pg. 173
“I’d do this for all the women who’d been brutalized, I reminded myself.” Still over it.
Pg. 275
“If I had to bring all of Scotland Yard with me, I would. Hope for redemption was as dead as the woman lying on the mortuary slab.” Like an okay analogy? But also there’s still no evidence against her dad. So….
“‘It’s a bit strange. Blackburn demanding the body back so soon, I mean,’ I said. ‘Could he be the killer, working on Father’s orders?’” First, still with the thinking it’s her dad after there’s no evidence is so frustrating. Second, she’s so quick to villainize literally everyone. It really just shows me her inability to do any kind of detective things because she sees one person do literally one thing and immediately jumps on the blame game train and it’s trustrating.
Pg. 277
“Father’s reign of terror would cease before a new day dawned. Of that much I was certain.” The thing about red herrings is, if you over do it it’s so obvious. This is overdone. Way over done. So much so that you can pretty much tell it’s not her father at this point.
Pg. 280
“I placed my hand on the doorknob, allowing myself a few breaths to pull my emotions together.” What emotions? I didn’t realize she was feeling anything because it was never shown.
Pg. 282
“The familiar scent of sandalwood and cigars that accompanied Father also didn’t send my heart into spastic drumming.” Sandalwood and cigars is also mentioned on page 73. But what does sandalwood smell like? Why does he smell like it? Idk.
“I swallowed disbelief down.” Syntax has left the chat.
Pg. 284
“My hand flew to my mouth, fear taking on a whole new bodily form. His name was Jonathan Nathaniel Wadsworth the first.” I still don’t get why this is so shocking. Repeated names are so common. I really don’t understand why this is such an issue. Maybe I’m just dumb.
Pg. 288
“Or maybe it was my own innate warning system….” She used innate right this time, but she’s already used it wrong once and that’s annoying so I don’t like it again.
Pg. 293
“It couldn’t be. Life wouldn’t be so cruel. It just wouldn’t.” Yeah, it can be and it has been. Maybe not for you. But for everyone else. For Mary Nichols and Annie Chapman and Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly and Emma Smith. Also, yeah, this isn’t written well.
Pg. 294
“What a rotten sister I was! Dreaming such things about my beloved brother. The real Nathaniel would never do this. He’d know it would kill me to lose him. He would never do something to hurt me so. He’d never hurt anyone. He just wouldn’t.” Here’s the thing. I love brother-sister relationships. They’re some of my favorite relationships especially in fiction. If this book was written well, this scene should have torn my heart out, should have left me a sobbing mess. But the problem was the fact that we were never allowed to feel anything for the characters. We were always told how everyone felt, so this really just falls so flat. And it’s all just bad.
Pg. 295
“I had no words. The women he murdered did matter. They weren’t rubbish to be tossed away in the streets. They were daughters and wives and mothers and sisters. And they were loved as we’d loved our own mother.” How can you be so far from being right? She’s not wrong here, but then she doesn’t treat them well. She treats them like the rubbish that she claims that they aren’t.
Pg. 298
“Jonathan Nathaniel Wadsworth the first was a bit of an eccentric. He’d had more secret passageways built in the cottage estate than were in the queen’s own palace.” This would have been nice information to know. I think if Jonathan Nathaniel Wadsworrth was as important as he ends up being, he should have been mentioned and explained a lot earlier. The author did well with the whole Frankenstein thing and Nathaniel being a medical student for a few months, but this wasn’t explained?
“Nathaniel was the only one other than Father who knew how to craft such intricate steam-driven toys.” Another thing it would have been nice to know beforehand.
Pg. 304
“‘What have you done?’ Nathaniel jumped and I jerked in my chair, startled by the sound of Father’s voice at the edge of the stairs.” Another moment that’s supposed to be so important but was written weirdly so it fell flat.
Pg. 306
“Thomas. With a sudden jolt, I realized how much I loved him and needed to be with him. He was the only truth left in the world I understood.” Not the time. Also, of all the declarations or love or realizations of love, this is kinda the worst one.
Pg. 308
Don’t really feel like quoting the entire thing, but it’s all of Thomas talking about how he knew it was Nathaniel. I don’t like this because he’s stupid and I don’t like him at all. This is way too much “Sherlock Holmes” esque. But he’s just not Sherlock.
Pg. 310
“Thomas was offering my brother a chance at life. A chance to atone for his sins and still know the police would be looking for him. It wasn’t right, but it was a chance I was willing to take for my family.” Everything about that was terrible. She’s all “I will avenge the women who were killed” until it actually comes down to it. When it comes down to it, she’s totally fine with letting Jack the Ripper off the hook because it’s her brother. I hate her and this book so much it’s unbearable.
Pg. 312
“My brother was young and he’d survive and make up for his sins. He would apologize and seek help to fix whatever had made him violent.” That’s not how being a serial killer works. That’s not how justice works. This sucks.
Pg. 316
“Thomas leaned closer, his lips tickling my ear in the most inappropriate manner as Uncle cleared his throat.” I don’t like this at all. Four pages ago she was sad about her brother and now she’s…flirting? I. Hate. It. Here.
And there you have it folks. My review of “Stalking Jack the Ripper” that is probably way too long.
Caroline Noelle
John 15.4-5
