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“I felt hot breath on my neck, and, horrified, I knew that he stood behind me . . .”
It’s 1888, and after her mother’s sudden death, Abbie is sent to live with her grandmother in a posh London neighborhood. When she begins volunteering at Whitechapel Hospital, Abbie finds she has a passion for helping the abused and sickly women there.
But within days, patients begin turning up murdered at the hands of Jack the Ripper. As more women are murdered, Abbie realizes that she and the Ripper share a strange connection: she has visions showing the Ripper luring his future victims to their deaths—moments before he turns his knife upon them. Her desperation to stop the massacres leads Abbie on a perilous hunt for the killer. And her search leads to a mysterious brotherhood whose link to the Ripper threatens not just London but all of mankind.
Praise:
“Well written . . . Reeves cleverly uses one of the most heinous figures from history to tell a gothic tale with a paranormal twist.”—VOYA
Krs10Anne
Posted April 17, 2012
I admit, I've never imagined myself reading a fictional story about Jack the Ripper. However, Amy Carol Reeves (or Dr. Reeves as I see in her bio) was able to spin a tale that made me thirsty for more. I found myself hooked and was on the edge of my seat (and biting my nails) the last 100 pages of the book. Reeves not only tells a great story, but does it so with such well-written imagery and easy-to-read dialogue. A kick-butt leading lady, love triangles, creepy villains, links to ancient brotherhoods--- Who could want more??????
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Arabella, or Abbie as her friends call her, feels trapped in the Kensington high society her grandmother wants her to travel in and jumps at the opportunity to work at the hospital in Whitechapel. In fact, she spends as much time as possible there to escape the teas and gossip her grandmother insists she attend. And her mother and grandmother were estranged at the time of her mother's death. Her grandmother disowned Abbie's mother for eloping with a French poet.
At first, the work is gruesome and some of the doctors and nurses don't think she's up to the challenge of the hard labor being the granddaughter of Lady Westfield. But, they don't know she's grown up on the streets of Dublin and lived a hard life in between her mother's governess jobs. She's an expert with a knife and gone without food at times for lack of money. She's not the privileged girl they expect and she proves not only invaluable but extremely intelligent and willing to learn. In fact, she has determined she wants to go to medical college. And her grandmother's friend that runs the hospital, Dr. Bartlett, has taken a special interest in her education and in her, treating her as an equal instead of just a woman, as many men would have in that day.
But, then, patients from the Whitechapel Hospital start dying the day they are voluntarily released. Dying by the hand of a psychopathic murderer. I think we all know the Jack the Ripper stories so I won't go into the details. This story puts a different if implausible twist on who Jack the Ripper was, but it was an interesting story. I didn't realize this was a paranormal story until I was midway through but I feel a little dumb, visions should have clued me in. I also felt a little confused as I read, like maybe a little too much was going on. There was the Jack the Ripper killings, the romance (love triangle) and then another aspect that I won't mention because it will be a spoiler. And the paranormal story which didn't only include Abbie's visions. I didn't know what to focus on. It turned out that two of the storylines converged into one and the love triangle resolved easily so eventually things came together, but for a bit, I had too many names and tangents to try to remember what was going on.
I liked Abbie, she was analytical and as she tells the story, she spoke in the cool calm tones of women of that day and social standing were required to. She reminded me of the women from a Jane Austen novel (not the silly ones). Even when she was scared out of her mind, she remained calm and able to focus and keep cool. She did what a proper lady would do. William and Simon are two of the doctors at the Whitechapel Hospital that admire/desire Abbie. Mary Kelly works at the hospital, too. Abbie got her a job there. And then there are the infamous parties at Dr. Bartlett's home where his housemates reside, a professor of literature, a reverend and a scientist. And Bartlett's nephew Max who pops in and out of the house. Abbie finds herself intrigued by him but repelled by him as well.
In all, I really enjoyed the story. It definitely wasn't trying to solve the Jack the Ripper murders with the paranormal twist to it, but I liked what Reeves added to the story. It was always to me a bit scary, with London being gloomy or dark or rainy. And those big old houses with their four stories and not enough people to fill them. Gothic, romantic, dangerous, and Jack the Ripper. All with a paranormal twist.
History at its most sensational and lurid form, RIPPER follows Arabella as she becomes intertwined with the brutal serial murders against all better judgment. Instead of sticking to her upper crust grandmother’s plans for snagging a good marriage, Abbie gets too involved with her volunterring at the Whitechapel Hospital and uncovers some dark secrets about the physicians there. Should she trust a handsome face with some pretty manners or the fatherly figure who encourages her to pursue the medical profession? Between late nights at the hospital and grisly unpredictable precognitions, the last thing Abbie needs is to turn down the wrong alley and bump into the wrong person at the wrong time for the worst possible reasons.
I find it hard to pinpoint my feelings for RIPPER. On the one hand, the time flew by as I wanted to find out what exactly Abbie was getting herself into at Whitechapel Hospital. Alleys drenched in blood and guts, secret societies wanting the unattainable, a woman testing her boundaries to expand her knowledge, RIPPER seems to have everything going for it – even a love triangle with two equally attractive men. Then again, while the pages flew, I cannot say that I was left with that WOW feeling at the end. It was more like a hmmm…? as if the story should have had a teensy bit more to really spice things up. The sense of dread, while present, never seemed to reach that boiling point where everything bubbled over to where I started frantically rushing through pages to see if the mess would right itself. RIPPER was good and enjoyable as it stands, but I think it needed something extra – whether it be more tension, more action, more horror, more drama – to really throw me into a deeper and darker rabbit hole.
Anonymous
Posted December 31, 2012
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
“I felt hot breath on my neck, and, horrified, I knew that he stood behind me . . .”
It’s 1888, and after her mother’s sudden death, Abbie is sent to live with her grandmother in a posh London neighborhood. When she begins volunteering at Whitechapel Hospital, Abbie finds she has a passion for helping the abused and sickly women there.
But within days, patients begin turning up murdered at the hands of Jack the Ripper. As more women are murdered, Abbie realizes that she and the ...