Monday, April 1, 2013

Ripper


Title: Ripper
Author: Amy Carol Reeves
Series: Ripper, Book 1
Number of Pages: 343
Date Read: 4/1/13
Genre: Historical Fiction, Urban Fantasy, Paranormal
Rating: A+

Synopsis (Found on Goodreads.com)

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.


My Review:

I really liked this book alot. I love Jack the Ripper~ in the sense that I find him fascinating, and the whole situation fascinating. So when I saw this book, I just had to read it. The book gives a totally new, paranormal spin on the ripper murders. In this book the identity of the Ripper is given. I figured out who it was about halfway to 3/4 into the book before its revealed who it is. The ending was crazy and action packed and ended in a subtle way that lets you know there will be another book. There were also paranormal and supernatural aspects added into the book that totally added to the suspense of the story

I really liked the main character Abbie, who is 17. Abbie has just moved to London with her grandmother after her mother died. Her grandmother is part of the upper social class and is snobby. Abbie is bored with living with her grandmother being stuffed in the house all day. She gets an opportunity to work at the whitechapel hospital for her grandmother's good friend, Dr. Bartlett and thats where all the craziness begins. One more thing about Abbie is that she has visions of the murders as the Ripper commits them.

Abbie is brave, reckless and just awesome. She loves her work at the hospital and loves helping people. She is very kind, knowledgeable and inquisitive, not taking anyone's word for things, she finds out for herself. She had lived a hard life with her mother, living in many different places in the United Kingdom. She's also kick ass because she knows how to fight and she used to compete in knife throwing competitions when she lived in Dublin. And she lives in the late 19th century where women were uptight and cared more about their reputations than living. She does what she believes is right even if it will ruin her reputation. She's easy to relate with and she actually gets hurt in the book which makes her and her situation more realistic.

I also liked the 2 doctors that Abbie befriends, William and Simon. William is hot headed, passionate, caring and a good doctor. Simon is also a good doctor but he is calm and calculating in the way where he never misses anything. He can tell automatically when Abbie is lying and see things she doesn't want him to see, like her trembling hands. Oh and both men are gorgeous by the way. William has dark brown curly hair with intense brown eyes. William is celestial looking (Abbie's description) with thick blond hair and blue eyes. Personally I like William better but both guys are nice. Abbie falls for William and he for her. You can see them starting to care fore each other but they don't make their feelings known to each other until William comes back from his trip abroad. Its then, among all the things that are going on, that Abbie kisses him and he kisses her. I like how the romance was not a major part of the plot and how it was subtly interwoven in the story. Abbie is not the kind of woman who is all consumed by her love for William. He is not her whole life. She plans to keep working and making plans for her future. That is a kind of love and relationship is relatable and adds to the story, not take away from it.

Let me just say that the book did skeeve me out with the descriptions of the way the doctors did the surgeries and baby deliveries. I mean this is at a time where doctors didn't sterilize anything and didn't wear gloves. It was just nasty to read and made me cringe. In one scene William had just been trying to turn a breeched baby (meaning his hands were in the woman's you know) and then he ran one of his hands through his hair. Nasty. In another scene Dr.Bartlett was operating on a woman's liver and removed the mass of tumor from it with his hands. Ahhhhh. In another scene William was doing an autopsy on one of the Ripper victims. Her chest was cut open and he just stuck his hands in her chest and proceeded to break her ribs to get to her lungs. Williams hands and forearms were very bloody from sticking his hands in the corpse. I'm gagging just thinking about it. Eww.

Anyway I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I highly recommend it

2 comments:

  1. Hey, this book looks amazing. do you do book loans through Amazon? Anyway, you followed me on a post in goodreads and I joined your site. My site is http://hidethematches.com and my facebook page that is lacking life is http://facebook.com/HideTheMatches

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  2. Hi. Sorry I don't do book swaps on Amazon. Love your site

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