2/5 stars

Kind of disappointed with my first read of 2019.

I didn't like Audrey Rose as a character. The fact that this story is also written through first person POV didn't help. Audrey is annoying. Her inner dialogue made me want to roll my eyes. She's whiny, indecisive, and kind of a snob? It felt like it would take forever for the characters to do anything because Audrey was too busy telling herself how she doesn't find Thomas attractive, or that she needs to stop being emotional, or she's a feminist and doing things that no one else is doing.

I feel like the author was really trying to push the whole girls-can-like-dressing-up-but-can-also-enjoy-cutting-up-bodies thing? There was a lot of telling and not enough showing. Actually, there was enough showing, but the author also felt the need to tell us everything, as if to re-emphasize what she's trying to do. As the reader, we could have come to the conclusion ourselves without it being forced down our throats every other second.

Thomas was just weird? He literally reminded me of Sherlock from the BBC show. His thought process, awkwardness in social situations, and blunt way of speaking was almost exactly the same. But we had to add the random times he's suddenly flirtatious? It felt odd.

I also couldn't understand the chemistry between him and Audrey. If Thomas could hear Audrey's thoughts, he would have abandoned the flirting on page one. I get that Thomas is attractive and everything, but he starts flirting with Audrey almost immediately and Audrey spends the majority of the book trying to talk herself out of falling for him, but then falls for him anyway. The whole scene where they're out at night and get attacked and then Thomas proclaims how he feels, actually had me laughing out loud cause it was so random? I don't know. I just wasn't a huge fan of this relationship.

As for the big reveal...I guessed it halfway through the book. And while I knew who it was, I felt like Audrey was kind of an idiot to not notice anything? I also find it hard to believe that the person hid everything so well for all those years and then only cracked near the end?

Despite that, the plot was interesting? I didn't know anything about Jack the Ripper before, so I found the whole investigation to be the one good thing about this book. It was really slow at times, and just being in Audrey's head made it worse, and when I googled things after I regretted it immediately, but I was genuinely interested in the forensics and postmortems that were done, even though they were really disturbing to read about.

Also, I'd just like to say that Audrey, her Uncle, and Thomas will probably die because formalin is a carcinogen and they were literally sipping tea in the lab while being surrounded by the fumes...

Rating this 3 stars overall just because I did read it pretty quickly. It was good enough for me to want to pick it up and turn the pages. I don't think I'll be picking up the other books though.