The day Louisiana teenager Rory Deveaux arrives in Lon­don marks a mem­o­rable occa­sion. For Rory, it’s the start of a new life at a Lon­don board­ing school. But for many, this will be remem­bered as the day a series of bru­tal mur­ders broke out across the city, grue­some crimes mim­ic­k­ing the hor­rific Jack the Rip­per events of more than a cen­tury ago. 

Soon “Rip­per­ma­nia” takes hold of modern-day Lon­don, and the police are left with few leads and no wit­nesses. Except one. Rory spot­ted the man police believe to be the prime sus­pect. But she is the only one who saw him. Even her room­mate, who was walk­ing with her at the time, didn’t notice the mys­te­ri­ous man. So why can only Rory see him? And more urgently, why has Rory become his next tar­get? In this edge-of-your-seat thriller, full of sus­pense, humor, and romance, Rory will learn the truth about the secret ghost police of Lon­don and dis­cover her own shock­ing abilities.

OK. I loved this book.

I’ve been read­ing some aver­age books lately. None was as good as I’d hoped, or held my inter­est for long. And then along came The Name of the Star, a book I’d been vaguely inter­ested in read­ing for months now but for some rea­son had always been pushed to the back of the pile.

I was hooked from the first chapter.

I should con­fess now that I have a (slightly mor­bid) fas­ci­na­tion with Jack the Rip­per. I did a his­tory project on the 1888 mur­ders and have read tons of books on the sub­ject, so this really was my kind of story. I was delighted to find that John­son has really done her research, for those strange peo­ple who don’t read about 19th cen­tury ser­ial killers in their spare time, The Name of the Star weaves in some pretty detailed, grue­some and accu­rate infor­ma­tion about the facts of the case, the injuries inflicted on the mur­der vic­tims and the killing grounds of the famous ser­ial killer.

There’s a great bal­ance between the dark, sin­is­ter and creepy and some gen­uine laugh out loud moments. I just loved Rory, who pos­sesses a dry wit, is kind, out­go­ing and con­fi­dent. It’s always refresh­ing to have a young hero­ine who isn’t angsty, obsess­ing over some boy or ago­nis­ing over her own looks or per­ceived defects. She is con­fi­dent in her own skin and despite being uprooted, in a new coun­try, at a new school, goes about meet­ing every­one with an open­ness and friend­li­ness that made me like her instantly. I also adored Jazz aka: the per­fect room­mate. She reminded me a lot of my own uni friends, we would reg­u­larly set­tle down with end­less cups of tea and bis­cuits as we worked through the night for a deadline.

There is a lit­tle romance in The Name of the Star but it is very much in the back­ground. Jerome was sweet, but per­son­ally, I was drawn to some­one else. I actu­ally loved pretty much all the char­ac­ters in this, but I don’t want to go into detail fear or giv­ing some­thing away. I will say that, Stephen, you intrigue me and I also get the feel­ing you might be hot in a Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Sher­lock kind of way. Also, Alis­tair — I begrudge the fact that you weren’t attrac­tively hang­ing out in my school library, ready and will­ing to help out with home­work assign­ments. Please con­tinue to be awe­some in book two. The mur­derer def­i­nitely had that creepy-factor. He was dis­turb­ing and dan­ger­ous, although his motives were a lit­tle ques­tion­able. How­ever, I enjoyed this book far too much for this to have a real neg­a­tive impact on the story.

I picked up The Name of the Star think­ing I knew exactly what to expect and ended up read­ing a very dif­fer­ent book. Rory’s involve­ment with the mur­ders doesn’t really pick up until half-way through, so some peo­ple may find the begin­ning of the book a lit­tle slow. I per­son­ally loved these chap­ters, which con­cen­trated on devel­op­ing the char­ac­ters and cre­at­ing a tra­di­tional Eng­lish board­ing school atmos­phere and thought the pac­ing was just right. John­son builds up the sus­pense care­fully, lead­ing to some great tension-filled action scenes at the end. The Name of the Star does in many ways work as a stand­alone novel, but there is a fan­tas­tic end­ing, which, while not exactly a cliffhanger, sure as hell made me des­per­ate to get my hands on book two.

The Name of the Star is a great story, part para­nor­mal, part old-fashioned detec­tive tale, with plenty of twists. Jack the Rip­per has been revis­ited many times in lit­er­a­ture, but this story feels fresh and orig­i­nal. It’s a won­der­fully atmos­pheric book and John­son really brings the echos of Vic­to­rian Lon­don to life. I can­not wait to read more about the secret ghost police of Lon­don (and I really wish this were a real thing).