Ripper
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“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.
“Well written . . . Reeves cleverly uses one of the most heinous figures from history to tell a gothic tale with a paranormal twist.”—VOYA
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reeves's debut is a chilling reimagining of London in 1888, haunted by Jack the Ripper. After Arabella Sharp's mother dies suddenly, the 17-year-old moves from Dublin to an affluent London neighborhood where her grandmother lives. In an attempt to civilize Arabella, her grandmother makes her volunteer at White chapel Hospital in the city's dodgy East End. It's hardly punishment: Arabella enjoys helping the patients, who are mostly prostitutes, but she begins to have visions of a chalice, hooded men, and gruesome murders of patients that she cannot stop in time; it's up to Arabella to discover the killer's ties to her family before he strikes again. Meanwhile, she develops an intense crush on one of the doctors, and a police inspector asks for her help with an investigation. Reeves offers a determined and free-thinking heroine in Arabella, and the ending suggests readers haven't seen the last of her. Along with recent takes on Ripper lore from Maureen Johnson and Stefan Petrucha, Reeves's story should help sustain interest in this grisly 19th-century mystery. Ages 12 up.
