High Energy and Full of Surprises
This is my first Maureen Johnson novel, and I was thoroughly pleased with it. I've been reading more young adult the last few years, and this one I would consider a literary thriller, and the writing quite sophisticated. It's gratifying that such a large number of young readers are digesting literature of this quality.
The protagonist in the story is a young woman, Aurora (Rory) Deverourx, who is from a small town outside New Orleans, Louisiana. Rory is on her way to London, England for her senior year of high school at Wexford in the East End of London, a two-year boarding school for seventeen and eighteen year olds. The story opens with a sort of "prologue," a third-person narration of a nurse scurrying along the streets of pre-dawn London. The woman is late to work and in a terrible hurry. She stumbles over something in the dark and soon discovers that it is a body with the throat slit and the head almost severed.
At the beginning of Chapter One, which is told in Rory's first-person narration, we learn that she will attend Wexford, while her parents, both lawyers, are on sabbatical from Tulane to teach law at the University of Bristol, east of London two hours by train. Rory arrives at the airport, where an old man picks her up and drives her to Wexford. On the way, she learns of the murder that same morning, which is characterized in the media as a Jack the Ripper copycat. Back in 1888, Jack had brutally mutilated five women prostitutes, the first on Friday 31 August and the last on Friday 9 November. This then locks the story's central conflict. It doesn't take a very astute reader to realize that this young woman will eventually become embroiled in the hunt for the killer who is repeating all of Jack the Ripper's murders, after all, Wexford is in "Jack the Ripper territory."
All this is good stuff, and initially the reader becomes engrossed in Rory's trials and tribulations as she meets new friends and adversaries and struggles with her classes at Wexford, what is for her, an exotic and demanding educational environment. At this point, it is sort of a fish-out-of-water story. New murders occur on Jack the Ripper schedule, and it becomes certain that the girls at Wexford are particularly at risk. The tension is palpable, and teenagers do crazy things, are inherently risk-takers, and fuel is really on the fire. But right in the middle of the novel, the story changes. I won't give away the plotline, but what happens, for me, really lets the air out of the tension balloon.
In the beginning of the second half of the novel, we experience a twist in the storyline that produces new secondary characters, and the old ones at Wexford sink in the background and are not, although peripherally present, developed further. The story quickly falls back to earth where it languishes for a couple of chapters. With a lessor author, this turn of events could be catastrophic, but Maureen Johnson is an amazing storyteller with writing talent to burn, and this twist soon recaptures the reader's interest, and we're off on an even more exciting ride.
The ending of the novel is thrilling, exceeds all of our expectations, and the reader comes away satisfied with having read a well-told story. And just when you think it's all over, the last scene in the novel will set you to thinking again, and make you quickly turn to twitter to urge Maureen Johnson to write faster, faster, faster, because obviously this story has a sequel. I checked it out, and I believe that this is Volume One of a new series titled Shades of London. Can't wait.
Review of the eBook format:
I actually hate to go into this, but it seems that publishers should get credit where credit is due, and when not, well... If this eBook is any indication, G. P. Putnam's Sons/Penguin Group Inc. has a ways to go before they can put out a good one. This one looks more like something a self-published author without much technical savvy would put together. First of all, I read this by jumping back and forth between my second-generation Kindle and apps on my iMac, MacBook Air, and iPhone, all nicely synced by Amazon. The cover used in the eBook is actually the black-and-white frontispiece of the hardcover edition. Granted on my second-generation Kindle (no color) that didn't matter much, but on the other devices, it did. All the devices I used besides the Kindle have color, so why not have that beautiful cover image? Once you've bought the book, all you get is a tiny color thumbnail in your list of eBooks, in which the title isn't even discernible. Once inside the book, you never see the real cover. Even if you click on the contents link titled "Cover," you don't get it. The cover is the symbol of a book, even sells the book in many cases, so why not have it available? Even self-published authors do this.
Secondly, the eBook's navigation has its own problems. The novel doesn't start with Chapter One. As I mentioned above, it has a "prologue" of sorts (titled DURWARD STREET, EAST LONDON AUGUST 31 4:17 A.M.) that actually kicks it off, which is fine. But that "prologue" isn't listed in the Table of Contents, so if you ever return there, you can't get to the beginning of the story without backtracking several pages. Also, it's becoming standard for each chapter heading to be a link back to the Table of Contents, but not in The Name of the Star. The eBook also has a few formatting errors (e.g. at the beginnings of Chapters 22, 24, and 31), but these are small annoyances. One bizarre error concerns a reference within the text to a website called "RipperFiles.com," which is highlighted and an active link provided to... nowhere. All in all, a rather amateurish eBook for a major publishing house, especially when you consider that it sells on Amazon for only a few pennies less than the hardcover, the price set by the publisher. I downloaded the free sample on Apple's iBooks and found the navigation situation with the "prologue" even worse.
The title, The Name of the Star, is still confusing to me. The words come up in the text, but the connection never quite makes sense, in my opinion. Publisher marketing generally reserves the right to specify the title.
Still, an excellent novel by Maureen Johnson. She is truly a marvelous writer. Too bad her publisher, one of the best in the business, can't keep up with the times.
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Reviews with images
EXPECTATIONS EXCEEDED
The Shades of London has been a comfort series of mine since I was 13 back in 2013. At one time, I owned all hardcovers of the books in the series, and somewhere in between moving out after graduating high school in 2019 and moving back to my hometown a few years later, the books got damaged in storage. Now as a 24 year old looking to build her library, I had to have this series on my shelves as it served great importance to me as a young teen and started my love for books. This particular hardcover is what I picked up first at my middle school library and as time goes on it’s difficult to find specific copies in not only good shape, but good quality. I was pleased to see how well the condition of this book is in. Thank you!
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2011
Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2024
The Shades of London has been a comfort series of mine since I was 13 back in 2013. At one time, I owned all hardcovers of the books in the series, and somewhere in between moving out after graduating high school in 2019 and moving back to my hometown a few years later, the books got damaged in storage. Now as a 24 year old looking to build her library, I had to have this series on my shelves as it served great importance to me as a young teen and started my love for books. This particular hardcover is what I picked up first at my middle school library and as time goes on it’s difficult to find specific copies in not only good shape, but good quality. I was pleased to see how well the condition of this book is in. Thank you!
Images in this review
Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2021
👻 Ghosts
🔪 Murder Ghosts
🕵🏻 A pinch of mystery
🇬🇧 London
It's a fun book where we follow a main character who slowly learns she can see ghosts. Her reality is chipped away page by page as a murderer who may be the ghost of Jack the Ripper gets closer and closer to her.
🔪 Murder Ghosts
🕵🏻 A pinch of mystery
🇬🇧 London
It's a fun book where we follow a main character who slowly learns she can see ghosts. Her reality is chipped away page by page as a murderer who may be the ghost of Jack the Ripper gets closer and closer to her.
Images in this review
Top reviews from other countries
TeaPartyPrincess
Ghosts in London, Oh My!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 7, 2018
Jennifer Mclean
Spectacular series,can't wait for the next book
Reviewed in Canada on February 11, 2015