Publisher's Weekly Review
Maniscalco's debut isn't for the squeamish: it starts with 17-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth deeply immersed in opening up and analyzing a corpse under the supervision of her Uncle Jonathan, with no detail or scalpel cut spared. Audrey Rose is a proper Victorian with the unladylike aspirations of understanding crime scenes, blood spatter, the brutality of murder, and exactly how a killer tears into his victim. Luckily for her, Jack the Ripper is on the hunt, and Audrey Rose-alongside Thomas, a handsome aspiring coroner-is determined to catch him. In taking on the subject of this famous 19th-century serial killer, Maniscalco is treading well-worn fictional territory, but she has created a serious, sharp-minded, and forward-thinking protagonist in Audrey Rose, whose fearlessness in the face of the decaying and the dead-while still navigating the social norms of the day-will endear her to readers looking for an engaging historical thriller. Abundant red herrings and a dash of romance round out this gruesome but engrossing story. Ages 15-up. Agent: Barbara Poelle, Irene Goodman Literary. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Defying Victorian-era gender conventions, Audrey Rose secretly studies forensics with her coroner uncle. When he's consulted in the Ripper case, then accused of the murders, Audrey Rose investigates. Her first-person narration is uneven--by turns lavishly detailing high-society fashion and crime scenes or swooning over forensics student Thomas and suspecting him. Still, readers intrigued by forensics will be entertained by Maniscalco's revisioning. (c) Copyright 2017. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Audrey Rose Wadsworth prefers breeches to ball gowns, autopsies to afternoon tea, and scalpels to knitting needles. Though her father, Lord Edmund, has forbidden it, Audrey covertly studies forensic medicine and human anatomy under her uncle Jonathan Edmund's estranged brother a prominent, if peculiar, London doctor. But Leather Apron is on the loose, butchering women in London's East End, and mutilated cadavers are arriving at Dr. Wadsworth's Highgate laboratory with unnerving frequency. Audrey and Dr. Wadsworth's young assistant, the wickedly handsome Thomas Cresswell, are quick to uncover the killer's grisly trademarks, sawed-off limbs and absent organs, along with an unsettling connection to the Wadsworths themselves. When Dr. Wadsworth is abruptly arrested and thrown into Bedlam asylum, the pair is left to prove and ponder his innocence. All the while, the Ripper remains two steps ahead, lurking where Audrey least expects. While readers with a thirst for progressive female protagonists may puzzle over Audrey's continued reverence for physical beauty and social class, Maniscalco's portrayal of scientific invention in a newly industrial era will serve as a fine first foray into Victorian classics.--Shemroske, Briana Copyright 2016 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-This audiobook has everything: a true-life tale that has intrigued readers for 100-plus years, a young woman who balks at the constraints put upon women during the Victorian era, a marvelous yet somewhat gruesome mystery, and a narrator who brings you down into Spitalfields as Jack the Ripper earns his name. Audrey Rose has suffered the loss of her mother and is having trouble finding her way in the world despite the help of her brother, Nathaniel. She is keenly interested in her uncle Jonathan's work as a forensic medical examiner but is forbidden to study the subject at school or assist her uncle in his laboratory. Her father has grown distant after his wife's death and depends heavily on laudanum to cope. Audrey Rose takes advantage of his distraction and surreptitiously works in the laboratory with her uncle and his assistant, Thomas Cresswell, as Jack the Ripper's victims come to his autopsy table. The Ripper scenes are visceral, and the plot dovetails with history perfectly. Narrator Nicola Barber voices the characters distinctly as they move about the story. An unexpected twist makes the ending worth the wait. VERDICT This is a must-have audio for fans of Ripper accounts and Sherlock Holmes and other BBC sleuths. ["An entertaining debut full of twists and turns, perfect for fans of historical fiction and mystery": SLJ 8/16 review of the Little, Brown/Jimmy Patterson book.]-Joan Kindig, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
