What an enraging book this is! I mean, it is the perfect theory as to who was Jack the Ripper, but lovelies, I could not have been angrier about the situation Sussanah put herself in, and REMAINED IN!! Just wanted to jump inside the pages, slap some sense into her, and then let her get on.
Anyway, this is the story about Susannah, a nurse at the London hospital. Introverted and with very little self esteem, she manages to snatch up one of the most coveted bachelor surgeons in the city.
Susannah and Thomas get married and honeymoon is bliss! Oh, but when they return home, a darker, violent side of Thomas emerges, making Susannah question everything, up to the point that she starts to suspect Thomas might be the new serial killer roaming the city called Jack the Ripper.
Who is he? Where does he go at night? Why does he return covered in blood? Who can help her, and will she end up suffering the same fate as all the murdered women?
Damn good this book is! ( )

WOW. Just wow. After ploughing through a slew of three star books, a random recommendation on Instagram completely captivated my imagination!

Clare Whitfield's Victorian gothic mystery, based on the murders of Jack the Ripper and with shades of classic 'sensation novels' like The Woman in White, is the story of Susannah Chapman, a nurse who marries a wealthy doctor to escape the poverty and drudgery she was born to. Dr Thomas Lancaster is handsome and charming, and Susannah can't understand why he is interested in her, a plain, thirty year old spinster with a shameful background, but agrees to marry him anyway. When the confidence and authority of her husband's upper middle class position turns to vicious cruelty and abuse soon after she moves in to his Chelsea house, with his Danvers-esque housekeeper Mrs WIggs, Susannah fears that she has escaped the frying pan by jumping into the fire - but what is the dark secret Thomas is keeping from his new wife?

The premise of the story is that Susannah believes that Thomas is Jack the Ripper, committing the horrific murders of 'women of abandoned character' in Whitechapel, where Susannah herself was born, but I actually found Susannah's own situation, and that of all Victorian women, to be far more disturbing. She marries Thomas out of vanity and ambition, but when she realises that he is not who she thought he was, she is trapped - her husband 'owns' her, legally and financially, and nobody would take her word over his if she spoke out, which she does try. There is also the very Victorian suggestion that Susannah is merely being 'hysterical' and imagining everything that happens to her at home - is she an unreliable narrator after all? The author had me doubting Susannah and her laudanum-fuelled 'hallucinations' at one point, skilfully unravelling the 'truth' about the characters at a constantly tense pace.

Despite not fully being able to trust Susannah, I did sympathise with her and wanted her triumph over her slimy husband and his haughty housekeeper. And despite the historical setting of the story, she is a very resourceful woman. Whereas the revelations about Thomas and Mrs Wiggs didn't surprise me, I was shocked by a secret from Susannah's past - but by that point, I was strangely willing to accept that Thomas wasn't the only one with two sides to his character!

I just can't recommend this book enough - the pages will fly, and there is also a lot of interesting historical fact about the women murdered by Jack the Ripper, brought to life far more vividly in this fictional account than Hallie Rubenhold managed in The Five. The memory of the Ripper's last victim, Mary Jane Kelly, is perhaps betrayed for dramatic effect, but I think she met a far worse fate in real life. ( )