THE NAME OF THE STAR – review by RS

This book really wasn’t what I expected it to be. The blurb on the back tells you that it is a ghost story set in London with a teenage girl versus Jack the Ripper theme – I wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t going to be just another paranormal excuse for a romance, probably one in which the female lead character is not as strong as she could be…

But I was wrong and surprised and amused. Rory (short for Aurora) is the kind of person who constantly gets into trouble – sometimes without meaning to, sometimes totally deliberately. She sees ghosts, but she doesn’t realise until quite far on in the story that she is talking to dead people, and the dead people seem quite ordinary although definitely not normal! The scariness in this book builds gradually – although the Jack the Ripper style murders going on in the outside world are happening from the start of the book, you feel that Rory is protected, until suddenly she is right in the middle, and it is too late for her to escape.