A Review | The Name of the Star by Maureen Jouhnson

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In the past few years I have heard so many Booktubers get excited about this book and give it great reviews, so this Halloween I decided I’d make it my spooky read. I’m a great lover of Victorian London in literature and Jack the Ripper is one of my favourite characters from that setting, I think this is both the reason for leaving ‘The Name of the Star’ alone for such a long time and for deciding to pick it up. I was nervous that Jack the Ripper couldn’t be executed in the same way in a modern day setting but I was curious as to how Johnson was going to get round it.

Johnson’s premise for a Jack the Ripper story in modern London was a good one, however it was poorly executed.

From beginning until 95% of the way through I felt disconnected from the plot, as did Rory the main character. The Jack the Ripper element got very lost amongst a boring, unnecessary love story, an irrational twist (which ended up taking the story even further from the thing that made me most want to read it), and general nonsense. There were so many blurry, pointless elements to the book, such as the very pointless love story that achieved very little in the way of plot development, that the exciting part ended up being an after thought - in other words too much faff not enough action.

Half way through the book Rory discovers she can see ghosts. This element allows Johnson to incorporate the Ripper idea nicely into the story but also forces her to include very inconceivable elements which made me stop and think - really though? Really? It also dragged everything further from the whole Ripper element which in the end seemed unnecessary as it all unveiled to have very little to do with Jack the Ripper. I found myself wanting more Ripper and less supernatural on countless occasions.

A lot of the characters felt very half hearted and bland and I’ll be honest easy to forget. Very few of them had much depth apart from the Ripper himself. The dialogue between the characters felt very forced and meaningless, almost used as a device to remind the reader that there is a Ripper in the story when the plot got lost on some other element. Rory’s ‘nemesis’ was rather un-nemsisy. A head girl who’s a bit of an over achiever doesn't constitute a dislike in my eyes and it felt a bit immature and over done.

There were good elements to the story. It was an easy read, it took some time to get through because it was all a bit messy and lost but the writing was easy to read and didn’t need to much brain power. The factual elements included throughout were, for me, one of the best parts as that’s really what I was hoping for. I thought she included them nicely throughout but at times they felt like she was just using them as a reminder that there was  Ripper in London but here’s Rory and she’s not that worried about it all. I’ll hand it to Johnson that she definitely didn't shy away from the gore of the Ripper, the facts included, well, all the facts and again it was all well incorporated.

The book was rounded up nicely, everything was solved and the characters were comfortable though there was enough of a cliff hanger for those who are interested in reading the next book in the series.

Me, I’m undecided whether I will or not as of yet.


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