After her near-fatal run-in with the Jack the Ripper
copycat, Roy Devereaux has been living in Bristol under the close watch of her
parents. So when her therapist suddenly suggest she return to Wexford, Rory
jumps at the chance to get back to her friends. But Rory’s brush with the
Ripper touched her more than she thought possible: she’s become a human
terminus, with the power to eliminate ghosts on contact. She soon finds out
that the Shades—the city’s secret ghost-fighting police—are responsible for her
return. The Ripper may be gone, but now there is a string of new inexplicable
deaths threatening London. Rory has evidenced that the deaths are no
coincidence. Something much more sinister is going on, and now she must
convince the squad to listen to her before it’s too late.
Oh where do I start? I enjoyed the first book in The Shades
of London series, as the Jack the Ripper stuff really balanced out well with
the silly and humorous doings of a White Chapel boarding school. Rory was
always a bit over-the-top for me, but the undertones of ghosts and murders
really toned her down. This second book however, felt like a romp on the
un-believable and hormonal express. Rory is inexplicably jerking from one
emotion to the next (even more so than is normal for a girl) and without
suitable explaination does some truly idiotic decision-making. I was so out of
patience with both the characters and the story by the end that I can tell you
I won’t be reading any more of this series. Things happened in the plot that
seemed to happen just because the author wanted them to, the characters felt a
lot like marionettes that suddenly were jerked from stage left to stage right for
no apparent reason. I’m disappointed, but no recommendation for this one. Skip
it and be happy with the first.
I give it a 1.5 out of 5
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