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When I was offered Ripper by TLC Book Tours, I was really looking forward to reading it. Isabel Allende is well-known in the world of literary fiction and I’d heard lots of good things about her books. She had never written a mystery novel before, but Ripper sounded really cool: it takes place in San Francisco; Amanda is seventeen years old; her mother is an holistic healer; her grandfather is her best friend; her father is the deputy chief of homicide for the San Francisco Police Department; her godmother is a famous astrologer in California; and Amanda sets out to solve a string of murders that are taking place in the Bay Area. Amanda seems to be fascinated by violent crime–she, her grandfather, and a small group of teenagers from around the globe get together online to play a role-playing game called “Ripper,” based on Jack the Ripper’s time in England. When the murders start (supposedly foreseen by her astrologer godmother), Amanda takes the role-playing game from 1888 into 2012 (with the consent of the other players) so they can work on solving the modern-day killings.
Sounds pretty cool, right? Teenage RPGer-turned-crime-solver, interesting-sounding characters, murder mystery…I thought this would be a really good book coming from an author like Isabel Allende.
Well.
Short version: Ripper just isn’t a good book. But it could have been, and that’s what disappoints me the most. It’s really more like (poor) literary fiction with some mystery/crime elements tossed in, and if Allende had set out to do that in the first place and really developed the literary fiction aspect of it, I think it would have been great. But she was just joking around, so I shouldn’t take any of my complaints too seriously…right?
My full review: http://btweenthecovers.com/2014/02/24/review-ripper-isabel-allende/
Sounds pretty cool, right? Teenage RPGer-turned-crime-solver, interesting-sounding characters, murder mystery…I thought this would be a really good book coming from an author like Isabel Allende.
Well.
Short version: Ripper just isn’t a good book. But it could have been, and that’s what disappoints me the most. It’s really more like (poor) literary fiction with some mystery/crime elements tossed in, and if Allende had set out to do that in the first place and really developed the literary fiction aspect of it, I think it would have been great. But she was just joking around, so I shouldn’t take any of my complaints too seriously…right?
My full review: http://btweenthecovers.com/2014/02/24/review-ripper-isabel-allende/