Stalking Jack the Ripper Review: The Book That Made Me Understand the Hype (Finally)

    Let's get one thing straight before we dive in: I have fallen off my couch approximately four times while reading books, and Stalking Jack the Ripper is responsible for one of them (another is when my foot got caught in the blanket while I was trying to move positions, but that’s not important). This book took a girl obsessed with cadavers, a Victorian serial killer, and a boy who flirts exclusively through insults, and made me a full-blown convert.

    Hi, bookish buddies. It's you book bestie, Poindexter Anonymous, here to talk about the book that finally made me understand why everyone loses their minds over Kerri Maniscalco.

    I’d like to let you know that I do read books with dragons in them, and we will review one at some point, I’m just in a gothic reading vibe right now. Bare with me, I’m seeing the rabbit hole and entrance to Wonderland, but I haven’t found the way out yet.

The Backstory (Because I Overshare)  

    So, here's the thing. I read Kingdom of the Wicked first, went in blind, came out with feelings that were, generously, mixed (that review is coming, don't worry, I have thoughts and they are numerous). But something about the world-building in that trilogy kept nagging at me, so while I was contemplating continuing that series, The Princes of Sin (that’s not really a series), I decided to go full literary detective and figure out where Maniscalco actually got her start. Cue me and my bestie wandering our happy place, the bookstore, no agenda, just vibes, when I spotted the new Stalking Jack the Ripper cover glowing at me from the YA shelf like it personally knew I needed it. Reader, it was love at first sight. I did not even pretend to resist.

    I bought it purely as homework. I finished it and immediately understood why people love Kerri’s work.

Quick Snapshot

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 ⭐ (we'll get into the missing half-star, don't worry)

Spice: Zero 🌶️

Genre: YA Historical Fiction / Mystery, with a garnish of romance and a *very* light dusting of the supernatural.

Vibe: Corset-clad true crime podcast meets enemies-to-lovers banter, with a side of "why is this 17-year-old better at forensics than the actual police?"

Ideal Reader: If you loved the atmosphere and slow-burn tension of Kingdom of the Wicked but wanted less brimstone and more bone saws, or if you've ever thought "I wish more YA heroines were unbothered by viscera," this is your book.

What This Book Feels Like

    Reading Stalking Jack the Ripper is moody and fog-drenched in the way all good Victorian settings should be, but it never takes itself so seriously that it forgets to be fun. The pacing is a slow simmer that occasionally boils over into "oh my god, put the book down and breathe" territory.

    Tonally, it's like if a BBC period drama and a crime procedural had a baby, and that baby was raised exclusively on gothic candlelight and mild social rebellion. Audrey Rose Wadsworth is not your typical corseted heroine wringing her hands about propriety, she's elbow-deep in a corpse within the first several chapters and thriving. It's darkly funny in places, genuinely tense in others, and the romantic tension crackles in a way that made me actively yell at my book, which, again, is how you know it's working.

The Story (Spoiler-Free, I Promise)

Audrey Rose Wadsworth comes from a proper, prim, marry-well kind of family, except she'd rather be dissecting cadavers in her uncle's laboratory than attending balls, which, frankly, respect the hussle. When women start turning up murdered and mutilated across Whitechapel, London spirals into a very real, very historical panic over a killer the world would come to know as Jack the Ripper. Audrey Rose, armed with her scientific mind and a stubborn refusal to stay in her Victorian-lady-shaped box, starts investigating alongside her uncle's brilliant, insufferable, entirely-too-charming apprentice, Thomas Cresswell.

What follows is part murder mystery, part slow-burn romance, part "is the love interest secretly the killer" fever dream that had me side-eyeing every male character with a pulse. Maniscalco weaves real historical details from the actual Jack the Ripper case into this fictional world with a level of care that genuinely surprised me, this isn't just borrowed spooky aesthetic, there's research here.

What Worked

Audrey Rose is a whole mood. She's stubborn, brilliant, morbidly curious, and refuses to shrink herself for anyone's comfort, including her own family's. I loved her immediately and without reservation. She's the kind of FMC who makes you want to reread just to catch every sharp little internal monologue you missed the first time.

Thomas Cresswell is walking chaos and I am obsessed. He flirts like he's cross-examining a witness. Every conversation between him and Audrey Rose reads like verbal fencing, and it is *deeply* entertaining. If you liked the tension in Kingdom of the Wicked, this is that same DNA.

The world-building is rich without being exhausting. You can feel the fog. You can smell the formalin. Maniscalco clearly did her homework blending real Ripper case details into the plot, and it elevates the whole thing from "spooky YA mystery" to something with real weight and texture.

The themes hit harder than expected. Underneath the murder mystery, there's a genuinely sharp commentary on how women, especially the era's forgotten victims, were treated in life and only mourned in death. It's not heavy-handed, but it's there, and it adds a layer of depth I wasn't expecting from a book I bought mostly because the cover was pretty.

What Didn't Work (keeping it real)

    Okay, here's my one gripe, and it's the reason we're at 4.5 stars instead of a perfect 5. This book reads, for about 90% of its runtime, like meticulously researched historical fiction with a mystery wrapped around it. The tone is grounded. The stakes feel real. And then the ending swerves into territory that felt a little too fantastical for the story it had spent the whole book building. It's not that the twist was bad, it genuinely got me, I became one with my floor, remember. It's that it didn't quite match the promise the rest of the book had made. It's a book that tells you it's going to be historical fiction with a mystery core, and then at the finish line it says "actually, surprise, we're doing this now." Maybe that's just me being a stickler for tonal consistency. It did not, in any way, stop me from sprinting to the bookstore the next day on my lunch break to buy the rest of the series, because your girl is a working-class girlie who does not have time to wait for shipping.

Favorite Moments

    Without spoiling anything: the autopsy scenes are unexpectedly some of the most engaging parts of the book, which is a sentence I never thought I'd write. Every single scene where Thomas and Audrey Rose are forced to work side by side and pretend they're not into each other is comedy gold. And the final few chapters had my heart absolutely racing in a way very few YA books manage to pull off.

The Verdict

    Stalking Jack the Ripper is the book that made me understand why Kerri Maniscalco has such a devoted following, and honestly, I'm a little annoyed that I started with Kingdom of the Wicked. It's atmospheric, smart, funny in the driest way possible, and stars a heroine who I'd trust to solve my murder. The ending stumbles slightly out of genre, but not enough to keep this from being one of my favorite reads this year. 

    If you're wondering whether you should read Stalking Jack the Ripper: yes. Absolutely yes. Clear your evening, because you are not putting this one down.

Should You Buy It?

    If you're the kind of reader who wants your gothic mysteries with a little romance, a lot of banter, and just enough real history to make you feel smart at dinner parties, you can grab your copy of Stalking Jack the Ripper (affiliate links, because again, I’m a working class girlie).

    If you devour this one as fast as I did (and you will), the sequel is already calling your name: Check out Hunting Prince Dracula.

    And if you're more of an audiobook commuter than a physical-copy hoarder, this one's got a narrator who really leans into the gothic drama you can check it out here.

Until next time book nerds, I've got a date with the next three books in this series. 

— Poindexter Anonymous 🖤

Did I miss anything? Did you jump right into the second book too? Drop you thoughts in the comments, but be respectful of others, if you're going to talk about specifics, disclaim your spoilers. And if you want more posts like this landing in your inbox (plus the occasional unhinged recommendation), subscribe to the newsletter below.