Welcome All Book Lovers

Welcome All Book Lovers

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

The Ripper's Wife by Brandy Purdy

It begins as a fairytale romance-a shipboard meeting in 1880 between vivacious Southern belle Florence Chandler and handsome English cotton broker James Maybrick. Courtship and a lavish wedding soon follow, and the couple settles into an affluent Liverpool suburb.

From the first, their marriage is doomed by lies. Florie, hardly the heiress her scheming mother portrayed, is treated as an outsider by fashionable English society. James's secrets are infinitely darker-he has a mistress, an arsenic addiction, and a vicious temper. But Florie has no inkling of her husband's depravity until she discovers his diary-and in it, a litany of bloody deeds...@goodreads



MY REVIEW:

4 STARS

I was given a print copy of this book by the author for my honest review.

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***********SPOILERS***********

I enjoyed this book almost as much as I enjoyed the author's book about Lizzie Borden. This one was an eeny meeny bit more..uh..gory though. I had to skim over some stuff because ew :-)

This book was written around the idea that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper and his wife was Florence Maybrick. The idea stems from the diary and watch that was found with Maybrick's name on them and the diary giving vivid details on the murders. The watch had the names of the victims scratched on it along with Maybrick's name. This is still a mystery. I did some research and the diary and watch were both proved and disproved, so who knows. I say he did it! But, that's just my opinion.

The is told in both Florence and James point of views, mostly Florence. James pov only seems to come about when he starts to go mad and killing and gross stuff and he's bat sh*t nuts if it's all really true.... or was..

James married a very young Florence who was from America and they lived in his home with one of his brothers and a host of servants. Florence had two children by James, a boy, James and a little girl, Gladys. And they were so happy until Florence finds out James has another wife and 5 kids! Really dude?!

After some time Florence starts having her own affair with one of his friends, which James finds out about and he beats Florence quite frequently. This is supposedly what made him start going out and mutilating those women. Other than the fact that he's whack a doo. I wonder too if him taking arsenic and other crazy stuff all of the time made him a bit nutsy cuckoo. I mean, maybe this was a thing I didn't know about but I don't think I would be taking deadly stuff like the things he was taking.

Anyhoo, Florence finds his diary and is appalled of course. In this book, James asks her to poison him so his children won't have to live with the shame and he's dying anyway.

But<--- then she is arrested for killing him and they have it all set up to kill her and then she's released but the damage has been done and she's pretty much shunned by everyone even her kids. They were taken to live with Dr. Fuller and his wife when Florence went to jail. James Jr. changed his last name to Fuller and year later when he was 29 he took cyanide and died. WTF is wrong with these people? Gladys got married, but they never cared for their mother again.

Of course now I want to read every book on both Florence and James ever written if there are any so I can see what they really thought!

I think the author did an awesome job of letting us be in the mind of Florence and live out a scenario that very well may have been true.

The happy couple below ↓

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GOODREADS REVIEW:


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