“Here is time held in suspension. Yesterday pickled. Eternity in a jar.” In Things in Jars, A 7-foot tall bearded parlor maid, mythical sea monsters, a ghost, and a winter mermaid are all brought together by a female pipe-smoking detective in Victorian London to solve the kidnapping of a mysterious child. When a child with supposed supernatural powers is kidnapped, Detective Bridie Devine is commissioned to find her. Bridie's sleuthing abilities lead her into the dark underbelly of nineteent

Things In Jars starts off with Bridie, a private detective, being presented with a most baffling case. Sir Berwick's daughter has been kidnapped and he wants her found, but he won't share any relevant information with Bridie, including why he keeps her hidden away. So what's Sir Berwick hiding? The more Bridie learns, the more unusual this puzzle becomes. She prowls around dirty Victorian London trying to piece this together, accompanied by a motley crew, including a faithful ghost companion, a

Five stars and a statue goes to best portrayed Victorian London book ! This is incredible combination of humor, kitsch, folklore with the writer’s talented and never ending imagination. We meet one of the most interesting heroines, Bride Devine , a woman detective, wearing a dagger strapped to her thigh, smoking pipe, solving murders by reading corpses and talking with ghosts. It seems like one of the heroes , also the part of love triangle is Ruby Doyle, champion boxer who is also dead. Mostly...

Be sure to visit Bantering Books to read all my latest reviews.“There are things in jars.”(Note: For optimal effect, the above quote should be read in a whispery, quivery, British-accented voice.)Oh yes. There are many, many things in jars between the pages of Jess Kidd’s aptly titled novel -- and they are all so brilliantly and twistedly delightful.Bridie Devine, “pipe-smoking detective extraordinaire,” has just accepted quite the unusual case. Christabel Berwick, the secret daughter of Sir Ed...

‘’Below her, streets and lanes, factories and workhouses, parks and prisons, ground houses and tenements, roofs, chimneys and treetops. And the winding, sometimes shining, Thames- the sky’s own dirty mirror. The raven leaves the river behind and charts a path to a chapel on a hill with a spire and a clock tower. She circles the chapel and lands on the roof with a shuffling of wings. She pecks at brickwork, at lichen, at moth casts, at nothing. She sidles up to a gargoyle and runs her beak aff

Meeting Birdie Devine, a female investigator, who in 1863 receives an offer from a baronet to find hs kidnapped daughter, was a pleasure. More than that, I was delighted to get acquainted with her and follow her efforts to uncover the truth behind the abduction. She is observant, intelligent, has no fear of the dead or alive, with one exception, perhaps, and she has been through a lot in life. And she is accompanied by a former boxer who, though dead, gives some advice, occasionally. I loved eve...

Indeed, a great and greatly entertaining book featuring colourful characters in Victorian London female detective Bridie, her giant housekeeper and sidekick, a ghost boxer and a wondrous child who attracts the weirdest marine life. A mystery, a fantasy, a crime novel, all in one. Quirky, funny and interesting. More to follow, 4.2! Interesting author, will definitely check out her other books.

A cloth covers the jar that Bridie took from the bookcase in the nursery, and Ruby is thankful for this. For the contents have the ability to rearrange even a dead man’s sense of reality. As with all terrible, wondrous sights, there is a jolt of shock, then a hypnotic fascination, then the uneasy queasiness, then the whole thing starts again; the desire to look and the desire never to have looked in the first place. 1860s London, the prime of the Victorian age. About fifteen years before Sher

But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more. —Hans Christian Andersen, The Little MermaidI'm a huge fan of Jess Kidd's exquisite, playful writing and KERPOW, what a start! Her vivid prologue was one of the finest things I've read in a long, long time. Gadzooks! That alone was worth the entrance fee. The book is set in a Victorian London that Dickens might have portrayed: one which is theatrically grotesque and wonderfully atmospheric - whose slums are as lively as a bla

2.5/2.75 rounded upBridie Devine is a female detective in Victorian London. One day she is approached to investigate the case of a missing girl, Christabel - the secret child of Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick. She is reported to have supernatural powers. Bridie is hot on the case; she lost her last missing child and is determined to save this one. Her search for the girls is aided by her seven-foot-tall housemaid, and a tattoo covered ghost. Sounds interesting, right? Well, it was...but there is a...

4.5 STARS A dark, bizarre and fanciful world  Imaginative storytelling that was menacing, detailed and plotted to perfection.I was quickly captivated by the gothic setting and the missing child investigation. The female detective, Birdie Devine specializes in domestic investigations and minor surgery. She was a fantastic character that brought humor and humanity to the tale.The supernatural elements and fairytale esque cast of characters kept me glued to the pages and immersed in their quest f...

My first five star read of 2020From the first sentence, you know this book is going to be different. “As pale as a grave grub, she’s an eyeful.” The writing is just gorgeous, in that Victorian, Dickensian fashion. Think Dickens matched with Grimms Fairy Tales. Or Dickens if he was smoking hashish ( or one of Prudhoe’s blends) and into Irish folktales. I loved the characters: Bridie, part sleuth, part doctor (untrained), Cora, her seven foot maid with a beautiful baritone voice and Ruby, a dead b...

Jess Kidd is now officially one of my most favourite authors. Three beautiful books in a row with not a fault in any of them. What more to ask for.Things in Jars moves us away from the author's usual locations in Ireland and off to London. Of course our main characters are still beautifully Irish and, also of course, one of them is a ghost. Kidd describes Victorian London perfectly with all its horrors and its smells and its poverty among the lower classes. Her characters too are all larger than...

3.75 stars“London is like a difficult surgical patient; however cautious the incision, anything and everything is liable to burst out.”The above sums up exactly my experience with this rather eccentric novel, my first by Jess Kidd! Nearly anything and everything macabre, bizarre, paranormal, mythical, and supernatural that you could possibly imagine turn up on the streets of Kidd’s Victorian London. I was both mesmerized as well as a bit out of my element. If you want to be wholly removed from y...

"As pale as a grave grub, she's an eyeful.""She's pretty."She's more than pretty. She's a churchyard angel, a marble carving, with her ivory curls and pale, pale stony eyes. But not stone -- brightening pearl, oh soft hued!"On this beautifully delicate, intriguing note Jess Kidd sings us into this fascinating novel in which most people and things are anything but pale or angelic. This is Victorian London, 1863, post Burke & Hare. 'Burking" is now a verb, corpses and body parts and nature's mista...

This book was quite the different and interesting read. I was definitely intrigued with what I was reading but it was a little too much work to stay fully focused in though. I felt that it was a little too wordy at times and I wasn't invested enough in the characters for it to be an enjoyable read. I thought this was just an okay read.Please take this review with a grain of salt as it looks like I am definitely the outlier here. So many others have really enjoyed this. Maybe it is this time peri...

BOTM pick January 2020!Absolutely breathtaking. I must read more from Jess Kidd ASAP! While the mystery of the disappeared girl is front and foremost in this tale, I felt that the idea of our fascination with creatures and humans different from the norm, and our desire to contain them, was a huge theme explored as well. This was a timely, thought-provoking read, and although it took me a bit to get through this one, it was well worth the time taken to read it. *Many thanks to the publisher for p...

4.5A Victorian detective novel set in London, 1863..This cast of characters is something else! Bridie, a red haired Irish woman..pipe smoking, a small and tough broad and her sidekick, a ghost named Ruby Doyle (especially loved these two)Bridie is on a case to solve the kidnapping of six year old Cristabel Berwick, an “oddity of nature” who has pike like teeth, who smells of the sea and draws people’s memories out of them.Jess Kidd is an amazing writer!This is her third book and I’ve enjoyed the...

It turns out that funny banter-filled romantic spooky mythical creature-populated fantastical historical fiction has been something that we've been allowed to have this whole time??So now I'm furious that this is the first time I, personally, have experienced this.I have grown to realize that I don't even LIKE historical fiction, contrary to decades (okay, like one decade) of belief, which is why I put off reading this book for, uh, two years.And then I got around to it and it somehow charmed ev...