The Five

Book/Story: ⭐⭐⭐.5 (rounded up)
Book Cover: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

TRIGGER(S): Prostitution, sex trafficking (briefly mentioned), domestic abuse (briefly mentioned), miscarriages/still births (briefly mentioned)

POV: Third Person Series/Standalone: Standalone Part of a series: No Safe or Dark: Safeish (see trigger warnings above)

DISCLAIMER: I switched between the physical and audiobook while reading this.

“Jack the Ripper killed prostitutes, or so it has always been believed, but there is no hard evidence to suggest that three of his five victims were prostitutes at all. As soon as each body was discovered, in a dark yard or street, the police assumed that the woman was a prostitute killed by a maniac who had lured her to the location for sex. There is, and never was, any proof of this either.”

Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols

“This was indeed Polly, as he used to call her—the woman he had once dearly loved, and married. It was Polly, who had borne six of his children, who had comforted and coddled them, who had nursed him in times of illness, the woman with whom he had shared laughter and at least a handful of joys for sixteen years. It was Polly, who at eighteen had been his girlish bride, holding her father's arm as she walked down the aisle at St. Bride's. They had been happy, even if only for a short while.”

Eliza Ann “Annie” Chapman

“Emily, Georgina, and Miriam could not bear to tell their elderly mother that the child she had lost to alcohol had been killed in such a gruesome and dehumanizing way. They smothered their grief as they held the hands of Annie's two children, who would never know the fate that befell their mother.”

Elizabeth Stride

“Over the course of her life, Elisabeth had been a variety of things to many people; she had been both dark and light, a menace and a comfort. She had been a daughter, a wife, a sister, a mistress, a fraudster, a cleaner, a coffeehouse owner, a servant, a foreigner, and a woman who had at various times sold sex.”

Catherine “Kate” Eddowes

“Over the course of her life, Elisabeth had been a variety of things to many people; she had been both dark and light, a menace and a comfort. She had been a daughter, a wife, a sister, a mistress, a fraudster, a cleaner, a coffeehouse owner, a servant, a foreigner, and a woman who had at various times sold sex.”

Mary Jane Kelly

“Mary Jane was whatever she wished to be, and in the wake of her death, she became whatever Joseph Barnett wished to commemorate. It was he who insisted that the name on her brass coffin plate read “Marie Jeanette Kelly,” a moniker brimming with all the flounce and flamboyance of a Saturday night in the West End.”

The infamous canonical five

“The cards were stacked against Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Kate, and Mary Jane from birth. They began their lives in deficit. Not only were most of them born into working-class families; they were also born female.”

TLDR: IF YOU ARE A SELF-PROCLAIMED RIPPEROLOGIST OR ARE JUST TIRED OF THE SAME OLD WORN-OUT JACK THE RIPPER NARATIVE, READ THIS BOOK!