Official excert-

Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord’s daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life.

Against her stern father’s wishes and society’s expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle’s laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.

Short summary- 5-8 minutes

Audrey studies how to perform an autopsy by her uncle when they are interrupted by a man who tells her uncle he is needed at a scene. The next day, Audrey goes to her uncle’s medical class dressed as a man, he discusses the first victim of the eventual Jack the Ripper’s case, also meeting the man, Thomas, from the night before. Later Audrey is celebrating her 17th birthday but her father does not approve of her studying with her uncle, but her brother, Nathaniel, distracts him. She leaves and goes to study the body with her uncle and Thomas. The victim had worked in Audrey’s household and Thomas makes correct observations about Audrey which irritates her. Audrey’s mother died of scarlet fever so her father is super protective but she sneaks out and does her own investigation. She goes to the local pub but is interrupted by Nathaniel and makes Thomas walk her home. The next day there is another murder and she goes to study it, but it had missing organs and had gears next to the body. Nathaniel comes to tell her that Father has left town because he was caught in an opium den.  Thomas makes deductions about her as a form of flirting. Later Audrey sneaks into her father’s office and finds a file on the first and another possible victim. She goes to investigate by talking to an old employee with Thomas. The employee is dying of leprosy but mentions another man. Audreys asks Nathaniel about it and it was another old employee. Audrey searches for this man with Thomas, who now works at the docks; they find him but he was killed recently. Later on, an officer, Blackburn, tells her that her uncle was arrested under the suspicion that her uncle was the killer. He is being held at a royal hospital which is known for horrible conditions. Audrey has tea with her cousin and mentions she should go to the circus. She goes with her brother and has fun, but Blackburn comes to talk to her and then takes her to see her uncle. Her uncle is in the hospital and is incoherent due to being drugged as a patient/prisoner, then she visits Thomas and sees him acquiring an unclaimed body to use for his personal study. 

Audrey, Blackburn and Thomas visit the editor of a newspaper because he had received a letter from the supposed killer calling himself Jack the Ripper. Thomas smells the envelope and it has Audrey’s scent and accuses her of writing it to get her uncle out of jail but she denies it and instead accuses him. The next day, a mutilated body is found and Audrey helps by looking at the body as requested by Blackburn. Her father shows up, gets angry and takes her home. He says that if she continues then he will kick her out of the house. Nathaniel later tells her that before their mother died, uncle tried to cure her by doing a transplant which failed but he continued to do experiments along with Thomas. The next day, Audrey makes her father angry and says she would rather live on the streets than in a cage and leaves. She goes to her uncle who she confronts about the experiments. He replies they haven’t tried in a while and that Thomas was interested in it due to his own mother’s death a few years ago which was difficult. Audrey and Thomas go to the victim’s funeral to see if they can out anything but instead meet a medium who claims he can talk to ghosts. He says Audrey met and talked angrily at the killer which makes Audrey think of her father. They go to the police because another letter was sent and a part of a kidney, which confuses them since the killer claimed to have eaten part of the kidney. 

Audrey and Thomas go out at night to investigate and first they are attacked by people who are angry at Thomas since he had acquired a body of someone they knew. Audrey slams her heel on their foot and they escape, then Thomas kisses her. Audrey then sees her father’s carriage outside of a house, so they wait. They see him leave a woman’s house and go back home and the woman inside also leaves but they do not follow. The next day, there was another murder that was brutally mutilated with a missing heart.  and Audrey is convinced it is her father so she goes home to confront him. He is not there so she waits in his office but finds a secret passage behind a painting. She finds a laboratory of the missing organs and her mother’s corpse. Nathaniel finds her and is then revealed to be the killer who thinks he can bring his mother back to life using science. Their father shows up and demands he stops, Thomas then shows up who claims the police are coming so Nathaniel kills himself. A couple weeks later, Audrey is trying to move on and continues to study with her uncle but her father shows up. He says he is sorry for being an overprotective father and sends her away to the best forensic school in Romania with Thomas as a companion to which Audrey is surprised but accepts.   

Long summary~20-25 minutes

The story is told through the main character’s( Audrey Rose) point of view in London, England in 1888. It contained various historical photographs of things in the story.

 Audrey is in her uncle’s laboratory practicing an autopsy under her uncle’s gaze and instruction. She is nervous about getting home on time before her father, who is very important, will send people to find her. Her uncle questions how the cadaver died. She answers and uncle approves but a man comes and interrupts telling him something is ready and uncle asks Audrey to finish alone. She asks to attend his class and he agrees but she must look like a man and dress like one.

In the class, her uncle is presenting the class with the case of a victim. He asks the class a question, and Audrey wants to answer but can’t. A man, Thomas,  answers well and even pretends to attack a man to deomostrate his answer. Her uncle agrees and suspects that the killer was interrupted and was after something else. Students discuss their ideas and Audrey was drawing the wounds and Thomas gives her some advice but Audrey rejects. He asks her name as Mr. but she corrects him and he makes the connection as uncle and niece. She recognizes him as the man from last night and he denies it. The class resumes. 

At Audrey’s house, she is leaving to meet her uncle and her father questions her. Her brother, Nathaniel, walks in and reveals that father is worried mainly because she had caught a disease in her younger years. She is dressed nicely because it is her 17th birthday but she has simpler clothes in the carriage. He allows her to leave but does not want her to do any work with her uncle and would blame Nathaniel and leaves himself. Audrey asks to have lunch with him, Nathaniel does know that she will be working with their uncle and is worried about her since she is a woman but  Audrey argues against it. Nathaniel is worried how their paranoid father will react to her working with Uncle.  In her uncle’s laboratory, she is labeling specimens while her uncle works on the victim(Mary Ann Nichols)’s body and Thomas makes notes. She joins and takes a look at the victim’s body. Uncle is dissecting the body and finishes after making observations. He asks Aurey if she recognizes the body and Uncle reveals that the victim worked in Audrey’s house when she was ill. They determine the killer must have had medical training and that the killer hit the victim and took her somewhere else. They make more observations about the body and Audrey hates that Thomas makes better observations than her. The paper refers to the killer as the “Leather Apron.” Thomas makes good observations and Audrey makes a joke that maybe he is the killer and that he needs investigating. He claims that the killer is not done.

The Leather Apron is in the news and people are afraid including Audrey’s father. Her father is particularly worried since she had scarlet fever and her mother died while nursing her. She decides she can not stand by and decides to do her own investigation and sneaks out.  She couldn’t take the carriage so she walked.  She is jumpy but sees and talks to no one. She makes it to the pub and goes in. She is nervous but was dragged back by Thomas. Thomas drags her out and tells her that her brother is there. Her brother is angry and explains that he is there with others to investigate on their own. He insists that Thomas takes her home.    

Audrey and her father are at home and her father thinks she is unwell and insists she go back to bed. Instead she makes an excuse to go out claiming that she will go shopping. When she gets to her uncle’s laboratory, she reads that there was another murder with body parts missing, hours after she had left. They discuss the victim (Annie Chapman) as they wait for Thomas. Audrey reveals that her father used to be a bit of an engineer, making clocks and things. After his wife died, her father blamed her uncle for not doing enough. Thomas enters and says that no one heard anything but there were some screws and gears near the body. They discuss theories, and Audrey thinks it was a revenge killing but the missing organs are a mystery. Thomas theorizes that he picks prostitutes because a lover or wife left him, and that the killer is entitled to what he wants because he literally paid for it.  Audrey then thinks the killer is trying to play god. Uncle thinks she is right and the killer is possibly associated with the church. They agree not to discuss their theories with anyone and a servant comes to tell them that Nathaniel is waiting upstairs for Audrey. 

Nathaniel was worried that something had happened to Audrey since learning about the victim. They start to argue and Nathaniel tells Audrey that their father was caught in an opium den.  He was found by a friend and their father would leave town for a bit. He agrees to let her stay but must be back at home for dinner and Aunt Amelia would come to help. Thomas makes some deductions about her and her family and she gets angry about it. He apologizes and explains his observations. She tries to make her own observations about him but fails. He insteads makes a flirtatious comment. She was reading her Uncle’s journal about a victim (Emma Elizabeth Smith) and noticed an entry that leads them to believe that this victim was the first victim of the killer. 

Audrey isn’t really eating and Nathaniel threatens to not let her go to Uncle’s unless she eats. She agrees but compromises to a snack before bed and leaves. She then sneaks into her father’s  office so that she can find some information about their former employee. She notices a key under a lamp and a new painting. She searches his desk and notices a lock made by him. She uses the key to open it. She found the file for Mary Ann but had only paper in it while a few other employees had several documents.  She also found a file for Emma Elizabeth Smith.

Audrey and Tomas are meeting for tea to talk about the case. He smokes and makes a flirtatious statement and Audrey tries to leave.  But Thomas followed after and he deduced that she was going on a train and also bought a ticket without knowing the destination. Audrey is again surprised and Thomas explains his observations. They take the train to an old employee, a former valet, who might know about Mary Ann. She gets nervous but Thomas reaffirms her and they finally arrive. A woman answers the door and says that the man is dying and she goes in to see him.

The man is dying from leprosy and looks almost dead. Audrey gives him some water and he remembers her. Audrey asks about Emma Elizabeth but he sees Thomas and asks if they are together. They deny it and she asks again but he doesn’t answer and she starts to leave. The woman from downstairs encourages him to answer Audrey. He then asks the woman for tea and reveals that Emma Elizabeth was a friend of Audrey’s mother and was close to her father and uncle. She asks why father had a file on her and he reveals that she was betrothed to  her uncle. He stops talking mid-sentence and shaking while walking about secrets within a wall. He mumbles some more but mentions a man named Alistair and dies soon after.

At a park, Audrey asks Nathaniel about Alistair and he remembers the man.  They have small talk and Audrey says she found the name in her father’s study. He explains Alistair was an old carriage driver that he played chess with but was fired after their mother’s death. He reveals he still sees him sometimes and that he is working on a ship.  He gets told that their aunt and cousin have arrived and he leaves early. As she is leaving, she randomly meets Thomas at the park with a dog. They go to the pier and find the ship. They talked to the captain and asked about Alistair. The captain is hesitant to answer and they make threats about customs and the ship’s cargo. The captain replies that he was making deliveries. 

They reached the back alley, and found some blood. Using the dog, they search for the man, they find him a few streets down and find him recently dead. Back at her house, she is in shock and Nathaniel is trying to comfort her. Nathaniel needs to leave and Audrey wants Thomas to come over to talk. He allows it only if the doors are open because of reputation. He starts to talk about Father but shuts up after. Their aunt Amelia replies that Father has been receiving callers to court Audrey. Audrey is surprised but thinks that maybe it might be Thomas. Amelia does not want her to stay and not work with Uncle. Nathaniel leaves and Amelia wants Audrey to bathe and  to work on her needle. 

Afterwards, Thomas has come over and says the police determined the killer used a gear. Thomas thinks that someone was spying on them and overheard them asking about Alistair. They flirt a little then go back to work investigating. Audrey wants to search her father’s study again but someone came knocking with a messenger about Uncle. The messenger says that Uncle has been arrested on suspicion of murder, and police were raiding his lab. Audrey and Thomas are shocked and rush to get to the lab. Once they arrive they talk to a policeman, Blackburn, who tells them he is sorry about it and he respects her uncle. He reveals he is a high ranking officer and escorts Audrey inside. 

Uncle’s laboratory is in disarray, and Blackburn mentions how Uncle’s experience, witnesses and other evidence worked against him. Audrey wants to speak with Uncle and knows that her father would not help and Nathaniel wouldn’t help due to father as well. Blackburn says that Uncle will be held at the Royal Hospital, which is horrific.  

Audrey is at home about to have her tea party with her cousin Liza. Liza realizes that Audrey is interested in a boy, and she tells her about Thomas. She thinks about her past and her mother’s background of being from India. Liza gives her a dress and they start the tea party.  At the party ladies are gossiping about her uncle’s arrest and Thomas. They talk about dresses and how boys would prefer beauty or brains and tell Audrey she should go see the circus.

Audrey wears a mostly black ensemble and says she is dressed in mourning of her uncle still in prison two weeks later. Nathaniel takes her to the circus to hopefully cheer her up.  Audrey is amazed at the circus and thinks of her childhood with her Indian grandmother since there was Indian food there. As they are watching the show, she is happy again but they are interrupted by Blackburn who needs to talk to Audrey about police business. 

Nathaniel is unhappy but lets Blackburn talk to Audrey. He reveals since there have been no more murders that he will be hanged 5 days later, and the trial will be not fair. Nathaniel has studied law and wants to speak to his mentor about the situation and asks Blackburn to see Audrey home. Blackburn then takes her to where Uncle is being held.  

The hospital is horrifying and Audrey is worried for her uncle. They get to her uncle’s cell but he is in poor conditions. He is mumbling and rocking back and forth. Audrey realizes that he has been drugged and Blackburn mentions that it is normal for the patients to be given drugs. Audrey tries to speak with her uncle but he is unable to respond. Blackburn assures her that he will not be given anymore so that he can communicate. They leave and she goes to Thomas’s palace.

She is dropped off a couple blocks away and watches from outside Thomas’ house.He comes outside but does not see her so she follows him. She follows him to the Necropolis Station which is where they would ferry the dead to the cemetery.   Another man approaches Thomas and they have a conservation that Audrey can not hear. They leave and Audrey debates on whether to follow. She decides to go, but then Thomas is suddenly behind her and surprises her.  He tries to figure out why she is there but she asks why he is there and he answers that he was getting an unclaimed corpse for his own personal study. They go back to his place to study the body together. Inside she sees a picture of a young woman assuming it is Thomas’s girlfriend, to which Thomas corrects her as his sister and that he loves only her. He deduces that she went to see her uncle and they discuss the possible drug he could have been given. Audrey thinks if there is another murder than her uncle would be set free but it is not likely, and they study the body they have. 

Thomas, Blackburn and Audrey head to a news agency to see the editor. The editor has a letter that came in their mail from the killer that was signed Jack the Ripper. The editor wasn’t sure whether or not to print it. They check the envelope and Thomas has suspicions that Audrey wrote it, but she denies it. Outside he tells her that he smelled her scent on the letter. She gets angry that he accuses her of writing the letter and then accuses him of writing the letter. 

Audrey sees a group of people standing around Mitre Square. Two more victims had been killed, Blackburn lets Audrey inspect the scene. Audrey inspects the body and sees gears and bolts around the mutilated bodies. Audrey hopes that her uncle will be released and Blackburn agrees and thinks they should discuss it, however Audrey’s father shows up. He reveals that Blackburn asked to court Audrey. She gets mad that he was courting her and not wanting to actually help with her uncle. Father beckons her and takes her home. 

When they get back to their home, Father asks her about her studying with her uncle. He is furious and forbids her from continuing, and if she does, she will be kicked out. Father leaves and Audrey confronts Nathaniel about him telling on her.  He reveals how their uncle tried to save their mother by doing a transplant but failed. He claims that their uncle is continuing to have a successful transplant in secret by performing experiments. He also claims that Thomas’s mother was sick and seeked out their uncle but his mother died, and has been obsessed with finding a cure since. Audrey is confused on whether or not to think that Thomas is the killer. 

Audrey’s aunt and cousin leave as Audrey reads the paper with Jack the Ripper’s letter published. Her father comes and is upset Audrey is reading about Jack the Ripper and threatens her again. She argues back saying it is better to live in the streets than in cage. Back in her Uncle’s laboratory, Uncle and Thomas are trying to clean up the mess from the police. Audrey suggests they wait until the maids clean it and then she asks about Thomas’s mother. They claim they haven’t tried any kind of surgery in a year and it was a severed finger. Thomas had also not mentioned it since they were busy with the case and it was hard for him to talk about. She then asks Uncle about Emma Elizabeth who Uncle was once engaged to. He replied that she wanted her to stop studying science and he refused and thinks she could have been a victim. 

Thomas and Audrey go to one of the recent victim’s (Catherine) funeral to see if they can find out anything. They spot one man being suspicious and go to talk to him. He asks about her mother and speaks to an invisible person next to him. He talks about a locket that only she knows about which spooks her. He claims he is a medium who can communicate with the dead. He claimsCatherine spoke to him about Jack the Ripper and wants to have a conjuring with her, to which she agrees.  At his parlor, they sit at a table,he  positions their hands on the table and he claims Catherine is there and speaks to him. He says information that is true which Audrey is skeptical of. “Catherine” then says Audrey spoke with Jack and she was angry with him, which makes her think of Blackburn or Father. The medium then becomes agitated and warns Audrey that she should leave town because she is marked for death.  

Staying at her uncle’s, she suspects maybe her father since when he was away, there were no killings. Audrey and Thomas discuss the possibility of Father being Jack the Ripper when a footman tells them they are both needed at Scotland Yard to meet Uncle. They go and see a part of a kidney that was sent in a package to a man named Lusk, who is a friend of her brother.Jack sent a letter claiming that it was a kidney from the victim and that he ate the rest of it. They are discussing why the killer would eat one if he was using it for experiments. Uncle thinks that the killer wants a heart before he finishes. Audrey had told her uncle about her suspicions and he replied it was probably a coincidence. 

Audrey finds an old tattered dress that she plans on wearing to sneak around to follow her father. Thomas thinks it is dangerous so he decides to go with her, but Audrey thinks that if it is her Father that he won’t harm her. Thomas counters that if it isn’t her father, she would be in trouble and Thomas pretends to attack with a candle and kisses her cheek. He then helps her think of defensive tactics. On their walk, Thomas pretends to have a limp to act as if he is drunk. They walk around for a while then eventually give up. As they head back they are attacked by muggers who realized they dressed down. The man says Thomas took the body of someone he cared about. Audrey then slammed her heel into the attackers foot and Thomas lands a punch and they both run away. Audrey asks what the mugger was talking about but Thomas was so worried and they eventually kiss. He apologizes for the attack and the bodies for his personal study were not unclaimed as his person said it was. They walk on and see a carriage that belonged to her father. 

They see lights in a building and decide to wait. Later Her father comes out with a woman. Her father leaves then the woman talks to another woman then leaves as she sings a song. They follow her father’s carriage. The next morning, a woman was found cut to pieces, and Adurey believes it was the woman from the night before but she saw her father go home and waited for several hours to be on guard. Audrey paces and Thomas attempts to calm her down. Uncle then comes back covered in blood and others bring the body. The body is horribly cut up and parts were placed around the body. They examine the rest and find the heart is missing. Audrey plans to confront her father as Jack the Ripper and Uncle makes Thomas deliver some evidence to Blackburn. Thomas wants to go with her but she decides to do it on her own. 

Audrey is preparing herself to confront her father but a footman says he is not at home, and that he would not return until late. She tells him that she’ll wait in the study and the servants are not to bother her and to leave early. She goes to her father’s study and find the locket in the place the medium said it was.  It was in a book from Paradise Lost and “from hell” was underlined.  She looks at the painting in the room, notices the placard was dirty and rubs it. It moves and concealed a hidden passage with a curved staircase. She debates on whether or not to go down and notices the painting is of a man that her uncle and brother were named after. Afraid there was a victim inside, she goes in. When she reaches the bottom, there is a room filled with machines and smells of burnt flesh. It was a laboratory and various experiments of flesh and animals. She finds the missing heart being pumped by a steam engine, and a long wooden box containing her dead mother’s body. She screams and sees someone and feels relief.

Nathaniel has appeared and Audrey insists they leave before their father returns. He grabs her wrists and tosses her into a chair and thinks that Father has drugged him. He says that it was all him and she thinks he is abusing opiates. It finally dawns on her that it was him when he reveals the knife he used to kill. He thinks that he can bring his mother back from the dead like Frankenstein. He thinks the whores were a disease and were better off being used in his experiments. He puts their mother’s body on the table and Audrey asks how he knew about the room, he answers that he knew it from a map from an old summer house built by the man in the painting. He added extra opiates to Father’s drink so he could be sedated while Nathaniel worked. Nathaniel started to prepare and Audrey recalled that one of Nathaniel’s hobbies was learning about Father’s steam engineering work and medical studies. He puts the missing heart machine into their mother’s rib cage and needs some blood from Audrey with a syringe. He tries to convince her that this is for the best. She yells at him and he seems defeated but then stabs her with the syringe quoting Paradise Lost.

He throws her back into the chair and ties her up. He successfully draws blood in the syringe. Suddenly their father is there asking what has happened. Father sees their mother then demands Nathaniel untie Audrey which he reluctantly does. Father stares at his dead wife and says that he knows that he has failed as a parent. Audrey, seeing all the grief, realizes that she loves Thomas and starts to leave. Father questions her and she replies that she is leaving to lock Nathaniel in and to go to the police. Father knows that they will hang Nathaniel and she says she must do the right thing. Thomas then appears and deduced that Nathaniel was Jack the Ripper and explains his thought process, while Nathaniel moves towards his knife. Thomas says the police are on the way and suggests Nathaniel give up. She starts to leave but Nathaniel flips a switch and stabs their dead mother with the metal syringe which then electrocutes himself. Both Audrey and her father mourn Nathaniel’s death. 

Two weeks later, Audrey is still studying with her uncle dissecting a body. Her father had covered everything up and was distant. Thomas is in the corner reading Nathiel’s journals. They are interrupted by a maid saying Audrey’s father was waiting upstairs. She talks with Thomas who flirts and says that her father adores him and they should be betrothed soon.  She thinks that Father is there to take her away from science as it did Nathaniel to which she agrees to not disobey him again. He replies that he lived in fear after her mother died and thought he could keep her away from bad things. He then said that he talked with Uncle and he was sending her away and gives her an envelope.  She protests and promises to be good, and he replies that he is sending her to the forensic school located in Romania. He says that Thomas promised to keep an eye on her, saying that it was his idea. Audrey is in disbelief and is happy and Father apologizes for keeping her caged up.

My review- 3.5 /5 stars

I thought this story was more fantasy and thought the enemies to lovers was about the main character and Jack as a retelling of sorts. So I surprised that it was a retelling but as a crime story. I enjoyed the various photos from that time period that was interesting to see since it is based off of real events. I know the time period did not think highly of women but I feel like the theme of it showed up too much. I liked Audrey’s courage to do what she likes but I also felt she was a bit young but could be a time period thing. I did not personally like the relaationship with Thomas as his flirting seemed as a joke but then was actually sincere. There are more in this series but I personally do not care for this time period and will not continue the series later.