The Name of the Star (Shades of London, #1)

by Maureen Johnson

[clementine]

I wanted to love this book, because I love Maureen Johnson as a human. She's funny, intelligent, kind of a weirdo, and I just think she's great. HOWEVER, I did not love The Name of the Star.

I liked the idea, even though I generally don't do anything supernatural. The basic plot was good, and it was paced well. I liked the Jack the Ripper 2.0 premise, and I felt like, while the plot wasn't brilliantly complex, it was laid out well.

The characters were generally likeable. I thought they were all fairly distinct and Johnson did a good job with them. There wasn't much character development, however, which I felt could have added to the depth of the story. The characters weren't super complex (some more than others), but it didn't really take away from the story since it's not really character driven. It would have been nice, but it's not a huge deal.

Some things were odd to me. First, all mentions of Alistair just stopped abruptly. I'm hoping he'll be a more important character later on in the series, because I liked him and I was hoping he'd play a bigger role and not just be there to be expository. Second, the whole romance with Jerome confused me. Jerome was one of the most poorly developed characters, and Rory never really explains her attraction to him, and the whole thing just seems to be thrown in because every YA book needs a romance, obviously. Third, the random POV changes with the seemingly unnecessary characters in the third person were just weird and threw me off.

What really bothered me was the writing style. There was so much telling and not enough showing. I appreciated Rory's somewhat sarcastic voice but I felt that the tone was a little too informal. This could have been a way better book if Johnson had concentrated on writing real descriptions (to make it more atmospheric) and SHOWING the action/feelings/surroundings.

I don't know, maybe I'm just outgrowing YA and becoming picky here. It's certainly possible. This is a solid piece of work and I'll probably continue with the series. It's not magnificent, but it also wasn't painful, and it was an enjoyable enough 4 hours of reading.