I am a huge fan of Jess Kidd's previous work, so was very excited to find her next title on NetGalley. Put simply, I loved it. It's full of strange, curious people, all intertwined in life in 19th century London. Kidd's trademark wit mixed with a bit of the bizarre propel the story of Bridie, who is trying to find a little girl who has gone missing. The girl is valuable though to medical collectors and circus men of the time for her appearance of being part water creature. Bridie's tragic past is interspersed with the current story, which gives a full picture of her as a character. Circus curiosities, myths of children who live in the water, primitive medical prodecures and specimens in jars abound, but so do deeply wrought characters, a whip smart plot and the sense that all creatures deserve respect and all humans could use a dose of humility. Oh, and did I mention the talking ghost? Fantastic book, all around!

This was an unusual choice for my reading. I normally do not read anything set in the Victorian period but after reading the blurb about Things in Jars I requested it. The descriptive portions of the novel were remarkably excellent. It is mostly set in the wrong side of London and the writing is amazing. At times I was convinced I could smell the scenes that were being described. Birdie Devine is an investigator in London. She came to England from Ireland as a street child and definitely grew up the hard way. She now says she is a widow and sometimes costumes herself as a man to go places a woman can’t readily go. She also drinks and smokes. This time she is looking for a missing little girl who is, to say the least, very unusual. Her companions in this adventure are her seven foot tall housemaid and the ghost of a former prizefighter whom only Birdie can see and hear. It was well done. Thanks to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for an ARC for an honest review.

Historical Fiction with a mystery, a missing child with odd looks and powers, taking place in the underbelly of Victorian London. 

Bridie Devine is a surprising and delightful character, along with her housemaid, Cora, who happens to be about 7 feet tall and was one of my favorite characters. 

In this London, there has been a kidnapping. And no one wants the police involved for reasons unknown at first. The child is supposedly the secret daughter of Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick. Her name is Christabel and to say she was a bit odd would be an understatement. 

Her unique appearance and abilities have attracted attention from some seriously unscrupulous fanatics of the unexplainable and odd. They have no qualms killing anyone in there way. So how is Bridie going to find and rescue this child? Along with Cora and a very lovely ghost with moving tattoos, and maybe an assist from her mysterious apothecary. 

The author has such a unique way of writing. I was hooked by the prologue! You would think that any historical fiction in Victorian London would be dour, but you would be wrong. Her style is so different and relatable, just when things are looking grave, boom! you're laughing.

Of course, underneath all of this danger, there is a very good look at what we consider human. Sometimes the monsters are the ones living in fine homes and not the ones under the water.

I hope we see more of this particular character!

Well Done!

NetGalley/ February 4th, 2020 by Atria Books

When I finished this book a few weeks ago I remember thinking it was a 4.5 star book for me. But I cannot for the life of me remember what I was docking the half star for anymore (maybe for the villain being a tad underdeveloped and the ending a bit rushed?) so I'm just going with the five for the written review.

This is a very cool, quirky book. It certainly won't be for everyone, but it worked for me. I LOVED the cast of characters. Bridie was a fascinating lead character with a great back story. The fact that her Scooby gang of people helping her solve a mystery included a ghost (with whom Bridie was kind of in love) and a seven foot tall woman she rescued from the circus made for a really engaging, colorful tale.

I really liked that the book didn't lean hard on its fantastical elements. There is no magic in this version of Victorian London--just a quest to find a mermaid-esque girl, in which our hero is aided by a ghost. Either you're down with those things being part of the reality of this world or you're not.

While there is color, whimsy and humor in this book, it is not a light frivolous read. Bridie is on a serious quest and she has to search through the underbelly of London, deal with some unsavory (sociopathic) characters, and sift through some dark memories from her traumatic past to get some answers. This is where I think the writing really shines, because the book deftly shifts between these differing tones without losing momentum.

Thanks to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars. I love Dickens and this is a neo-Dickensian novel, filled with seedy, stinky streets, unusual larger-than-life characters, a heroic lady-detective to root for and dreadful villains to hate. I wanted to like it so much more than I did. For me, the story and characters sagged under the weight of the endless descriptions. Thus, the novel which would normally have taken me a few days to read, ended up taking a month.

★★★✰✰ 3 stars

Throughout Things in Jars Jess Kidd showcases her creativity. This novel imbues its mystery with an intriguing mixture of fantasy and science.
Kidd's main character is a tour de force. Bridie Devine is an experienced detective. Her strength, her resilience, and her sharp-wit, made her into an incredibly compelling character. Her relationship with Cora, her 'second in command' who is about 7ft tall, provided a lot of heart-warming scenes. Their interactions were funny and consolidated the depiction of her friendship.
At the start of the story, and coinciding with her new case, Bridie meets a former boxer Ruby Doyle...who happens to be a ghost. He claims that they knew each other, but Bridie doesn't seem to remember him. Together they try to find Christabel Berwick, a remarkable child who has been kidnapped. Bridie and Ruby's scenes were perhaps some of favourite moments in this novel. These two have a great (not strictly romantic) chemistry and I found their banter to be really entertaining.
The other characters were definitely...picturesque. They were not as interesting as Bridie or her friends and they often seemed either weird or creepy (a few manage to be both).
Kidd sets her intriguing story in London 1863. The city comes to life through layers and layers of vivid descriptions. Her London buzzes with a chaotic energy and at times it could be almost overwhelming there. The dialogues, dialects, and expressions all conveyed this historical period.
What stopped me from ever loving this novel—in spite of its many merits—is the writing style. The sprawling narrative jumps from character such as Bridie to a secondary character to an animal, such as a bird or a horse, to the objects of a room or the city itself. Everything seemed to become part of this narration, and at times I wished it would just settle down on Bridie. From the start of the novel there are chapters from the person who has taken Christabel and they sort of undermined Bridie's storyline, which should have been the focus of this story.
Often sequences would seemed clouded by this unrelentingly exuberant narration. Revelations where muddled, characters' actions or choices seemed to be revealed in a backwards sort of way, to the point where it seemed I had to re-read and decode a scene before grasping what had happened.
Each phrase or description seemed far too playful. Soon these funny description became repetitive and predictable. The humour was overwhelmingly there. Everything was meant to be amusing, which didn't quite work in favour of the most serious or dramatic scenes. The narrative was almost interactive...which I found irritating since it made the characters and their experiences in a bit of a joke. It just made some of themes less serious.
If you don't mind this sort of playful style (which uses the type of humour that a child might use: arse and farts jokes, comparing people to turkeys and crabs ) this might be book for you.

Things in Jars by Jess Kidd is a mystery based in Victorian era, circa Fall of 1863, with occasional flashbacks to the years 1841 and 1843 when the protagonist, Bridie Devine, was a child. In the present (c. 1863), Bridie is a thirty something year-old woman, who, due to his analytical skills and training as surgeon assistant, is a private investigator. Bridie is an odd bird—she is rumored to be rich but lives plainly, smokes a pipe with whimsical tobacco concoctions manufactured by a dear friend, and has no sense for fashion, but her analytical skills are unparalleled. She is also unmarried and happily so, though a good-looking ghost will make her question whether it is possible to blur the line between the living and the dead.

The case that Bridie Devine has been called to investigate is an odd one: a peculiar six-year-old girl, heir to a baronet with scientific leanings, has disappeared from her home, presumably kidnapped by the nurse in charge of caring for her. The child possesses certain powers...powers coveted in the black market. Before all is said and done, Bridie will comb through London’s underbelly in a race against time if she wants to find the child alive.

In Things in Jars, Jess Kidd effectively mixes the best and worse of London’s Victorian era with fiction, and adds a touch of folklore for good measure to create a unique mystery that traps the reader. Unfortunately, the mystery is the element that should have been underscored in the plot since it is the one with real possibilities, but the author chooses to go on tangents, making the mystery more of an afterthought.

The novel is labeled as genre-bending Victorian gothic, and I confess that is what appealed to me at first, but I didn’t “feel” the gothic atmosphere at all; I wanted to get a little spooked, and that didn’t happen, so if you are looking for that sort of mystery, this may not be for you. I liked the book just fine, but, to me, it felt like heavy reading; excessive descriptions that didn’t add to the overall plot led me down thinking rabbit holes so I kept zoning out, which is not that frequent when I read.

I know I am in the minority as so many readers have loved this novel, including readers whose tastes I trust implicitly because they mirror mine, so it is possible that it was the right book at the wrong time. Unfortunately, I followed a sensational read with this one and it paled in comparison.

Disclaimer: I received from the publisher a free e-book via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

Bridie is a female detective who helps out the London police when they have a difficult case. She has been called by a baronet in Victorian London to find out who kidnapped his daughter. She is supposed to possess certain powers, but the baronet will not elaborate nor is he very forthcoming in the details.

This was a very enjoyable book to read. I loved Bridie and her unusual friends. She has an over 7 ft. female housekeeper who is more friend than housekeeper as well as a ghost who has tattoos all over his body that move. This is part fantasy and part mystery. I loved the authors prose and fell in love with the characters mentioned.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read this delightful story.

In "Things in Jars," Jess Kidd uncorks a gritty Victorian gothic steampunk fairytale horror magical-realism thriller, starring a terrific new detective. Overwritten and way over the top, Kidd's prose is all over the place, turgid as the Thames in one paragraph and flip and coy the next. Plotting is fairly solid but suffers from a surfeit of villains. Time leaps are always tricky in novels of the fantastic in which the reader is suspending disbelief while keeping a large cast of characters straight, but Kidd manages the leaps fairly well.

Kidd's most irritating descriptive device is telling the reader to "look," which adds to the sense that Kidd is churning out words like notes from a calliope. Present: every last Victorian trope, including a street urchin named Jem, evil dissecting doctors, cannibalistic bakers, collectors of the macabre, and circus weirdos.

All this excess is compensated for by the protagonist, round Irish redhead and pipe-smoker Bridget "Bridie" Devine, investigator. Like Mrs. Muir, Bridie's love interest is a ghost, but not a sea captain, thank goodness. There is more than enough of the sea in the book, from the architecture to the "merrow" (a kind of monster-mermaid child) whose kidnapping kickstarts the plot. The lover-ghost is Ruby Doyle, late boxer, who is good at snappy dialogue but no good at finding out helpful information. Far more interesting is Cora, Bridie's 7-foot housemaid and ex-circus "giantess."

While the novel has some weaknesses, I'd be happy to see this grow into a series. However outrageous the conveyance, if Bridie is driving, we are going places.

So, I'm sniffing around Netgalley for something juicy to read, and I see a book called "Things in Jars." Who wouldn't want to know more? And although I'm usually not a fan of magic realism, author Jess Kidd may just convert me.

Bridie Devine is a little woman in a widow's cap and ugly bonnet who helps find people and things in 1860s London. She's hired to find an aristocrat's missing daughter Christabel, who has been kidnapped from the estate. Accompanied by the ghost of a boxer named Ruby whose many tattoos shiver and travel around his nearly-transparent self. Bridie does not know him and has no idea why he's tagging along. However,he is useful, since he can pass through walls and gather intel for her and, if necessary, her seven-foot-tall lightly bearded maid, Cora.

Jess Kidd takes us into Bridie's mottled past, including her connection to Valentine Rose, the police inspector who occasionally hires her and may have a thing for Bridie. Her connection to Ireland means that she has can comprehend the mysterious creatures that may come from there, including the sought-after Christabel, who she realizes may be other than human.

"Things in Jars" is frisky and bright, and Bridie and her cohorts are people you want to meet again. The end leaves the possibility of a sequel, and I'm all in if there is one.

Kidd writes like no one else, but the kind of delightful surprises this novel offers reminded me of Judith Merkle Riley's works. There! Lots of new authors to discover, my fellow greedy readers.

~~Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader

This is a tale full of imagination and creativity. It was a bit slow going in the beginning for me. It started to pick up about one quarter of the way in. The story takes place in England alternating back and forth between 1863 and 1843. The protagonist, Bridget Devine, was a poor child who taken off the streets and quickly learned to read and write. She was observant and had an uncanny ability to put these observations together to help her understand what others could not.

There is plenty of action, murder, conspiracy and general "skull duggery". The characters are diverse and well developed. The real question surrounding the story is can a myth be true?

I received an Advanced Reader's Copy from Atria Books through NetGalley. The opinions expressed are entirely my own.
#ThingsInJars #NetGalley

I gave up at 15% because I struggled to get into it and the way until then was confusing. There has to be some kind of an entry for the reader, and I missed it here.
Maybe it's unfair and wrong to say, and it's just me , therefore I won't publish this review outside Netgalley.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing a copy!

Honestly, it wasn’t bad. BUT it was really really hard to get into at first. I struggled to force my way through the first few chapters as I believe you should give a book that before deciding to finish it or not. However, once I got through a few chapters, it was much easier to read and I was able to finish it and enjoy it more than I thought I would. I would definitely try reading more books by this author after reading this one.

A dark and intriguing tale set mostly in Victorian London. A lady detective is given the task of finding an unusual child. A story with a little bit of a magical and supernatural twist and a very enjoyable read. My first Jess Kidd novel but it certainly won't be my last.

This is my first novel by Jess Kidd and it was a good one.
On Victorian London, we meet lady detective Bridie. Bridie is...... Very unconventional! She carries around a gun and smokes a pipe! She is consulted upon to find a missing child. A child who is said to have supernatural powers and looks very odd.
Throw in a ghost, Ruby, who joins Bridie in this and her servant, 7 foot tall Cora, who both provide a little comic relief.
I really enjoyed being thrust into this world. I enjoyed the many stories woven throughout. I liked getting to go back in years and getting to know Bridie and where she came from.

A lot of books claim to represent the Victorian era, but this is book actually earns the comparison. The spirit of the book feels very familiar to classic detective stories by Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, but with the added twist of putting the supernatural front and center. Bridie is a great lead, and Cora is an amazing sidekick (although I feel like there was so much more ground to cover with her, and I hope it's explored if there are further books with these characters).

A fantastically written story, with a great mystery, but the true high point of the book is its unique and intriguing cast of characters.

I was invited to read and review this book by Atria Publishing, and my copy of the book was gratefully received through Netgalley.

Loved this author's first two books. I didn't care for this Victorian crime/fantasy fiction overall. It had its bits of humour and creative original thinking as one would expect from Jess Kidd, but it also had time sequencing of events that sometimes "jarred" if I may be so bold. I would not wish to see a sequel following the career of the featured female detective.
The early years of Bridie were most interesting for me as the portrait of survival amidst more than harsh living conditions was movingly described as well as her tutelage by a doctor who saw her brilliant potential.
I would have preferred to meet Bridie as a youngster and then follow the story chronologically. The calendar of going back and forth in time frustrated this grumpy old reader leaving me impatient to know what the fate of the "mermaid" was to be.
I see the majority of readers loved the book, so that is a good thing. Maybe I will read it again later and feel differently.

Thank you to publisher through Net Galley for this review copy!

Wow Wow Wow.
The only plus-side of losing power in my California home for five days was that I had all the time in the world to read this book. But what a plus-side that was!

This is a DELIGHTFULLY Grimm-like story. It's tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich for the reader's soul. It is so full of delicious characters, from the tough yet good, to the most terrifyingly evil. There is a ghost - A GHOST! - who will cause your Grinchy heart to grow three sizes. There is one amazing red-haired pipe-smoking detective woman as the main character, and it's all set in filthy, murky, fog-filled Victorian London. No, there are no Grimm princesses in this story, but there are scary possible-mermaids, and scary children who are possible-mermaids with teeth who will attack you and steal your memories and swallow your soul and kill you. FUN, right??

It's all told with beautiful writing that my brain had apparently been ravenous for. I ate this book up. I consumed every grotesque description, every gleefully unrepentant villain, every dirty street urchin. I loved being immersed in a London so engulfed in trouble it was soon to give birth to Jack the Ripper. And I adored Bridie, the flame haired heroine. Was there really a ghost? Were the mermaids real? The best stories feed your imagination so thoroughly that you make your own decisions. Jess Kidd's writing fills every character with huge personalities and I already miss them and am sad that at least a few will never be heard from again - even the evil ones!

So many thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. This book gets five FULL stars from me, and I urge every reader to get a copy and immerse yourself in this magical world.

Things in Jars by Jess Kidd
Book Review by Dawn Thomas

384 Pages
Publisher: Atria Books
Release Date: February 4, 2020

General Fiction (Adult), Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Ghosts, Mermaids

Bridget (Bridie) Devine is a sleuth and medical specialist in the 1860s in London. She loves to smoke pipes and has a 7-foot housemaid named Cora Butters. Dr. Harbin contacted Bridie to assist on a missing child case. The girl’s mother is dead, her father is distraught, and her nurse is missing. While searching for clues, Bridie comes across Ruby Doyle, a heavy weight boxer. He has a problem though; he is a ghost.

Because the life of a small girl is at stake, Bridie uses all resources to find her. Valentine Rose is the local detective inspector and her childhood friend offers suggestions and advice when asked. She even dresses as a man at times to gain access to a medical theatre to witness a surgical procedure by Dr. Gideon Eames.

The story is written in the third person point of view in the present tense. It takes place in 1863 with memories from 1837-1843. The characters are well developed and the story flows well. This was the first book I have read by this author, but it will not be the last.

I have truly enjoyed the two novels I have read of Jess Kidd. Both Himself and The Hoarder were fun to read stories. However, Things in Jars is just too far afield for my tastes. I really found little to like in it save the setting which was Victorian England.

I am all for ghosts and oddities and things that set one's head spinning, but this book seemed to have no sense to it. It was so far from reality that it was at times laughable. I know it has been compared to Neil Gaiman's story telling, but I saw little or no comparison.

I feel like once again traveling on that lonely outlier road, but honestly this story was appallingly silly.