Jess Kidd is an auto-buy author for me. If she writes it, I must read it immediately.

Kidd describes Victorian London with witty aplomb; the sights, surely, but more so the stench and emanations of its denizens. There is so much stink in this book I could taste it, and I mean that in the most complimentary way. There are botched surgeries, festering skin infections, and delectable, if not a little bit hallucinogenic, pipe tobacco. I was often curled up reading this romantic phantasmagoria thinking, “Damn, I love this!” Also, bring a highlighter on this adventure. My vocabulary increased threefold.

The whole story is a mystery involving a kidnapping of an otherworldly, sinister child. The child looks like an angel, but on close inspection really looks more like a corpse. And don’t get too close – she’s likely to snatch at your fingers with her pointed teeth. Draped behind the plot is the backstory of our protagonist, red-headed Bridie Devine, and how she came to be one of the most skilled surgeon’s assistants cum detective. Her seven-foot-tall sidekick, Cora, is a force to be reckoned with as well.

There are inclinations of magical realism, as there are in all of Kidd’s books. Evil mermaids (“merrow”) who can drown people on dry land, curious grotesque specimens in jars, and a ghost with the most winsome personality and animated tattoos that you can’t help but fall in love with him. My favorite character was little precocious Myrtle and her one-eyed doll, Rosebud.

Things in Jars requires a keen reader, as Kidd can be subtle in revealing plot twists. This is not a book to be rushed through, and I think it’s best taken in large doses, not unlike a pipe full of Dr. Prudhoe’s Bronchial Balsam Blend, in order to follow the different characters and the nuanced relationships among all of them. The kidnapping and the motives behind it have very deep roots.

Highly recommend. I want to go back and start it all over again. I did not want to leave the world of Bridie Devine. Many thanks to Atria Books / Simon & Schuster for the advance copy in exchange for my review.

This is a very descriptive book that seems to have a lot going on. It’s full of interesting characters. I did think it was a little wordy at times. It was different. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the early copy

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest and fair review.

Set in Victoria London, the book introduces us to Bridie Devine, a pipe-smoking "detective" with a shadowy past. She's hired to find the kidnapped daughter of a landed gentleman. With the help of her unusually tall maid and the ghost of boxer Ruby Doyle, she uncovers more than she bargained for and comes face to face with some unfriendly faces from her own past.

Not as enjoyable as "Himself" in my opinion, but still a very good read. Kidd creates strong, independent female characters with substance. She expertly weaves the weird and wonderful into our world.

I have mixed feelings about this novel. It was a slow start for me and I had difficulty getting into the plot, but the setting in Victorian England was dark and mysterious and the main character had me intrigued. I enjoyed Bridie’s unique strength very much, and did not mind the supernatural/ fantasy elements. The overall mystery kept me turning each page. But that being said, the writing style was a bit cumbersome and I found myself becoming confused by the number of characters and jumps in timeline. A book that, to me, had a lot of potential felt like work to finish.

I just absolutely love Jess Kidd’s book that I literally accepted this book without reading the description! Man I was not disappointed! The way Jess mixes common storyline with this twisted and bizarre side just makes her books amazing and Things In Jars is no different. This book just wowed me! The storyline was flawless and the characters were all so amazing flawed. Must Read!!!

Things in Jars by Jess Kidd (4 Stars)

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Jess Kidd’s previous book, Himself, was a delight! Kidd has a unique writing style, very conversational while poetic at the same time, painting a picture for your mind. Himself was an unusual tale and this one was even stranger because, well, because there are things in jars and that infers strange things. Indeed, this book is strange, but in a weirdly good way. There are some squeamish parts to it because, well, because there are things in jars. The storyline has a dark undertone of gruesome strange things, fantasy, folklore and violence, yet it is a perfect blend of light and dark as there are also curious strange things, sleuthing, humor and love.

The setting is Victorian England, and female sleuth Bridie Devine is investigating the kidnapping of Christabel Berwick, a very peculiar child. So peculiar, in fact, that people seek to collect her. Bridie is on the hunt, along with her 7-foot tall maid and friend, a helpful pharmacist and a ghost from her past. Bridie is determined to find Christabel not only because it is what she does, but because she needs to reestablish her reputation after her last case ended badly. The timeline alternates between past and present, with a little more of Bridie’s past revealed each time. Kidd is adept at character development, both major and minor characters. You may not like them, but you certainly get to know them well.

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Jess Kidd is a gifted storyteller, and you will savor the story unfolding before you.

Somehow I failed to read Jess Kidd’s acclaimed novel, Himself, but I will remedy that as quickly as possible. I absolutely loved Kidd’s forthcoming book, Things in Jars. The plot is a perfectly delicious mix of Victorian murder mystery, a child kidnapping case, and a gothic ghostly love story. Mrs. Bridie Devine, private sleuth for hire, dons her famously ugly bonnet to search among London’s most violent characters for the recently stolen and apparently secret daughter of Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick. Missing six year old Christabel Berwick’s picture and description summon Birdie’s dark childhood memories of “The Winter Mermaid” kept in an anatomist’s glass jar, and set Bridie, along with her ghostly bodyguard, Ruby, and Bridie’s devoted seven-foot tall housemaid (the whiskered Cora) on the trail of the kidnappers. Bridie’s mission finds her in London’s darkest environs among a cast of shady surgeons, anatomists, and “collectors” bent on dissecting or promoting for profit those persons billed as freaks or wonders. There is a collision of violent, repressed childhood memories, grief, guilt, and lost love, and Bridie’s unrelenting passion to find Christabel Berwick. I want more Bridie Devine!

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. My review is my own.

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 for the "Winter Mermaid". The images of snails, scales and those "things in jars" were mesmerizing. I also learned about merrows, which both fascinated and terrified me!

A splash of magical realism, some wicked happenings and plenty of side characters to love/hate made this one quite a fantastical journey!

This is a beguiling and fascinating mystery, combining forensics and myth and the supernatural in ways that both sit uneasily with one another and complement each other perfectly. Bridie, trained to understand the causes of death, is tasked with searching for a missing child who is not entirely human. Accompanied by a ghost and the traumas of her own past, Bridie seeks out justice while grappling with the implications of her youth and those she knew. The language is beautiful and the plot is masterful; a gothic gem.

I wasn’t personally crazy about this author’s storytelling voice, but the story itself and the characters found within were more than enough to keep me hooked.

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