The Whitechapel Full Moon Society by Elizabeth DeLozier Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Gothic, historical fantasy, historical fiction, historical thriller
Pages: 368
Published by Dutton Books on August 25, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Set in Victorian London during Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror, this gripping, original novel is perfect for fans of V. E. Schwab, Dana Schwartz, and Sarah Penner.
When Caroline Foster arrives at the Whitechapel Full Moon Society in search of her missing brother, she finds a dilapidated façade belying an interior as opulent as any exclusive gentlemen’s club. In exchange for room and board, Caroline is hired as the Full Moon’s maid, where she is given three orders: don’t ask personal questions, stay out of the iron-barred room on the second floor, and remain in her bedroom from sunup to sundown on the full moon.
But when it is revealed that the previous maid was murdered—an early victim of Jack the Ripper—and her brother has left behind no answers, only more questions, Caroline begins to suspect her hosts might be hiding something. As more bodies turn up with a connection to the Society, Caroline fears she may have unwittingly stumbled into a bedtime story, the kind with monsters and curses, family secrets and ancient lore.
Tantalizing and pulsing, Elizabeth DeLozier’s sophomore novel gives an exciting alternative look into the infamous Jack the Ripper story with a major, supernatural twist.
My Review:
The story is Caroline Foster’s. She’s come to London to look for her brother Charlie. Caroline is a young, shy, sickly, country girl – albeit of the squirearchy – with no money, no prospects, no other family and no hope. Charlie’s all she’s got and he told her not to come. But she’s out of resources – literally and completely – and has no other options.
But Charlie is missing and Caroline needs a place to live and to use as a base for her search – and there’s no place better for that than as the maid of all work at Charlie’s last known address, the titular Whitechapel Full Moon Society.
Who or what the Whitechapel Full Moon Society is and does becomes part of the mystery that Caroline has to solve to find her brother. It’s not just that Charlie was a member of the Society, although he was, but that the Society itself is weird, its mission is murky and obscured, its members are a surprising – and unusual – polyglot of ages, races, religions and origins. They shouldn’t all fit together – nor should her brother have fit among them – but they do fit all the same.
The question is, “fit into what”, and why? Along with a side question of where the money comes from because in spite of the insalubrious location in Whitechapel, it’s clear to Caroline that there’s plenty of money in whatever is going on there and the secrets that everyone keeps so very close. Not to mention the practically medieval looking padlocked door that Caroline is never, ever allowed to enter.
Caroline is certain that the secrets IN the house are dangerous. The question she wrestles with is whether those secrets are more or less dangerous than the surrounding district. Whitechapel in 1888 was infamous in general, but Caroline arrived in the middle of Jack the Ripper’s killing spree. Literally in the middle, as the reason the maid’s job is available is that Caroline’s predecessor was the first of ‘Saucy Jack’s’ victims, Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols.
When Caroline discovers that the Chief of the Metropolitan Police is one of the Society’s members, and that he was drinking and carousing and sleeping the sleep of the thoroughly inebriated in one of the house’s guest rooms the night that yet another of the Ripper killings takes place, Caroline combines the secrets of the house with the weird rules she has to follow and the lies in the newspaper that cover up the Chief’s whereabouts during the latest murder, adds two and two together and gets a number that is definitely not four.
Leaving Caroline in yet more danger, with a second mystery to solve that puts her no closer to solving the first – but does put her right in the path of the most infamous serial killer the world had yet seen. With nowhere to turn except out into peril or back into the house where it’s been impatiently waiting for her all along.
Escape Rating B: I didn’t expect to love the author’s first book, Eleanore of Avignon, nearly as much as I did – but I absolutely did. It sucked me right in and kept me glued to the page, sometimes in spite of myself AND in spite of the fact that it was wrapped around the grimmest of subjects, The Black Death.
I expected to be just as captivated by The Whitechapel Full Moon Society – or perhaps more because its historical fantasy/paranormal blend is a bit more my jam. And I did like it, but I didn’t LOVE it the way I thought I would.
One of the things that did work – and that was reminiscent of Eleanore – is the way that the author manages to absorb the reader in the minutiae of the protagonist’s daily life. I didn’t think that life in service in the Victorian Era could be as fascinating as it turned out to be – without turning into the sheer grim drudgery of serving one’s supposed “betters” who expect one to be grateful that they are employed so they can “bow and scrape” from before sunup to well after sundown.
What didn’t work as well in this story is that there are two separate plots that crash into each other and tussle it out for dominance. And these are two great tastes that don’t necessarily go great together.
The first plot is the obvious one. The mystery of Charlie’s disappearance wrapped up in the mystery of whatever is being hidden at the Society. Along with Caroline’s certainty that those two mysteries are part and parcel of each other – that Charlie’s disappearance was either caused by one of the Society’s other members OR was related to the secrets that the Society keeps. Or both.
Which, as it turns out, it is but it also isn’t. (I’m being cryptic on purpose because it’s all part of the big reveal at the end.)
Then there’s the Jack the Ripper killings, and the mystery of Jack’s identity and motivations – however twisted. That part of the story has been done before, sometimes better and sometimes worse. (If you’re curious about this part, check out Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye, Anatomy of Evil by Will Thomas, and A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman which is a bit more relevant than one might initially expect.)
Obviously, the Jack the Ripper killings have inspired a lot of fiction as well as true crime. It’s a story that is so sensational, even today, that if it hadn’t actually happened it would break the willing suspension of disbelief that fiction needs to work. As the saying goes, “fiction has to be plausible, nonfiction just has to be TRUE.” ‘Saucy Jack’ was true and made whole vast swaths of fiction possible in his bloody wake.
The issue I have with The Whitechapel Full Moon Society, as a story, is that Jack was too big a figure to be, essentially, a side character and part of the atmosphere. The secrets being kept by the Society, the reasons for those secrets, the big secret that lay behind them, Caroline’s own secret connection to them and her hidden connection to the Society and its membership were MORE than enough to sustain the action and the mystery. The big, head-exploding reveal at the end would have been even more explosive without Jack tacked onto the story like a barnacle.
All of that to say that I still LIKED The Whitechapel Full Moon Society. I did enjoy Caroline’s story and the way that her world opened up when she stepped out of the cage that she was supposed to be stuck in – and especially when she owned her own power – even though it took her a while and a lot of “oh woe is me” to get there. The book had a slow start but a slam-bang finish and if you like dark, twisty, creepy, gothic Victorian-Era stories, it has a lot going for it. It just didn’t need Jack the Ripper on top.
Of course, your reading mileage may vary.
