The Ruin of Evangeline Jones by Julia Bennet

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The writing was superb and it flowed very well. It also painted the era and scene of the book in such a believable matter: I was very pleasantly surprised when photographs were mentioned, as they aren’t usually thought of in other Victorian novels!


However, the characters and storyline didn’t hold appeal for very long. At the start, the book was quite interesting, but then it tapered off into a merely ‘ok’.


The story is about Alex (the male MC) having a ‘hobby’ of exposing fraudsters, and he’s got Evie (the female MC) in his sights, for she is a medium and charlatan in his books.

Alex was an ok hero, and personally the most interesting between the two. However, I didn’t enjoy Evie much, I’m afraid.

She says that she doesn’t hurt anyone, but I do agree with Alex’s sentiments that it’s awful she plays on people’s emotions by performing her medium sessions where she apparently can speak with dead people. From the first chapter, she tells a poor couple who had lost their child that their son is now at peace and in a better place! In her mind, it was a good move to reassure the parents that their child went to Heaven or something, and I feel like she was thinking of herself as a good Samaritan. I begged to differ.

It left a bad taste in my mouth, and I didn’t like her from the very beginning…


Quite unfortunate as the book was very well made 🙂



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