Julie Berry is an author who has written a few books that are on my TBR (it’s a never-ending list, haha), and her newest book If Looks Could Kill really caught my eye. Jack the Ripper against Medusa? I can say that’s a combination I’ve never seen.

Today I have an interview with Julie Berry about this book and I’ll tell you what it’s all about. A big thank you to Julie for taking time to answer my questions.

From Printz Honor–winning and New York Times bestselling author Julie Berry, a true-crime-nailbiter-turned-mythic-odyssey pitting Jack the Ripper against Medusa. A defiant love song to sisterhood, a survivors’ battle cry, and a romantic literary tour de force laced with humor.

It’s autumn 1888, and Jack the Ripper is on the run. As London police close in, he flees England for New York City seeking new victims. But a primal force of female vengeance has had enough. With serpents for hair and a fearsome gaze, an awakened Medusa is hunting for one Jack.

And other dangers lurk in Manhattan’s Bowery. Salvation Army volunteers Tabitha and Pearl discover that a girl they once helped has been forced to work in a local brothel. Tabitha’s an upstate city girl with a wry humor and a thirst for adventure, while farmgirl Pearl takes everything with stone-cold seriousness. Their brittle partnership is tested as they team up with an aspiring girl reporter and a handsome Irish bartender to mount a rescue effort, only to find their fates entwine with Medusa’s and Jack’s.

Interview

What inspired you to write If Looks Could Kill?

If Looks Could Kill is, in a nutshell, a myth-meets-true crime thriller that pits Medusa versus Jack the Ripper. Medusa was the germ of the idea for the novel. I’d written about Greek gods, and now I wanted to explore Greek monsters. I settled upon Medusa and began building a story around her, which ultimately brought me to Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the late Victorian era. While researching a book about the Bowery neighborhood of the Lower East Side, I came across a mention that Jack the Ripper may have lived there for a time. A credible suspect in the Jack the Ripper investigations left London, slipping bail after the last of the Canonical Five murders, and sailed to New York trailed by London detectives. I already knew that to write a Medusa story I needed to find a villain worthy of Medusa’s wrath, and my research served him up on a silver platter. 

I loved researching and writing this book, and I especially love the characters (well, with one notable exception – he’s pretty despicable). It was hard to say goodbye to them, but I’m excited that so many people will now get to meet them.

What has been the favorite part of your publishing journey so far?

The writing itself is my favorite part of being a published author. Of course, I also wrote before I was published, but publication does help create an ongoing sense of urgency and a clear rationale for continuing to write. I profoundly enjoy many other parts also, including presenting to students and meeting with booksellers and readers, but the writing itself remains this vocation’s principal reward.

If you were a character in If Looks Could Kill, what kind of character would you be?

Definitely not Jack the Ripper. 🙂 Of all the characters in this book, I think I bear the most resemblance to Tabitha Woodward, the main protagonist and principal narrator of the story’s events. She has a lot of energy and curiosity, paired with a curious mixture of self-confidence and self-doubt. Like me, Tabitha has a lot to say. Sometimes too much.

Describe If Looks Could Kill in five words or less.

Medusa versus Jack the Ripper. 

Also: 
Fierce, frightening, freeing, funny, & female.

What is your favorite quote from If Looks Could Kill?

“Who will plead for the worth of our bodies?”

Could you give us 5 random facts about If Looks Could Kill (think the story, writing, publishing, anything that comes to mind)?

1. I started writing my Medusa story set in ancient Greece during the age of gods and monsters, but decided to switch to the Victorian era upon a suggestion from my dear friend and bestselling YA author Nancy Werlin. She knows me well.
2. This book makes important twists to the Medusa myth to allow Medusas to be actual agents that can interact in the world: a Medusa is a way of being, not just one person’s name; there can be many Medusas at any given time; if a girl or woman has Medusa power, she can turn it on or off (ie, she can look like a Medusa when she wants to, and like her normal self when she wants to); and most importantly, a Medusa is free to modulate how she uses her power, whether to stun, to terrorize, or to turn one into stone. Put another way, she’s free to interpret “petrify” as she sees fit. But using this power murderously can backfire disastrously.
3. At the moment I settled upon writing about Francis J. Tumblety as my Ripper, I was, quite accidentally, introduced to an author a few towns away from me who was finishing up a book about Francis J. Tumblety and who shared with me a pre-publication manuscript of his research. Total serendipity.
4. I got to take a research trip to Greece with my husband while writing this book. It was my first time there, and I absolutely fell in love with all of it (and especially the feta cheese).
5. In a conversation over gigantic bowls of ramen, my editor coined the term that has come to represent this book and its message of female empowerment – that each of us has a potent force within. The term is, “Medusify.” Or, as I like to say it, “In the face of evil, #Medusify.”

About the Author

Julie Berry is the New York Times bestselling author of the 2020 NCTE Walden Award and SCBWI Golden Kite Award winner Lovely War, the 2017 Printz Honor and Los Angeles Times Book Prize–shortlisted The Passion of Dolssa, the Carnegie Medal– and Edgar Award–shortlisted All the Truth That’s in Me, the Odyssey Honor The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, and the Wishes and Wellingtons trilogy. Her picture books include The Night Frolic, Happy Right Now, and Cranky Right Now. Julie holds a BS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in communication and an MFA from Vermont College of the Fine Arts. Julie lives in western New York, where she owns Author’s Note, an independent bookstore.

 

I will say Medusa has always fascinated me, so I definitely have to read Julie’s take on this author very soon. If Looks Could Kill sounds like an amazing story! Have you read any books with Medusa as a main character? Let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.