Thursday, August 28, 2014

Lockwood & Co., Book 2 The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud

Lockwood & Company are ghost hunters.  They protect people from bad ghosts by using tricks of their trade.  So it's real embarrassing when they get to where they are going to gather one in and the other team of investigators gets it first.  It makes Lockwood mad!

Disney-Hyperion and Net Galley allowed me to read this book for review (thank you).  It will be published September 16th.  If you haven't read the first book in this series, grab that one now so you'll be ready to move on with their new adventure.

I like Lockwood.  He's smart, good looking, and able to do things most of us couldn't.  He'd sacrifice himself to accomplish his goal or protect someone.  Lucy can hear ghosts.  She's also learning how to be a kick-ass ghost hunter and has a crush on Lockwood.  George is their technical side:  he researches old documents to find the ghosts they will send on their way.  He's also a bit of a fruit loop, which makes him fun to read about.  If that's not enough to interest you, they also have a talking skull.  The problem with the skull is that while he can be helpful, he also gets real excited when he thinks they might die!

Lockwood and the other boss have made a bet.  Whoever solves the next case first forces the other to put a new article in the paper about how the winner is the best of all.  Nothing like a challenge...

Mr. Saunders hires Lockwood & Co. to seal the casket of  Edmund Bickerstaff, a Victorian doctor who reportedly tried to communicate with the dead.  He's a powerful spirit and was messing in the wrong world while alive.  He wanted to see the other side and was using souls to give him the power to do so.  All is going well until George gets a bit too close trying to read the casket markings.  When he almost dies there, they should have realized this was a bit too big for just one group to control.

Throw in a magic mirror, a traitor in the project and a ghost free-for-all and you have a real situation that takes a lot of doing to conquer.  You won't be bored.  And at the end of the book, there's a door opened that I'm sure is going to segue into another book in the series.  I'm glad about that!

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