Audiobook Review: Lockwood and Co. (The Screaming Staircase AND The Whispering Skull)

After her career ends tragically, Lucy moves to London looking for a new beginning and a new job as a ghost hunter.  She manages to find a home at the small agency Lockwood and Co.  Her only co-workers are Lockwood himself and a boy named George.  Together they seek jobs to seek out and put to rest ghosts.

Set in a world where iron is sold for its ability to fend off ghosts and where only children and teens can detect ghosts, it's up to those with special senses to seek them out while most of the adults remain safely inside.  Ghost hunters' services are desperately needed, because the world has been faced with "The Problem" of ghosts emerging everywhere for several decades now.

Jonathan Stroud's Lockwood and Co. series is action packed and fun to read.  I stayed up late to finish reading The Screaming Staircase.  Though my excitement dwindled a little with The Whispering Skull, I will be on the lookout for the third book in the series (The Hollow Boy--due out in September of 2015!).

A new friend had recommended this series to me.  She's a children's librarian at at a local school.  I'll admit, part of my goal was to assess her judgement.  I downloaded The Screaming Staircase  on Audible.  At first, I struggled to get into it.  This can probably be blamed on my tendency to multitask more than the story itself.  I actually stopped listening for several days.  But, eventually, I decided it was worth a second chance and restarted the story from the beginning.  This time, the exchanges between Lockwood and Lucy as they battled a ghost caught my interest and I became more hooked as the story continued.   Suffice to say, my friend passed with flying colors and I'll be talking about more middle grade children's books with her.

My biggest issue with this series is the setting.  Not the location--London is perfect for some ghostly adventures.  The timing though.  Every time a television was mention I was taken out of the reading.  It felt like this book should have been set in the early 1900s, or at least before 1940.

As I was reading, I was vaguely reminded of Maureen Johnson's Shades of London series.  (Admittedly, the similarities pretty much end at ghosts + London.  But still, while waiting for the next book in one series, you can get hooked to another.  Story of my life.  Truth.)

Tasty Rating:  !!!. (3.5--four explanation points for The Screaming Staircase and three explanation points for The Whispering Skull)