Mysterious and Creepy - The Whispering Skull

Premise: Lockwood and Co have a major case - a strange mirror has been stolen. Not just any mirror, but a haunted mirror owned by a Victorian doctor who tried to communicate with the dead. As bodies pile up, the team must find the mirror and fend off threats from all sides.

Title: The Whispering Skull
Author: Jonathan Stroud
Length: 448 pages
Genre: Mystery, Horror, Fantasy
Series or Stand Alone: Book 2 or 2 (so far) in the Lockwood & Co series
Content Appropriate For: Grades 6-8
Format: Digital ARC provided by Disney and NetGalley

Three adjectives that describe this book: dark, gripping, mysterious

I absolutely loved the first book in this series, The Screaming Staircase. See -

So I was both excited to re-enter the ghost-riddled world of Lockwood & Co., but also terribly nervous. What if The Whispering Skull suffered from Second-Book-Itis? So let's start off by saying that this book absolutely does not suffer from Second-Book-Itis.

It jumps right in with ghost-action and continues to build tension throughout the central mystery of who stole a deadly, haunted mirror spirals to include murder, black-market scheming, raids, and catacombs. Once again Jonathan Stroud has created a complete and compelling world.

Most interesting is that this time around he rounded out the central characters and made them somewhat untrustworthy - George was obsessed with an artifact and perhaps too-trusting of a new colleague, Lockwood ignored all the warning signs and was too focused on defeating a rival, and Lucy...

Lucy found herself directly under the influence of a ghost. This ghost, the title character, can only be heard by Lucy. It whispers rumors about her colleagues, sketchy leads for the investigation, and derisive sniggers. Although she tries not to listen, this ghost may have useful information after all...

4.5 stars