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The Creeping Shadow, by Jonathan Stroud, was published in 2016 by Hyperion. It is the sequel to The Hollow Boy.

After leaving Lockwood & Co. four months ago, Lucy has become a freelance operative, hiring herself out to psychic investigation agencies that value her ever-improving skills in locating Sources and shutting down Visitors. Her new life of independence, complete with her own studio apartment, would be fine if it weren’t’ for having to work with incompetent agents and answer to meddling supervisors. And it does sometimes get lonely, even though she has the skull in the jar to annoy her with his leers and sarcastic jibes. One day Lucy receives a surprise visit from Lockwood, who tells her he needs a good listener for a tough assignment. Penelope Fittes, the leader of the giant Fittes Agency, wants them—and only them—to locate and remove the Source for the ghost of a legendary cannibal. Throughout this very dangerous undertaking, tensions remain high between Lucy and her former colleagues. What will it take to reunite the team?


I’ve enjoyed each book in the Lockwood & Co. series more and more, and I ate up The Creeping Shadow. Creepy ghosts (seriously, the cannibal one is the creepiest yet), intriguing developments, and cute awkwardness between Lucy and Lockwood led up to an ending that I can say I truly did not see coming—and took the series in a whole new direction for the grand finale fifth book.

I said it in The Hollow Boy and I’ll say it again here: adding Holly to the picture and making Lucy leave Lockwood & Co. was truly a good thing for the series, which felt a little stagnant to me after the second book. I was ambivalent about Lucy in the first two books, grew to like her in the third, and now am vehemently behind her in the fourth. And her camaraderie with the skull (who I’ve found annoying in the past) works, so that her going after it made complete sense character-wise.

The plot revelations in this book were good, too—and reminded me strongly of Stranger Things, as any book with other dimensions will now do—and although I knew who the villain would be based on what happened in the third book, I was not expecting the Big Reveal at the end—and it was a fantastic whammy of an ending, too.

The supernatural/horror genre really is not my cup of tea, so it’s a testament to just how good Stroud is that I’m enjoying Lockwood & Co., in all of its spooky element, so thoroughly. I can’t wait for what the last book will reveal for these characters that I’ve grown to love.

Recommended Age Range: 14+

Warnings: None.

Genre: Supernatural, Mystery, Young Adult (maybe mature Middle Grade if they can handle scary)

He was here! Why was he here? Excitement and incredulity kept smashing together, like waves colliding at a jetty. There was so much noise going on in my mind that the first priority—making small talk—was a bit of a problem.

“How’s business with Lockwood and Co.?” I asked over my shoulder. “I mean, I see you in the papers all the time. Not that I’m looking for you, obviously. I just see stuff. But you seem to be doing okay, as far as I can gather. When I think about it. Which is rare. Do you take sugar now?”

He was staring at the clutter on my floor, blank-eyed, as if lost in thought. “It’s only been a few months, Luce. I haven’t suddenly started taking sugar in my tea…” Then he brightened, nudging the ghost-jar with the side of his shoe. “Hey, how’s our friend here doing?”

“The skull? Oh, it helps me out from time to time. Hardly talk to it, really…” To my annoyance, I noticed a stirring in the substance that filled the jar, implying a sudden awakening of the ghost. That was the last thing I wanted right now.

You can buy this book here: http://amzn.to/2ffJ6ym





The Hollow Boy, by Jonathan Stroud, was published in 2015 by Hyperion. It is the sequel to The Whispering Skull. As a massive outbreak of supernatural Visitors baffles Scotland Yard and causes protests throughout London, team Lockwood & Co. continues to demonstrate its effectiveness in exterminating spirits. Anthony Lockwood is dashing, George insightful, and Lucy dynamic, while the skull in the jar utters sardonic advice from the sidelines. There is a new spirit of openness in the team now that Lockwood has shared some of his childhood secrets, and Lucy is feeling more and more as if her true home is at Portland Row. It comes as a great shock, then, when Lockwood and George introduce her to an annoyingly perky and hyper-efficient new assistant, Holly Munro. Meanwhile, there are reports of many new hauntings, including a house where bloody footprints are appearing and a department store full of strange sounds and shadowy figures. But ghosts seem to be the least of Lockwood & Co.’s concerns when assassins attack during a carnival in the center of the city. Can the team members get past their personal issues to save the day on all fronts, or will bad feelings attract yet more trouble?

I realized something while reading The Hollow Boy. I realized that Jonathan Stroud can write one heck of a good ghost story, and even though I don’t normally like ghost stories or anything horror-related at all, I couldn’t stop reading! The Hollow Boy was everything I’ve wanted out of Lockwood & Co. and more. A new dynamic shakes up the team, Lucy finally gets more dimensionality and acts more like a character and less like a narrator, and spooky, gripping scenes abound. And points for the double meaning of the title!

Things weren’t all perfect, alas. As interesting and spookily good as the book was, I thought there were one too many “ghost hunts.” I wondered almost 2/3rds of the way through the book when the “hollow boy” of the title would show up. Of course, once I realized the double meaning, I realized that he’d been there all along, but still—it felt slightly too drawn out even so.

Also, one of the complaints I had about The Whispering Skull was that I felt that Stroud made the villain too obvious. And in The Hollow Boy, even though there was no villain per se, beyond the ghostly ones, I felt that it was slightly too obvious who Stroud was setting up to be the Big Bad. Or maybe I’ve read too much and know a lot of plot twists. But I think I know who the villain of the next book will be, and that makes me a little sad because some of the surprise will be gone (if I’m right, of course).

Overall, I thought The Hollow Boy was mostly excellent, and definitely improved on some of the things I found stale and/or annoying about the first two books. While it was still fairly formulaic (the book starts in the middle of a ghost hunt, again, and there are several ghost hunt interludes before the big plot wraps up, again), I found the mystery of it intriguing and the ghost sections suitably creepy and spine-tingling. Also, I really want Lucy to become the commander of a ghost army and save London from Villain Guy, even though I know that in Stroud’s world, that would never happen because of how he’s built the world. But I can dream!




“Is it me,” I said slowly, “or is there something lying on that beam?”

It was the crossbeam almost directly overhead. Cobwebs hung down from it, merging with the shadows of the eaves. Above was a funny patch of darkness that might have been part of the beam, or part of an object resting directly on it. You couldn’t really see it from below, except for something poking out on one side that might have been hair.

We regarded it in silence.

“Ladder, George,” said Lockwood.

George went to get the ladder, pulling it upward through the hatch. “Those guys are still down there,” he reported. “Just standing around the chains. Looks like they’re waiting for something.”

We set the ladder against the beam.

“You want my advice?” In its jar, the ghost had stirred. “The worst thing you can do is go up and look. Just chuck a magnesium flare and run away.”

You can buy this book here: The Hollow Boy 


The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud, was published in 2013 by Hyperion. 

I don’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed that the fantastic humor of Stroud’s Bartimaeus series was lacking in The Screaming Staircase. There’s a bit of humor thrown in by George, and this book desperately needs humor because of the tension and overall scariness of the atmosphere, but what I was expecting—Bartimaeus-like humor, etc.—was not what I got. I suppose I should be pleased, since it shows that Stroud can write more than one style, but I’m also slightly disappointed–although I know it’s unfair of me to expect every book Stroud writes to be like Bartimaeus.

I really liked the characters, despite the fact that nothing they did particularly stood out to me and they were overall extremely generic. George’s humor, as mentioned above, was much needed, and I liked the dynamic between the three of them (even if it was predictable due to their character types). I think the “Intelligent, Often Closed-Mouth Protagonist With The Mysterious Past” is way overdone, but I couldn’t help but like Lockwood despite of it.

I did really like the mystery, even if, like the characters, it was predictable. I’m glad that Stroud connected the first part of the plot with the second (although I think the killer’s identity is too obvious), and I love both the atmosphere that he sets up (the Red Room was the creepiest thing) and the world overall. Lucy has a spectacular moment at the end when her thoughts and mine completely matched and she did exactly what I wanted her to do and it was awesome. I hope she gets more dimensionality to her in future books, because I can see her completely stealing the show from Lockwood.



Warnings: Ghosts and ghouls, scary situations and imagery.

With the nail of my middle finger, I tapped the side of the glass; at once the smoke awoke, rippling outward from the point of impact, becoming thicker, more granular as it did so. As it separated, it revealed the object in the jar: a human skull, brown and stained, clamped to the bottom of the glass.

The ripples of smoke contorted, twisted; they took on the horrid semblance of a face, with blankly rolling eyes and gaping mouth. For a moment the features were superimposed upon the skull beneath. I jerked back from the glass. The face devolved into streamlike ribbons of smoke that swirled about the cylinder and presently became still.

Overall Review:

The Screaming Staircase has characters and a plot that are a little too generic for me to really love it, but despite that I still like the characters and what Stroud did with the plot. I really liked the spooky, ghostly atmosphere, though, and the world that Stroud has created. I wish he had done a little bit more to make the characters stand out, however.

You can buy this here: The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co.) 

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