Lockwood and Co 2: The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud

Summary from Goodreads:

In the six months since Anthony, Lucy, and George survived a night in the most haunted house in England, Lockwood & Co. hasn't made much progress. Quill Kipps and his team of Fittes agents keep swooping in on Lockwood's investigations. Finally, in a fit of anger, Anthony challenges his rival to a contest: the next time the two agencies compete on a job, the losing side will have to admit defeat in the Times newspaper.

Things look up when a new client, Mr. Saunders, hires Lockwood & Co. to be present at the excavation of Edmund Bickerstaff, a Victorian doctor who reportedly tried to communicate with the dead. Saunders needs the coffin sealed with silver to prevent any supernatural trouble. All goes well-until George's curiosity attracts a horrible phantom.

Back home at Portland Row, Lockwood accuses George of making too many careless mistakes. Lucy is distracted by urgent whispers coming from the skull in the ghost jar. Then the team is summoned to DEPRAC headquarters. Kipps is there too, much to Lockwood's annoyance. Bickerstaff's coffin was raided and a strange glass object buried with the corpse has vanished. Inspector Barnes believes the relic to be highly dangerous, and he wants it found.

Review:

Nick and I had about 3 hours left of this audiobook when we got back to our home in MA…and we had to keep listening! So, we we’ve been listening some nights in our living room instead of watching Netflix. We just finished this sequel last night. Was book 2 as good as book 1? Not quite…But, will we keep going with the series? Absolutely! It ended with another cliffhanger, to start with. But also, we are so invested in these characters now.

We still have the same questions about the time period of the world this takes place in, but I feel like our questions might slowly get answered over time thought the 5 book series. Also, now we have more characters to like. This book involved a fancy dinner party heist, in which the characters snuck into a big, supernatural library and well, how could two librarians not be at the edge of their seats for this?

There also seemed to be more emphasis on supernatural artifacts (mirrors, jars, etc). So, it sounds like we might be headed into a direction where we learn more about how things came to be…Maybe. And I’d love to learn this! Again, the narrator was fantastic. I loved how she did the ghost in the jar. I loved getting to know Flow. I loved even the villains of the story.

Really this book made a very long car ride so much more enjoyable. The characters, the setting, the ghosts, and the suspense were on par with the best fantasy middle grade books out there. I give this one an 8/10. I can’t wait to see what happens next.