Book 42 The Screaming Staircase

 

Book 42 The Screaming Staircase

The Screaming Staircase, Lockwood & Co Book 1 by Jonathan Stroud fulfilled the category “Book with a Character with a Vision Impairment or Enhancement (a nod to 20/20 vision)” for the PopSugar 2020 Reading Challenge. Wow, that sentence was a mouthful.

The Screaming Staircase is a post-apocalyptic middle grade/young adult novel about a ghost invasion. They call it “The Problem.”  In this new world, something has awakened spirits who prey on humanity. Scary stuff, right? To make it worse, only children up to a certain age can see the spirits. Young teens with the sight work in teams with adult supervision to help combat the supernatural menace. But Lockwood and Co is different as Lucy Carlyle soon discovers.

Lucy is out of work. She left her position at another ghost hunting company due to circumstances beyond her control. People lost their lives, and she is wracked with guilt. Now the only place that will hire her is Lockwood, run by Anthony Lockwood, a teen himself. Lucy can’t imagine how he, along with George and she, can handle the job, and that’s before Sir John William Fairfax challenges them to rid his home of spooks.

Together, the three combine their powers of empathy touch, sharp sight, and supernatural hearing. They plan to spend the night in Combe Carey Hall, solve the mystery of the screaming staircase, and make the reputation of Lockwood and Co as the premier ghost hunting outfit in London. Will they survive?

I know that sounds like a book blurb, but man, this story deserves it. It’s got all the best haunted house tropes, horror traps, and young adult problems. They are a bunch of unsupervised kids working to save the town. Check—independent kiddos. The world (or maybe just England) is swallowed up in this Problem, where the ghosts roam the night, and no one can go outside, much less have a window open. Check—post-apocalypse setting. And the horrors are the worst around. None of the agencies are able to discover what happened in that house, much less calm the ghost and vanquish them. Check—uber haunted, and they are the chosen ones. It’s a perfect mix of horror and YA. The scares are real, the feelings of the characters are real, and the angst is real.

The book reminded me of A Series of Unfortunate Events. I enjoyed those tales of the three siblings against the world, fighting their way to survive, not just perils but the adults who caused them. The Screaming Staircase has those same elements, including some of the doom and gloom. And of course, as I read, I see the actors from both the TV series and the movie of ASOUE playing the roles (not to mention someone from Umbrella Academy playing Lockwood). The novel/series would make a wonderful Netflix project, especially with the themes of horror, YA, and unconventional humor.

I give The Screaming Staircase Lockwood & Co Book 1 by Jonathan Stroud Five Haunted Lockets.