The Creeping Shadow (Lockwood & Co., #4)

by Jonathan Stroud

[Nessa Luna]

Warning: This review has some minor spoilers for the previous book(s) in the series. If you haven’t read those, beware.

Back in 2018, I picked up a book called The Screaming Staircase, the first book in the Lockwood & Co series. I really enjoyed that book, but it took me another book to fall absolutely in love with this series. By the time I finished The Whispering Skull, I decided I needed to get my hands on the rest of the series. The Creeping Shadow is book four in this five-book series. In these books, we follow Lucy Carlysle, who joined the small ghost-hunting agency led by Anthony Lockwood. In book four, however, she’s alone – a freelance agent. But soon enough she’s swept up in another adventure with her previous colleagues.

Let me just start off by saying that I loved this book. I think it is my favourite so far, though of course, I haven’t finished the series yet. But this book made me realise how much I actually love this series and how much I care for these characters. Even Holly, who didn’t join the agency until the last book. I actually didn’t like her too much at first, though she did grow on me in the previous book already. By the time I finished this book, she was one of my favourite characters (who am I kidding, all four of the agents from Lockwood & Co are my favs).

This book had some twists and turns and I enjoyed every one of them. Especially near the end, I was sitting on the edge of my seat and I stayed up until way past my bedtime to finish it because I needed to know how it ended. (And what an ending it was…) I just love Jonathan’s writing style. While I feel like it was intended for the younger side of YA, I kept imagining the characters as being older than they really were – maybe that has to do with my age, maybe it has to do with the danger these characters are constantly in.

What I also love about these books is that there is hardly any romance in them at all. Though I do think or maybe hope something will happen between Lockwood & Lucy because COME ON GIVE THAT TO ME PLEASE. I hadn’t felt like this before, but thanks to this last book I really want them to end up together, please. As someone who’s asexual and a little bit aromantic, it’s refreshing to see a YA book that doesn’t revolve around romance (it’s not a bad thing, but I’m just tired of reading fantasy/sci-fi books that are secretly romance books with a fantasy or sci-fi blanket).

All in all, I really loved The Creeping Shadow and I’ve been constantly recommending it to people who want to read Paranormal books. If you love ghost stories, if you love Sherlock Holmes-type characters, if you want to read a book with little to no romance – read the Lockwood & Co series.