Monday Memories is a weekly feature hosted by Miss Print and the Book Bandit. Just take a photo of a book from your personal library (or a library book that’s significant to you, etc.) and talk about why it matters. Is it your first ever signed book? The first book you reviewed on your blog? Whatever it is, write it up in a Monday Memories post and share it. Just please link back if you decide to join!
Today for Monday Memories I’m talking about The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud.
The Screaming Staircase is one of those books I wish I had read sooner (you’ll see why on Wednesday!).
I got this book as an ARC from BEA 2013. I already knew Jonathan Stroud’s work from his Bartimaeus trilogy which is a lot of fun and a book I recommend often. BUT having been burned rather spectacularly by the third book in that series, I was wary of starting a new Stroud series. I also just wasn’t sure it was for me though, in retrospect, I wonder why I thought that.
For whatever reason, the book kept moving lower and lower in my to read pile. ARCs started showing up at my then office to mock me. Still it sat unread. Until finally I began purging books and looking at what my friends had to say. After I saw that Cecelia had nothing but good things to say about this book, I knew I had to give it an honest chance because Cecelia is one of those bloggers who I not only trust but who has very similar reading tastes to my own.
Which brings us to this summer (late August in fact) when I finally read The Screaming Staircase. Suffice to say that I loved it. Not only did the book have everything I loved about the Bartimaeus books, plus it had a plucky girl narrator who is smart and witty. With ghosts! And hints of romance! While I think of this book as a middle grade (despite what cataloging at my place of employ might say) it also had everything my YA loving heart could want.
I’ve put off reading book two because I don’t want to be in a position where I am without a new Lockwood and Co. book to read. Really, I can’t recommend this highly enough. Go read it!
To join, click the Inlinkz frog below to link up. Then see what everyone else has to say :)
Miss Print 
I read this earlier this year for a review group at my library and I also loved it! I was wary at first because it’s not the kind of thing I usually enjoy reading, but just like you said – the narration was amazing and i loved the ghosts and hint of romance and the secondary characters. Looking forward to more in this series!
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Exactly. Perhaps it was a marketing fail that gave me pause, but I really love this one.
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I love ghosts! I’m going to add this to my wish list.
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