I received this book for free from the Author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Series: Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper #5
on October 2, 2015
Genres: Adult, Horror, Horror & Ghost Stories, Urban Fantasy
Pages: 220
Format: Paperback
Source: Author
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The luxurious Lathrop Grand Hotel is a Savannah institution that has entertained guests for more than a century and a half, offering some of the finest accommodations in the city. Famously haunted, the hotel draws tourists from around the world eager to encounter its numerous ghosts. The hotel is also known for being honeycombed with hidden doors and secret passages, enabling staff to appear and disappear quickly as they attend to the hotel's guests.
Now some of the spirits in the Lathrop Grand have turned violent, even murderous. Ellie and Stacey must determine which ghost has become dangerous and remove it from the hotel before it can claim any more lives. They soon learn the hotel has secrets even darker than the notorious string of nineteenth-century murders that made it famous, and the powerful entities inhabiting it don't intend to leave without a fight.
Picking up one of J.L. Bryan’s Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper books is sure to be packed full of chilling scares, a bit of historical research about a real place that’s purported to be haunted, great one liners, and smart decisions/ways for the characters to get to the bottom of the hauntings. The fifth installment that like the others can be read as a standalone, House of Whispers, has all that and more.
Just Trying To Keep the Status Quo…
Ellie is trying to continue on with the business’ investigations as usual, even though a larger company has tried to buy them out to expand into their market. While their ghost trapper business does okay money wise, they bill on a sliding scale with how much the client can afford, so they’re really looking forward to the big payday that this new investigation will bring in–but they aren’t prepared for what lies behind the walls of the most haunted hotel that Savannah offers.
The Hotel Holds So Many Lost Souls…
The Lathrop Grand Hotel has housed guests for over 150 years, but it’s also served as a Civil War hospital and a place to treat yellow fever victims. It’s most famous ghost is Stabby Abby, who’s said to have murdered quite a few wounded soldiers that she was supposed to be nursing back to health. It was also home to a curious rich widow and her hangers-on at the height of the spiritualists movement. Who knows what kind of dark rituals they might have performed on the fourth floor that now needs to be renovated so the current hotel owner can make more money, but workmen don’t last more than a few days up there due to the whispers, the missing tools, and the malevolent touches–if they make it out alive at all.
Ellie has to up her game…
I really love how Ellie and Stacey work so great together, especially since they are such opposites. Ellie is very serious and pragmatic while Stacey is much more bubbly and by-the-seat-of-her-pants with everything. They have a few new gadgets to use in this book, but Ellie really employs a great new tactic with such a wide variety of ghosts in this hotel in order to defeat the ultimate problem here, and I loved the turn this book took as it raced towards the end.
But Ellie and Stacey have more to worry about than the ghosts after a run-in with the people who want to buy their company and recruit them. After reading House of Whispers, I’m not sure what to think of the two representatives that we meet or about their business tactics. I guess I have to wait until book six to see more from them.
I give House of Whispers a 4.5 out of 5. This was a fantastic fifth installment in the excellent adult urban fantasy series. New ghosts, new ways to defeat them, and a new commercial hotel setting made for this fast paced novel to quickly become my favorite in the series. Ellie and company try to find their path in the busy and dangerous world of ghost hunting and trapping. I wished that Jacob, Michael, and Grant had bigger roles to play, but this book was pretty chocked full so I can see why they weren’t in there very much.
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