The Quiet House

Another slightly disappointing sequel. I immensely enjoyed the first novel because it had a very classic ghost story mixed in with a very cute and fun new relationship between Blue and Levi. I think this story was just a bit too ambitious. It's very obviously based off of stories like “The Haunting” where a bunch of strangers are put into a very haunted house and the eccentric millionaire owner sets them through some tasks, that are then thwarted by the ghosts, to see who will be around (and alive) at the end. Morton also threw in some lore about very real The Hellfire Club. It got just a little too crowded with both too many characters and ghosts. I was glad for more Tom as he seems like a really fun old man but didn't understand the point of the addition of Declan, especially as Blue doesn't really get anything out of him and in the end he seemed like he was just cannon fodder anyway. A lot of these scenes could have been cut, like the Lady in the Lake, and replaced with more about the history of the Viscount's family and the house instead of just referring to different deaths. As many other reviewers have said, Blue and Levi also have a slightly different personality. I don't think Morton spent enough time developing them and maybe got them confused with different characters she's written or just didn't know what to do with them. Levi especially seemed like a completely different person from the first book and they didn't gel as well together.
Overall, I did like the story and found it entertaining but not as a sequel to a book I thoroughly enjoyed. If this was its own book with totally new characters, I would frankly have less of an issue.

I'm not always a fan of Lily Morton's contemporaries (being snarky is not sufficient character development for me), but I am quite enjoying this series that started with [b:The Mysterious and Amazing Blue Billings 48752448 The Mysterious and Amazing Blue Billings (Black and Blue #1) Lily Morton https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1573478187l/48752448.SY75.jpg 74054330]. Morton shines when she can develop more plot around her characters, and The Quiet House has plenty of paranormal thrills and chills. There's a little bit of TSTL behavior on the part of both our MCs (“that's okay, I'll just go running by myself on the grounds of this haunted mansion, what could possibly go wrong?”), but there are also many opportunities to strengthen their relationship and overcome their lingering self-doubts (Blue: I'm too weird/Levi: I'm too boring) as they work together to figure out the gruesome history behind said haunted mansion. Plus the secondary characters, notably Tom and Declan, add a lot to the story without being annoying and unnecessary sequel bait. Looking forward to more books in this series, as I suspect there are many more paranormal phenomena that Blue and Levi have yet to explore.