Review: Tunnel of Bones

Tunnel of Bones 
Rating: 5/5 
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review! 

Trouble is haunting Cassidy Blake . . . even more than usual.

She (plus her ghost best friend, Jacob, of course) are in Paris, where Cass's parents are filming their TV show about the world's most haunted cities. Sure, it's fun eating croissants and seeing the Eiffel Tower, but there's true ghostly danger lurking beneath Paris, in the creepy underground Catacombs.

When Cass accidentally awakens a frighteningly strong spirit, she must rely on her still-growing skills as a ghosthunter -- and turn to friends both old and new to help her unravel a mystery. But time is running out, and the spirit is only growing stronger.

And if Cass fails, the force she's unleashed could haunt the city forever. 

I'm not going to lie to you all, I enjoyed this one even more than City of Ghosts. As much as I enjoyed City of Ghost's the long explanation about chips annoyed me and I was disappointed to see so few Scottish characters as well as so little of Lara, along with the other things Victoria was quite vague about, and while I enjoyed the book it had a few...niggles. 

When it comes to Tunnel of Bones, I was extra excited to read it after my visit to Paris last year and get to see Cass journey to places I'd seen and been and she even used the Metro which brought the whole experience flooding back to me! Of course, I didn't get to go in to the Catacombs so I enjoyed reading about them, and the urge to go back and visit what I didn't get to is even stronger than before.  

Unlike City of Ghosts, we actually had French characters in the form of Pauline, the camera crew and Adele who was a lot of fun as well, and there wasn't quite the faff with wording. The settings are once again vividly written, and like I said, it brought my whole trip flooding back and I enjoyed getting some historical tidbits and ghost stories to go with the locations. But we have such a different vibe and atmosphere than we did in the previous book set in Edinburgh, giving the two different cities very different feels which is obviously true to real life. Of course we dip in and out of history a time or two in equally as vivid and atmospheric moments as Cass delves in to the Veil, bringing that particular moment in time to life brilliantly. 

There's a nice pace as we're immediately in Paris from the start, then we get straight down to things with a trip in to the Veil before filming starts and we're exploring the well known spots of Paris...and being presented with this books mystery. This book is definitely a lot creepier than the first book, it's chilling and somewhat menacing, and the mystery we have in this one is a different breed than the previous book. We have to dig for information on the star ghost of this book, using what few clues we have which I really enjoyed, as sad as it was. 

While Cassidy has become a little stronger so has Jacob and he has...bursts that aren't quite like him. Lara's words are clearly weighing on him and perhaps hinting at the direction his character is going to take, it all felt a little foreboding. I think it's clear he's going to have an inner battle not to turn into the thing we see in this book, perhaps? But what I love about Jacob is that Cassidy has a tendency to just jump in and do things, and Jacob reigns her in whenever she wants to do something foolish, they make a good team. 

We get to expand and develop the ghost lore a bit more as we see a new type which I loved because I was so fascinated by it in the first book, we also get to delve into the characters a little bit more. I feel like Jacob has become more of a fleshed out character this book, and Cassidy has become a bit more sensible with her power, although I was disappointed that we didn't see more of Lara. 

Tunnel of Bones was nice and creepy at points, always atmospheric and slightly sad too in this case. Exploring a new city and seeing a new type of ghost to add to the ghost lore was interesting and it all wrapped up nicely with a little thread of mystery to presumably carry us over to the next book, where we're heading to New Orleans!