Scarlet and Ivy 4 – The Lights Under the Lake

Sophie Cleverly's The Lights Under the Lake is a boarding-school mystery for 10 year olds that takes twins Scarlet and Ivy out of Rookwood School for a week, to a gloomy hotel beside a very deep lake.

What happens

This is the fourth Scarlet and Ivy book. Rookwood is trying hard to feel normal again after a terrible time, and the new headmistress has a plan to cheer everybody up. A school trip!

Scarlet is desperate to go. Ivy has a bad feeling about it (she's not keen on lakes, for reasons fans of the series will understand). Their stepmother Edith says no, of course, and hangs up on them. So the twins write to their aunts instead, and it works.

Their best friend Ariadne is coming, with her new camera and a suitcase that seems to be full of bricks. So is quiet Rose, who hardly ever speaks, when a prefect is thrown off the trip for forging her permission slip.

That makes the prefects furious, and they promise the girls they'd better watch their backs. Then a car follows the bus all the way there. Out on the dark water, near a tower, Ariadne sees lights where no lights should be. And the Shady Pines Hotel turns out to be more crumbling than grand.

The chapters take turns between the twins, so you get Scarlet's cheek and Ivy's worry side by side. Scarlet writes three names at the top of the sign-up sheet before anyone else gets near it. Ivy is the one wondering how they'll ever pay. They squabble like real sisters and stick together like glue.

It's an old-fashioned kind of school story, with porridge, detentions, midnight-feast sweets and teachers who bellow. There are shivers too, but it's more spooky than scary.

One thing to be aware of. So much happened in the earlier books that this one keeps mentioning it, and those mentions give away some big surprises. If your reader hasn't started the series, begin with The Lost Twin.

What to read next

And if they're already hooked on clever girls solving mysteries at strict schools, try A Girl Called Justice. Justice arrives at a boarding school on the Romney Marshes quite certain there's been a murder, and she's taking notes from the moment she gets out of the taxi.