The Pack – Claw and Order

Claw and Order, from Lisi Harrison's The Pack series, is a boarding school story for 10 year olds about four friends with animal powers and a beauty salon that lands them in BIG trouble.

What happens

At Charm House, every girl is an "animal-light". Sadie is a lion, with superhuman strength and hearing so sharp that rain sounds like bullets on a tin roof. Her pack mates are Lindsey the tiger, Taylor the chameleon (she can turn invisible) and Amy the snake, fangs and all.

It's the second Pack book, and the opening pages catch you up on the first.

The four of them have opened the Claw Spa in their dorm rooms. It's a huge hit. The only problem is that customers pay in chores and desserts, which is very much against the rules for a school club.

The hyena girls know. They run a comedy club, and at Family Day they tell the whole school in a string of lion jokes. ("I'm not lion.")

Suddenly Sadie is on probation. Her grades have slipped, her parents are furious and her mum is talking about taking her home. Who could blame her for wanting revenge on the hyenas?

Then her friends quietly join other clubs without telling her. Taylor is choreographing a dance troupe, Amy's started a tutoring club and Lindsey sneaks off to see a boy. It's a very real kind of hurt, the feeling that your friends have moved on while you weren't looking.

The puns are everywhere (a new hairdo is a "mane-over" and the teacher without powers gets called Professor Normal). Underneath the fun, Sadie is carrying a huge secret about Lindsey's family, and it's getting harder to keep.

There's a darker thread too. A research institute hunts girls like them and keeps them locked up for experiments, and the recap of the first book mentions a scary prank involving venom and scratches. There are crushes and a boyfriend as well, so it feels at the older end of the shelf.

If you've got a reader who loves a friendship group with plenty of drama and a bit of magic, this will go down very well.

What to read next

If they'd like another gang of four girls with powers who don't always agree, try Prophecy of Evil, where the Mysticons have to decode a prophecy about a dragon before their enemy does.