Ghost Writers: The Haunting of Lake Lucy

Gr 4-6–Thirteen-year-old twins Jayce and Evie are vacationing at Lake Lucy. Jayce has been haunted by nightmares of the abandoned house next door and a ghost, possibly the lake’s namesake, who is said to have disappeared along with her rowboat years before. He writes a letter to the ghost and is stunned to receive a reply. This novel in verse has a languid feel that invokes lazy, sun-baked days at a lake. The slow pacing makes some of the horror scenes read as more procedural than scary. The twins come across as younger than 13: Evie carries around a three-foot-long stuffed lizard that was a gift from a crush, and Jayce’s fear of the dark and closed places stems from an incident when he was three. Race is not mentioned and character development is too fast to be believable, but the focus is on the ghost, overcoming fears, and helping others. Readers will be pulled in by dramatic scenes of the ghost displaying its anger, but the eventual reveal of the reason for the ghost’s wrath may be disappointing and doesn’t really account for the intensity of the rage. At times, characters who are related seem to have no prior knowledge of one another’s pasts, which leads to some unnecessary confusion.