Scarlet and Ivy Series 6 Books Collection Set by Sophie Cleverly (The Lost Twin,The Whispers in the Walls,The Dance in the Dark,The Lights Under the Lake,The Curse in the Candlelight,The Last Secret)

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SC: After having a bit of a break due to the birth of my daughter, I am working on a new series which is due to start next year. It’s all a bit of a secret at the moment, but I hope it will appeal to my fans. Over the last few months, I have been working my way through the Scarlet and Ivy series by Sophie Cleverly. This middle-grade book series captured my imagination and is now entertaining my nine-year-old son as well. What Is Scarlet and Ivy? SC: I am definitely more like Ivy, I think. I am quite shy and bookish but have the occasional urge to have fun and go on adventures! But I have to say that Scarlet is my favorite twin to write as I sort of live vicariously through her. She isn’t afraid to stand up for herself and loves getting in all sorts of trouble.

GM: Which was your favorite twin to write and do you feel like you identify with one more than the other?SC: Definitely! After hearing about things like the Bechdel Test, I really liked the idea of a series where the focus is almost entirely on girls and women due to the all-girls school environment. I went to an all-girls school myself (though it wasn’t private or a boarding school), so it was very familiar to me. I wanted to showcase female voices with a wide range of differences. So Ivy now has to take on a great challenge. Scarlet and Ivy are like day and night, like chalk and cheese. But she has to remember all of her memories of Scarlet, otherwise she'll be in trouble. One day, she discovers a diary, Scarlet's, which tells her, bit by bit, the mysteries Ivy desperately wants to solve. Why did Scarlet die? Why did she obey Miss Fox? There’s a new girl at Rookwood. Ebony claims to be a witch and soon seems to have most of the students (and the teachers) under her spell. Scarlet and Ivy don’t believe in witchcraft but something weird is definitely going on, and it’s down to them to figure out what before their best friend gets dragged down with it all. Scarlet and Ivy is a middle-grade series of six books, the latest one (and last in the series) was released in January 2019. The books follow the adventures of Scarlet and Ivy Grey, thirteen-year-old twins who attend Rookwood School, an English boarding school in the 1930s. Throughout the books, we get to know the girls and their family, along with their friends, and the teachers at the school as they solve a series of mysteries. Other than book one, The Lost Twin, the books are told in chapters that alternate between the perspectives of the two girls.

The setting of an English all-girls boarding school also allows for a wide range of female voices to be heard. In fact, across the whole series, the number of male characters with speaking parts can almost be counted on one hand compared with the dozens of female characters—I’m pretty sure the series would actually fail a reverse Bechdel Test until the final installment. SC: Mostly my terrible jokes… I often have silly jokes that my editors don’t get and tell me to take out. (Sometimes I don’t listen!) But at least I keep myself amused when writing.Scarlet, Ivy, and their friends get to go on a week-long residential trip to a countryside hotel by the edge of a reservoir, but Rookwood’s mysteries are determined to follow them. The legends surrounding the town drowned beneath the reservoir seem to be coming true, and is there more to one of their friends than she is letting on? As for Rose’s character, she is quite different to the other girls—she is very shy, she struggles with speech and learning (often being selectively mute), and has a special interest in horses. Her differences wouldn’t be well understood in those days, but I wanted to show that she could be an important part of the group, too. I was able to get in touch with the author of Scarlet and Ivy, Sophie Cleverly, to ask her some questions about the series and her plans for the future.