SuitabookThe Hollow Boy
Jonathan Stroud
- Reading
- Read the earlier Lockwood & Co. books first if possible, since this instalment builds on previous mysteries and relationships. For a wary reader, pause after frightening scenes and discuss whether the humour changes their impact.
- Themes
- Belonging and changing relationships: Lucy sees Portland Row as increasingly like home, while Holly’s arrival unsettles the existing team and new loyalties develop. The story appears to treat belonging as valuable but unsettled: closeness grows alongside resentment, rivalry and uncertainty about newcomers.
- Courage and dangerous responsibility: The young investigators take on hauntings and a wider crisis, while Lucy repeatedly risks contact with ghosts despite warnings. The narrative presents courage as useful in confronting danger, but Lucy’s abilities also expose her to serious risk and difficult consequences.
- Human wrongdoing alongside supernatural threat: The investigators encounter ghosts and also uncover living people who knowingly expose others to a deadly haunting and keep the victims’ property. The book treats this strongly critically.
- Worth knowing
- Consider whether the reader enjoys frightening ghost stories involving death, threatening apparitions, bloody imagery, attacks and children facing danger. Interpersonal resentment and rivalry may also deserve attention for a sensitive reader.