Thoughts before reading:
I have low hopes for this, although it sounds like the kind of spooky story that would have intrigued me as a kid. This reminds me somehow of those "spooky/mystery" Dawson's Creek novels they came out with when the show was really popular.
The basics:
The Hatt family, old friends of the Kishis that we've never heard of before, own the old Stoneybrook lighthouse, and they're coming for a visit. Claudia overhears her parents arguing about it, in fact. Mary Anne remembers something bad happening there when she was young, but she never found out any details.
Claudia's parents then tell her and Janine that the Hatts are moving to Stoneybrook, and will be staying with them for awhile, but not many other details. They're a family of 5, so things are going to be pretty tight. Claudia and Janine will have to share a room, which both girls are firmly against. To make matters even worse, Janine has just had a fight with Jerry and is in a terrible mood.
When the Hatts arrive, Claudia's stunned to see their son, who she had known as "little Stevie", is now gorgeous. This cheers her up about the visit, even though Janine keeps flirting with him. (This is difficult for me to picture...)
Adjusting to the increased household is a bit rough though. The Kishi house becomes so crowded that the BSC ends up having one of their meetings in the bathroom via call forwarding. Janine's eating some of Claudia's junk food. A charred hat and some threatening messages begin to show up at the house too, obviously directed at the Hatts. The BSC girls decide to do some research at the library after these incidents begin, and they learn that the incident at the lighthouse was 9 years earlier, and involved a 16 year old boy drowning in the icy water right outside the structure. His name was Adrian Langley. Mr. Hatt found him, and from there he was taken to the hospital, where he died a few days later.
The girls decide to go talk to Mr. Langley, Adrian's father, who tells them he thinks Mr. Hatt shut his son inside the lighthouse on purpose, which prompted the boy to try jumping out to safety because he had severe claustrophobia. He also claims his family rightly owned the lighthouse, but Hatt cheated them out of it in court.
The BSC girls then go to look around the lighthouse and find a letter with a gargoyle drawn on it, just like the one that sits outside SHS. They learn that the high school students call it Fred, and a gang of kids years back was using it as a symbol.
Steve Hatt starts talking about having a party at the lighthouse, and someone sets it on fire to deter him. His dad tells him to go ahead and have it anyway, tired of being intimidated. (The fire turns out to be smoke bombs, a false alarm.)
At the party, an old classmate of Adrian's turns up, sneaking around suspiciously. He tries to sneak out without being seen, but gets tangled in some lights outside. When confronted, he admits to being the leader of the gargoyles back in the day. Adrian was trying to join the group, and his initiation was to spend the night in the lighthouse. He then got claustrophobic and tried to jump out, causing him to drown. Mr. Hatt's name is finally cleared.
Side plot: There's a comet called the Veehoff comet coming soon, that's only seen every 71 years. Everyone's talking about it, and Kristy plans a comet party for the BSC charges... who end up being very unimpressed by the comet.
Timeline:
It's somehow still the Christmas season.
Misc. thoughts:
*Ghostwritten by Peter Lerangis.
*Sorry for the terrible summary on this one, but I just couldn't even get into this enough to even take good notes. It was so boring, and silly, and didn't make much sense either. For instance, why would Mr. Hatt have locked Adrian inside the lighthouse on purpose? How did none of this information about the SHS group and the initiation come out before now?
*Janine and Jerry make up by the end.
*It was weird to see Claudia and Janine liking the same guy again, as they did in The Summer Before. I could see this being a problem when they were older, but by 13 and 16 it's a bit much that it's happened even once.
Books mentioned:
None
My rating:
2 stars. Very generic mystery: silly, ridiculous, yet still dull. They really should have ended this series by now...
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