- Horror
- Crater Lake collection
- Ages 9–12
Crater Lake
Part of the collectionCrater Lake→A two-book gateway-horror thrill ride — creepy, funny and relentlessly paced, with the scares escalating from the first book to a scarier, cleverer sequel.
- Books2 / 2
- Arcs1
- Span2020–2021
- StatusComplete
The series
At a glance.
Jennifer Killick's Crater Lake duology takes an alien body-snatcher premise and runs it at full pelt: fall asleep and you wake up wrong, blank-eyed and taken over from the inside. The first book strands Lance and his friends at a remote residential centre; the second brings an evolved, cleverer version of the threat home to his own town, with one of the aliens wearing his mother's face. Killick keeps the humour and heart intact while steadily turning up the dread, so the fright escalates across the two books. Short chapters, cliffhanger pacing and a genuinely funny voice make it exceptionally reluctant-reader friendly, while the creepy imagery and peril place it firmly at the top of the middle-grade age band.
A two-book gateway-horror thrill ride — creepy, funny and relentlessly paced, with the scares escalating from the first book to a scarier, cleverer sequel.
Read Crater Lake before Crater Lake: Evolution — the sequel follows directly on from the first.
One arc
The shape of the series.
- INarrative arcBooks 1–2 · 2020–2021Moderate sensitivity
The alien invasion
Two connected books escalating an alien body-snatcher threat from a school trip to Lance's home town.
The two Crater Lake books form a single escalating story. In the first, Lance and his gang are trapped at a remote activity centre where the golden rule is not to fall asleep; in the second, set five months later, an evolved version of the enemy returns to his own town with the friendships now fractured and the stakes personal. The threat gets cleverer and the dread deeper across the pair, so publication order matters. Killick keeps the trademark wisecracking humour and warmth running underneath the horror, so the fear never tips into bleakness. Scary imagery and cartoon-adjacent violence keep it to the top of the age band and away from sensitive or bedtime readers.
Fit check
Right for your reader?
Where the series lands by age
- 1
- 3
- 5
- 7
- 9
- 11
- 13
- 15
- 17
- 19
- Best fit · 9–12
- Read aloud · 8–11
- Independent · 9–12
Reluctant-reader friendliness
Very high
Read-aloud quality
Strong
Adult crossover
Low
Grows with the reader
Designed to
Sensitivity envelope
Moderate overall, and consistent.
Content notes
- Scary imagery
- Violence
Where it sits
In conversation with other series.
About the author