Looks can be deceiving. Sarah and Sylvia Price may resemble ordinary middle school students, but they're actually hideous monsters in disguise. Even worse, they're campaigning for student council, with a secret plan for abducting the entire seventh grade. The only ones brave enough to stop them are twelve-year-old Robert Arthur and his best friends: the school bully, the school ghost, and a very hungry two-headed rat...

The Slither Sisters is the second book in Charles Gilman's Tales from Lovecraft Middle School series.

The main story revolves around the election of a new school student council. Sarah and Sylvia Price are easily the lead favourites, but Robert has discovered that the Price twins are not who everyone thinks they are. The two have been replaced by monsters who are using the election to ensure that they can manipulate the school's pupils to their, as-yet-unknown, secret agenda.

Robert, with the help of an unlikely ally, in the form of one of the school's teachers who is also wise to the demonic plans of "The Master", sets about running his own campaign to win the election. But as no one really knows Robert, and he's not a very confident public speaker, the odds are stacked against the forces of good.

The book works as a standalone novel but, more importantly, for those that have read the first book (Professor Gargoyle) The Slither Sisters adds much to the universe that Gilman has created. We move a little closer to discovering what "The Master's" big plans are for the students of Lovecraft Middle School are and what happens to the pupils that have been kidnapped and replaced by shapeshifting demons. We also learn a little more about Karina, the school's ghost.

The book is aimed at the younger end of the teenage market and once again employs the novel idea of the inclusion of a lenticular cover which shows the Price twins as normal teenagers, but as you move the book they transforms into their demon selves. The image gives the appearance of depth too with some of the snakes they have as hair sticking out of the book.

Another interesting book which ends on a cliff-hanger that's sure to have teenagers eagerly awaiting the third book in the series (which is published in May 2013).

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Nick Smithson