The Prom Queen

I’m not sure if this was the first Fear Street book I read or not. I do know that it was the first book I ever got to pick out brand new. I remember sitting on the floor in the bookstore (Walden Books in the mall in my grandparent’s town), looking through all the Fear Street books and trying to pick the right one. I don’t know if I was already familiar with Fear Street or if that was the moment I discovered it. I do know that instead of picking a book for a good reason, I totally judged by the cover. I know I picked this one because it featured a poofy pink dress and a skull. You couldn’t get more up my alley than that.

On rereading this one, I was surprised to discover how much of the plot I remembered. This one doesn’t start with a prologue or a peek into a killer’s mind. It’s another one in first person. The kids at Shadyside High are all worked up because a murdered girl from a neighboring town was found in the Fear Street Woods. This would have been a perfect occasion for the kids to swap stories about Fear Street, including callbacks to the previous books. That’s not RL Stine’s style, though.

The kids all move from gossiping about the murder to an assembly where the candidates for prom queen are announced. I have absolutely no memory of how the whole prom king and queen thing worked at my school or if there was an assembly with nominees or what. I barely even went to my prom and tended to skip out on assemblies, though, so I guess I’ll just have to assume it’s basically accurate in the book. In any case, we meet our prom queen nominees: Elizabeth McVey, our narrator, Simone Perry, the literal and figurative drama queen, Elana Potter, the popular girl, Dawn Rodgers, the hyper-competitive one, and Rachael West, the shy, poor one.

We soon learn that Simone has a chronically unfaithful boyfriend. She caught him at school that day flirting with one girl and catches him out with another while the potential prom queens are all having a celebratory pizza together (on an unrelated note, I sincerely hope that the kinds of girls who get nominated for prom queen get to go out and have pizza together to celebrate without counting fat or carbs or whatever. Sometimes life calls for pizza, y’know?).

Simone then misses rehearsal and when Elizabeth stops by her house to check on her, she finds a puddle of blood in the floor and sees a boy in the school’s colors running toward the woods with a person-sized bundle in his arms.  Shortly after, Dawn is attacked in a theater, then Rachael is murdered. Sandbags on the stage are sabotaged in another attempt on Dawn’s life, and by the time Elana is found dead on the stage after a fall from the catwalk, the remaining two prom queen candidates are sure someone is targeting them.

Because it’s a Fear Street book, the truth is actually so much dumber than that.

Also, Lisa Blume, now the student council president, makes an appearance in this book. How many summers have gone by since the first book? I stopped keeping track, but at this point she should at least be in college, and she might be able to legally drink. I think I’ve figured out what’s wrong in Shadyside–and it’s not Fear Street. The whole town is in a time warp. All of the students of Shadyside High are trapped there forever. They’ll never graduate. No wonder they’re all killing each other.

So, the carnage? Piling high and deep this time around.

Shadyside death count: 29. I’m not counting the girl whose body was found in the Fear Street Woods because she was from Waynesbridge. I haven’t counted other deaths from outside Shadyside, so same with this one. Still, Elizabeth found the puddle of blood in Simone’s room, was the last one to see Rachael alive, and found Elana’s body. That’s all rough for one girl.

Additional carnage: On a rainy night, Elizabeth thinks she hits a small child with her car. It turned out to be a raccoon, but RL Stine was sure to spare us no details. There’s also a graphic description of a girl’s broken leg after a sandbag lands an her, and another is stabbed in the chest, but survives. If this was my first Fear Street book, it was a hell of an introduction.

Spoiler-laden point at which this all could have been avoided: Someone should have taught Simone that if your boyfriend is constantly cheating on you, the problem is not with the girls he’s cheating with. I’ll agree with her that going out with your friend’s boyfriend is tacky as hell, but it’s not really worth faking your own death so you can murder your competition at leisure and blame it on the serial killer from the next town over. Additionally, two different girls go out with her boyfriend within the first three chapters, but she only went after the prom queens, so her plan seems extra-flawed.

The Knife

Full disclosure: this is the first of the Fear Street books so far that I know for sure I read as a kid. I clearly remembered the cover and one particularly gruesome scene, but I completely forgot the whole plot.

This one opens with a prologue, but we’re with a victim fleeing for her life instead of with the killer stalking her. This particular trick–opening with a scene from the climax of the story–irritates the crap out of me. It may be possible to do it in such a way that it doesn’t ruin the entire book that follows, but it always destroys at least some of the tension, even if there’s always a twist.

Laurie Masters is working for the summer at Shadyside Hospital, where she immediately sets out getting on the wrong side of one of the older nurses. There’s also construction going on at the hospital–building the new Franklin Fear Wing. Apparently the Fear family is still around and still super loaded, which explains why no one in Shadyside has yet managed to get the troublesome street renamed.

While working in the children’s ward, Laurie is drawn to a little boy whose room is barren of flowers, toys, balloons, or other gifts. Laurie is one of the most genuinely decent kids featured in these books so far, and she sets about rounding up something to cheer up the kid. She manages to find him as he’s being checked out suspiciously early in the morning. She manages to hand him a teddy bear, and just before being dragged away, the little boy confides that the woman taking him isn’t his mother.

This doesn’t rule out her being a step-mother or something, but Laurie isn’t the kind to let things slide. Of course, because this is a teen thriller, there’s a cute, mysterious new guy. Never mind that Laurie is already dating someone else who happens to be the stepson of the hospital administrator. The new guy starts acting suspicious and Laurie keeps getting herself in trouble over the little boy until she walks into the unfinished Franklin Fear Wing and finds the body of the troublesome nurse.

Laurie gets more points from me for summoning hospital security and the police. Of course, now that someone finally called them, there’s no body for them to find. The nurse in question doesn’t show up for work, but she had a vacation conveniently scheduled. SHe does turn up–dead in her car after an apparent accident.

Laurie sticks with it, and with the little boy, whose home is located on Fear Street. This isn’t a Fear Street book that features ghosts or teen hijinks as imagined by an adult man. In some ways, it’s the most disturbing of the assorted goings on in Shadyside, though just how deeply unsettling passed me by as a kid.

So, the carnage? The body count wasn’t high, but we’re still getting really gruesome views of the gore.

Shadyside death count: 27. Including one nurse murdered by way of scalpel plunged into her throat. Her body was discovered by our main character, though her death wasn’t personally witnessed, so I suppose there’s been worse. Then her body was disposed of by way of a faked car accident.

Additional carnage: No dead animals this time around. It’s always a bit of a relief.

Spoiler-laden point at which this all could have been avoided: I’m going to give Laurie a pass here. Since she insisted on snooping around and wouldn’t let anything stop her, she broke up a ring responsible for kidnapping and selling children. She managed to expose the hospital administrator who was behind it, and not only rescue the kid she wanted to save, but the kid’s twin brother, along with the missing sister of the mystery boy. All in all, not bad work.

The Secret Bedroom

This is, I think, exactly what I expect out of a Fear Street book.

Or maybe a Goosebumps book, since they seem to have a lot in common in this case.

Lea and her family have just moved to Shadyside. Her parents bought a house on Fear Street, despite the fact that the attic contains a boarded up room that’s been closed off for the last hundred years because there was a murder committed inside it. That right there? That’s the Fear Street I know and love.

Lea’s not thrilled with the house, and she’s not really tearing it up at her new school, either, where she’s only made one friend. At two weeks in, she’s ahead of where I was after a couple of moves, but I still feel her pain. She finally got everyone’s attention when she tripped in the lunch room and and spilled chili on a popular girl’s white sweater. That’s…not really the kind of thing that usually goes over well, so I still feel for her. While Marci, popular redhead with a bad attitude, is off trying to wash chili out of a white sweater, Marci’s boyfriend Don introduces himself and asks Lea out.

I know that teenagers are terrible and all, but wouldn’t that still sound like a terrible idea? I’m pretty sure you aren’t required to accept every date request, especially when the guy issuing the request is currently dating. But Lea’s new, lacking both friends and sense, so she accepts.

Her only friend, by the way, is Deena, who we met back during The Wrong Number. I’m pretty sure she runs into either Lisa or Corey, too. This book was published three years after the first, and it’s clear that several school years have gone by since the original book, so I’m not sure why they’re all still at Shadyside High.

Don shockingly does not appear for their date. Lea locates his phone number and calls only to discover he’s not home. Unable to let it alone, she tracks down Marci’s phone number and calls her to ask if he’s there, because…really? And Marci cracks up because she’d put Don up to asking her out and it’s just unbelievable she fell for it. Really? Has anything like that ever happened anywhere but in a book or movie? Either way, we’ve now established that Don and Marci are both asses and Lea’s a little dumb.

Don finds her to apologize, then Marci follows to apologize, tell her she forced Don to apologize, and invite her to a sorority meeting after school on a floor that doesn’t exist. Lea starts showing a little brains when she figures out on the spot that the floor doesn’t exist, but Marci’s still thrilled with herself.

Since Lea doesn’t know what’s good for her, she can’t let go of the secret room in the attic, either. She’s sure she can hear someone moving around up there, so she makes her way up into the attic to check it out. She’s treated to a waterfall of blood over the door, which is really the kind of sign that you should get out of there already. To her credit, she does just that, then she calls the police. I know I’ve been begging the characters in these books to call the police, but really?

On Lea’s next trip to the attic (because of course she goes back into the attic), the door greets her with shooting metal spikes. Don happens to call while she’s busy freaking out about the door, and when he asks if she wants to meet at the local pizza place she accepts. Really? And then she heads straight there, where she meets Don and Marci, because why in the world wouldn’t that be another set up?

There’s a lot of verbiage put into how evil Marci is and how poor Don is just wrapped around her finger and it’s obvious he’s just such a nice guy, but you know what nice guys don’t do? Repeatedly set someone up for humiliation.

Because Lea’s not too good at learning her lessons, she heads up to the attic again, and finally meets a ghost girl who eventually introduces herself as Catharine. Catharine claims her parents hid her up in the attic for her entire life before eventually killing her. Lea decides the perfect chance to get back at Marci is to use Catharine to play Carrie. There’s no way that plan could go badly.

In order to get to Marci’s house, Catharine has to possess Lea. Once there, after enough demonstrations of telekinetic powers, Marci makes a break for her bedroom, and Catharine gives her a shove over the railing. Marci falls and dies right in front of her mother and Lea. Though she’s unhappy with Catharine, Lea wastes absolutely no time feeling any guilt about Marci’s death. She was kind of a bitch anyway, right? She and Della should probably hang out. They can go on a murder spree together.

In a twist I absolutely did not in any way see coming, it turns out that Catharine isn’t very trustworthy at all. Also, Don starts calling Lea because he really is terrible. I’d say she can do better, but as of her guilt-free murder, I’m not so sure.

So, the carnage?

Shadyside death count: 23. Maybe 26. Marci’s death by ghost, Catharine, and her parents. I’ve counted deaths in the past before, so I’ll go with 26.

Additional carnage: No dead animals, which was refreshing.

Spoiler-laden point at which this all could have been avoided: Not buying a house on Fear Street? I’m not gonna lie, though. If I had a chance to have an address on a street with a name as ridiculous as Fear Street, I wouldn’t pass it up. A boarded up room in the attic that was the scene of a murder a hundred years ago would just be extra incentive. Since the dangerous room in the house was apparently Lea’s bedroom instead of the attic, and since Lea was hallucinating all of the attic scenes, I’m going to have to just go with this: using a ghost to get revenge on a bully is a bad plan. Maybe it wouldn’t have been possible to avoid being possessed, but I’m pretty sure Marci didn’t have to die.

Lights Out

Lights Out opens in familiar territory–we get a narration from a killer, this time in the form of a letter addressed to Chief. Then it immediately yanks us away from Shadyside to Camp Nightwing. Yup, like Ski Weekend, we’ve got another book that’s only related to Fear Street in that the main character lives there. There’s a practical joker who no one thinks is funny because of course there is, and he lampshades Friday the 13th pretty quickly.

How many Shadyside High students have lived on Fear Street so far? I should go back and count. It seems like a lot for a street that’s supposed to be filled with abandoned houses that everyone’s afraid of.

In any case, our heroine this time around does not immediately endear herself when the first thing she does it have a fit over a spider on her pillow. In a bunk at a camp. She also throws the pillow onto someone else’s bunk, spider and all, instead of either killing it or tossing it outside. She doesn’t like bugs or really anything about being outside, but she’s working at the camp to help out her uncle.

Her uncle purchased Camp Nightwing in his latest doomed business venture. I’m always curious about the kind of people with no business sense and terrible luck who somehow still manage to acquire the funds necessary for yet another bad idea. I’m not sure what kind of track record summer camps have as money makers, but a child died at the camp the previous year, so he’s desperate for counselors. You’d think he’d also be motivated to find experienced counselors, or at least someone who knows how to handle a spider. Apparently he’ll settle for his whiny niece.

Holly is ‘on a break’ from boys after breaking up with her boyfriend, which means all the boys in camp are immediately all over her. It turns out her former best friend, who hates her, is also a counselor at the camp, so everyone knows right off that their boss is also her uncle. The senior counselor Holly is partnered with is framed as a total bitch, but it seems more like a Devil Wears Prada (movie version) kind of situation with someone who just wants everyone to do their damned job already. Then it turns out that evil, bitchy Debra was the counselor on duty when the kid died, so maybe she’s got good reason to be a little touchy?

Holly doesn’t make a very good impression with Debra and likewise loses all of my good graces when a bat gets into the cabin and she tries to beat it to death with a canoe paddle, because Holly is kind of the worst. Luckily, Debra’s got shit handled.

Things start going wrong at the camp pretty quickly, starting with a big shelf in the arts and crafts cabin coming loose and falling on Holly’s uncle. Holly finds a red feather, and she finds another later affixed to a canoe that gets a hole punched in it. She tries to tell her uncle about her suspicions that someone is sabotaging his camp, but he’s got no time for her. Since she’s also got a problem with her senior counselor and one of the other counselors and she’s got an established history of being totally whiny, it’s hard to blame him, even if she’s right this time.

We get regular updates from our killer, who is planning revenge and really upset that Chief isn’t writing back. Since no one will listen to her, Holly takes it upon herself to get to the bottom of what’s going on, even though it doesn’t really endear her to anyone. She might not be my favorite, but she gets points for sticking with it. She gets more points when she walks in on the most gruesome scene in the series so far and handles herself better than she did with the spider or the bat. Debra’s necklace gets caught in a pottery wheel, dragging her down and grinding off her face. We, the readers, get all the grisly details, including mention of a battered feather in Debra’s necklace.

The police are summoned, and Holly gets more points when she actually shares her suspicion. The police, however, determine it was an accident. I bet the Shadyside PD would have listened. We’re not in Shadyside, however, because this is only a Fear Street book in name.

There’s a lot going on in this story, and unlike Ski Weekend, I enjoyed it well enough. Holly’s snooping gets her right in the middle of a forbidden affair, and there’s a particularly uncomfortable subplot with an absolute jerk who doesn’t take no for an answer and who treats Holly like crap for turning him down. He even teams up with Geri and someone else who doesn’t like Holly to chase her down and throw leeches on her. They completely get away with it, too, because Holly has figured out that everyone’s tired of her crap. I’d like to argue that hazing or bullying like that shouldn’t be tolerated, so she should have spoken up that time, but the reality is probably that her uncle was done hearing about it and wouldn’t have helped.

Even after all that, Holly’s still gullible enough to get up before everyone else and strike off alone in a canoe with another counselor, because who needs to think anything through? She does end up with the right to the biggest “told you so” in the series thus far.

So, the carnage?

Shadyside death count: Still 22. A child did die the year before the book opened, and this one does feature a truly gruesome death, but none of it happened in Shadyside.

Additional carnage: Surprisingly, none. You’d think this would be a prime location for some horribly slaughtered animals, but we’re spared.

Spoiler-laden point at which this all could have been avoided: I’m going to assume that Debra is a pretty capable counselor, and the death the previous year was one of those freak accidents that you really can’t properly prepare for or avoid. Our killer was the kid’s older brother, but Holly’s uncle didn’t realize because they had different last names. I’m really going to put this on the killer’s parents. Why would you send your kid to a camp where another of your kids just died?

I want to add that I appreciate that we’ve got a killer who ‘just snapped’ who isn’t a girl this time. It’s one of my least favorite tropes, but it’s nice to see it turned a different direction from the usual.

The Fire Game

After Ski Weekend, this book was mostly a refreshing return to form. We open in Shadyside High with some kids arguing in a library. If it had just opened with some narration from a killer, I’d feel right at home.

Jill, Andrea, and Diane are in the library avoiding studying when their friends Nick and Max arrive and manage to set a file folder on fire. Admittedly, that sounds like the kind of thing I’d have done in high school…if I somehow lost about 50 IQ points. Diane has an absolute fit over it (foreshadowing!) before things can go too far…at least until Andrea dropped the thing into a trashcan in a school library, which predictably does exactly what you would expect.

It turns out a benefit to setting the school’s library on fire is getting the afternoon off. They brag about their exploits when they meet Diane’s friend Gabe, who has just arrived from “the city.” Gabe is thoroughly unimpressed by Shadyside and absolutely doesn’t buy the legends about Fear Street. It’s hard to blame him there.

We’re repeatedly reassured that Gabe is a very dangerous kind of guy, but he’s really the kind of guy who eggs other people into committing arson without actually doing anything that might put him in any danger. He manages to talk Max into setting a fire in the boy’s restroom, which…didn’t the girl’s restroom just burn down? You’d think the school would be automatically suspicious of fires in the bathrooms by now. In any case, Max sets a fire and slips out just before…the bottles of cleaning chemicals by the trash can get too hot…and explode.

Seriously, that’s not how explosions work.

It turns out Gabe is also the kind of guy who will ask two best friends out on dates. Then he’ll show up for one of those dates with a guitar. I guess he was bound to show up sooner or later. He’ll also sit in the backseat of a car with one friend and make out with her while one he’s asked on a date is sitting in the front seat. A lovely date is interrupted when Gabe’s car catches on fire…and explodes.

Again, that’s not how explosions work. Please stop.

Not to say he didn’t have it coming on some level.

The game continues to escalate until an abandoned house on Fear Street burns down. Jill sees Nick and Max fleeing the scene, so she naturally believes they’re at fault when it turns out a homeless person died inside the house. At some point everyone suspects everyone else of all kinds of wrong-doing, but no one ever gets around to calling the police. Since all of them were involved in arson or covering up arson at some point, I guess that’s less surprising than usual.

So, the carnage? Simultaneously light and still pretty awful.

Shadyside death count: 22. That one happened off-camera, so to speak, but a homeless person burned alive while trying to sleep. That’s awful.

Additional carnage: A cat gets burned alive in an oven. It turns out to be just a dream, which is cheating, but I’m counting it anyway. Also, one girl is attacked while practicing gymnastics and ends up sending some time in the hospital over it. Also, there’s an attempt to burn a character alive.

Spoiler-laden point at which this all could have been avoided: I’m not sure it’s even a spoiler. Probably if Andrea knew how to make sure paper is no longer on fire, the Fire Game never would have launched. Also, not competing over a guy, most especially when your friend is clearly not totally ok with all this.

Although, to be fair, you don’t normally expect your friend to snap and start trying to cleanse people with fire because she was a victim of a serious fire who survived some terrible burns. Of course, no one would expect it because that’s not how mental illness works.

I’m not sure what I expect from a guy who doesn’t know how explosions work, either.

Ski Weekend

This is only a Fear Street book by the very thinnest of margins–three of the main characters are from Shadyside and one lives on Fear Street. Mentioning it briefly is as close as the entire story gets to the titular street. Since RL Stine also published Point Thrillers and other books, I’m not sure why this was a Fear Street book. Since all the Fear Street books before this one were published in 1989 and 1990, maybe it was a deadline thing.

In any case, I really struggled to get through this one. Ariel, Doug, and Shannon went on a ski weekend in Vermont and are trying to get home to Shadyside. The met Red in the ski lodge and promised to give him a ride home to a town on the way. What we learn about Shadyside is that it’s close enough to Vermont for a long weekend trip.

Doug is a reckless jerk and they all end up stranded in the snow not far from a ski lodge. They hike up through the snow where they’re taken in by Lou and Eva. Lou is a rude, violent, drunken asshole, Eva is super shy, everything is really shady, and the whole story was just so boring.

To be fair, I’m not sure if it was really that boring or if I was just irritated by the location.

No, the outrageously stupid plot didn’t help.

Lou actually assaults Eva at one point, and he goads Doug into a wrestling match, then shockingly turns out to be a sore loser and hurts Doug. Their car gets pushed off the road into a ravine, the phones stop working, and it keeps snowing. The three Shadyside teens spot a masked stranger outside, and Red claims he overheard Lou planning to rob all of them. They decide to steal Lou’s van and Doug ends up shooting the masked man.

I hope I’m not accidentally making this sound exciting. I usually read one of these books in a couple of hours on Friday evening or sometime on Saturday, but I took a whole week to struggle my way through this a bit at a time.

The carnage? Lou talked a bit about people he knew who died. There was the masked man, who turned out to be Eva’s brother and the rightful owner of the ski lodge. There’s an additional death during the climax.

Shadyside death count: Still 21. People died, but they were in Vermont, or at least not in Shadyside.

Additional carnage: Two mice are killed in traps and left to struggle and suffer for the reader’s supposed amusement. One is even described as having its innards oozing out. Snap traps are awful, but usually not quite that awful.

Spoiler-laden point at which this all could have been avoided: I’m going to set two points: the Shadyside kids could have not picked up a hitchhiker. They probably still would have been stranded in the blizzard, so it’s hard to tell if this worked out better for them in the end or not. Eva, Lou, and Red should have come up with a brighter idea than framing random teenagers from a distant ski lodge, because that seems unnecessarily complicated.

The Stepsister

There’s no killer to introduce us to this story, but we do get to learn about how much Emily hates her hair. And pretty much everything else about herself. She’s especially wound up at the moment because her new stepfather is bringing home her stepbrother and sister, who are going to be living with them. Emily’s older sister Nancy is keeping her own room to herself, their new step brother Rich is getting put into a closet, and Emily is going to share her room with Jessie in their house on Fear Street. There are enough students who live on Fear Street that you’d think people would be slightly less freaked out by it.

Rich is immediately characterized as a total weirdo for reading Stephen King books, and Jessie introduces herself by taking Emily’s bed, hating her dog, and ripping the head off her teddy bear. So…that’s a relationship off to a good start. Since Emily is dating the boy who just dumped her older sister, there’s not a lot of room for excellent sibling relationships in the family, anyway.

Things go downhill when Jessie deletes a paper Emily’s been working on for weeks, then someone puts peroxide in Emily’s shampoo, ruining the hair she already hates. She’s naturally positive Jessie’s behind it. When Emily comes home from a dance to discover someone has stabbed her dog to death in the kitchen, she naturally thinks it was Jessie.

I’m going to gloss over how absolutely horrible it would be to discover someone had murdered your dog because it’s making me tear up. I’m glad my dog is currently curled up right against me for easy cuddles. Emily’s mother and stepfather can’t seem to think of anything to tell her except that they’ll call animal control to pick up the body tomorrow, which…even if you don’t want to consider that someone under your roof was willing to take a knife to the dog, that’s not really something you should just shrug off. It’s violent and horrible and really not a good sign, especially when you add in the peroxide in the shampoo thing.

Hugh, the new stepfather, did actually manage to summon a little compassion when the dog was killed, but he’s terrible throughout. He picks on his son for reading and not being athletic and he’s a sexist asshole. The mother, who may or may not have ever gotten a first name, avoids any and all confrontation to the point of letting her new husband bully his son and refusing to discuss the possibility of a problem in their home.

By the time someone sets a trashcan on fire in a school bathroom with Emily locked inside, you’d think someone would take the whole thing seriously. That would require adults who give a damn. By the time Emily catches her boyfriend cheating on her (which, big surprise, considering he dumped one sister to go out with another), it’s clear the adults won’t be helping.

Hugh does hatch one genius idea. His new wife and stepdaughters used to go out camping all the time. The last time the family went camping together, they went to Fear Island, where Emily and her father went out on the lake. Their boat capsized and Emily’s father saved her before drowning himself. Obviously, the best thing to do for the family is to haul them halfway across the country to go camping. Hugh is seriously the worst. He even referred to his wife and daughters as his harem, which is awful on a special new level, so it’s not surprising that Emily doesn’t figure out exactly what’s going on until she’s been dumped in an open grave with a dislocated shoulder.

There’s a sequel, and I’m guessing everyone in this family continues to be the worst.

The carnage this time around was pretty awful.

Shadyside death count: 21. That one happens before the story and is told through flashback, but treading cold water waiting for your father to surface…that’s awful.

Additional carnage: One horribly murdered dog. Having pets in Shadyside is probably not a good idea. I can’t and won’t joke about that one because I really just want to hug my dog.

Spoiler-laden point at which this all could have been avoided: I’m blaming adults again. No matter who was behind it, bad things were happening in the house. Two girls had lost their father, and one had been right there with him when it happened. Maybe don’t just avoid talking about that? I feel especially bad for Jessie since she was innocently dragged into the whole thing and framed by one of her new sisters. Poor kid.

Halloween Party

Eight books in and the plots are already being recycled. 44 more books to go. Yay for me.

The similarities between The New Girl and Halloween Party are greater than having a male POV character. Lisa even makes an appearance. I’m pretty sure she should have graduated by now, but she’s also still dating Cory, so I don’t know what to do with her. There’s no use trying to keep a timeline going.

There’s no introductory narration from a murderer, but there is a new girl in school. So as not to tread too closely to existing territory, Terry already has a girlfriend, and they’ve been invited to a very exclusive party by the new girl who lives on Fear Street. In order to get to the party, they have to walk through the Fear Street Cemetery…which is admittedly something I’d totally arrange if possible. Is it too late to start planning a Fear Street themed Halloween party? Think anyone would play along?

Before Terry and his girlfriend Niki make it out of the cemetery, we head back in time two weeks. It’s not a murderer! It’s the main character in the future! Totally different!

In the past, we find out that the gorgeous new transfer student, Justine, has invited nine people to her party. Most of them aren’t really friends, some of them have significant others who aren’t invited and aren’t welcome at the party. One guest, Alex, is Terry’s former best friend and Niki’s ex-boyfriend, which…I mean, isn’t dating your best friend’s ex pretty universally bad form? Although if anything I remember from high school is accurate, that’s probably some pretty standard drama. Justine won’t bend on the guest list, not even when a couple of bullies, Bobby and Marty, get pretty pushy about wanting an invite. Some of the party guests start getting threatening notes, but it’s Shadyside, so it’s kind of surprising they don’t consider that a Tuesday.

When it’s finally party time, Terry and Niki head to the creepy mansion where Justine lives with her uncle. There’s gourmet food and pizza and Justine has planned a series of surprises for everyone. When Bobby and Marty break into the party by way of driving their motorcycles into the living room, where they threaten Justine’s uncle, Justine refuses to call the police. There’s a party to focus on! Luckily, Niki realizes this is suspicious as hell, and she’s not willing to let anything go.

Niki is, by far, the best character featured in any of these books. She’s smart, she’s unrepentantly nosy, she doesn’t put up with anyone’s shit, she’s brave, and she ultimately saves everyone’s asses. She’s also deaf and described as having ‘olive skin,’ which may or may not make her Shadyside’s only minority so far, and the only student or main character thus far with any kind of disability.

Really, no matter how much I want to roll my eyes at this book, it’s got everything I’d expect out of a Fear Street book.

So, the carnage? As grim as it gets so far.

Shadyside death count: 20. Two young parents in a car accident twenty-eight years ago and one student who barely made any appearances at all. He still marks only the second dead Shadyside high student so far, however, and another kid not only found him, but two of them ended up moving his body around. It’s a definite escalation in violence and a reminder you’re not safe by virtue of being a kid.

Additional carnage: No dead animals this time around. It’s a trend I don’t mind at all.

Spoiler-laden point at which this all could have been avoided: While the kids probably shouldn’t have gone to the party at all and definitely should have made themselves scarce when Justine refused to call the police…but I’ve really got to put the blame firmly on whatever idiots let a nearly 30-year-old enroll in high school and the family member who supported her in this plan.

Haunted

I think this book could be used to start discussions with girls and boys about unacceptable ways to be treated or to treat other people, because this is pretty much a novel-length exploration of how not to look out for your own safety.

We skip the prologue from a killer and go straight to Melissa Dryden waking up the house because there are tree limbs knocking on her window and she’s afraid of the Fear Street Prowler. Melissa is rich, lives on Fear Street, and is the same 16-17 as the other main characters through the series. It’s the end of summer, and considering the focus on that one street, you’d think she’d have been mentioned sooner. Especially since her best friend is Della, who didn’t actually kill anyone, but would probably be fine with it if she did. Della is still dating Pete, which might be one of the better dating decisions anyone in these books has made so far.

Despite the family being rich enough to have a live in housekeeper, there’s no air conditioning in Melissa’s room, or most of the house. I’m not sure where Shadyside is supposed to be located, but in the space of a week or so, it goes from ‘too hot to have the window closed while sleeping’ to ‘requiring a sweater to go out after dark.’ I think this book is meant to explore rich vs poor dynamics a bit, but it’s a really clumsy attempt.

Melissa is soon confronted by a ghost in her room. He introduces himself by trying to shove her out a window as revenge because she killed him, but as far as she knows Melissa’s never killed anyone. Considering the way she drives, that’s surprising. Also, it’s only a matter of time. To stop him from killing her, she promises to find out what really happened to him.

She and Della are unable to think of a single teenager who died in the last few years, which means everyone’s forgotten about Evan. He was a jerk anyway, but he got shot not too far from Melissa’s house, so you’d think someone would bring it up. A kid from the poor school on the other side of town remembers a guy who died in a diving accident, but it’s definitely not Melissa’s ghost.

Finally, she runs into her ghost outside of Shadyside’s dance club, Red Heat. Only he doesn’t remember her, he’s definitely alive, and he’s been drinking. He and his buddies unquestionably would have raped her in one of the most upsetting sequences in all of these books so far. This doesn’t stop Melissa from hunting him down and nearly being assaulted by him a few more times because girl has absolutely no stranger danger. She also starts nursing a crush on him–both the living guy and the ghost, because a guy who has tried to kill you or who has tried to rape you and has real problems taking no for an answer is real boyfriend material. Especially when he’s a time traveling ghost and you’ve got a boyfriend.

Considering how much time she spent during this book worrying about killing someone, she never did start paying attention while she was driving. She’s also up there with Della on making terrible decisions, which might explain why they’re such good friends.

So, the carnage? Simultaneously pretty light and also fairly traumatic.

Shadyside death count: 17. I’m including the kid who died in a diving accident.

Additional carnage: No dead animals this time around.

Spoiler-laden point at which this all could have been avoided: I’m not sure how that works with time traveling ghosts without causing some sort of paradox. Avoiding paradox may be asking too much of Fear Street books, however, especially since this probably would have been entirely avoided had the ghost never made an appearance. I guess that’s more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than a paradox, though. In any case, calling the police about the time the guys nearly assaulted her wouldn’t have been a bad move. Not continuing to hunt the guys down after that close call also wouldn’t be a terrible idea, especially after the guy you’re afraid of killing informs you that he knows where you live. Finally, not lying to your parents and spending the night alone with a prowler and a violent jerk out there ready to hunt you down would probably also be good.

The Sleepwalker

This is a Fear Street book that breaks the mold by not starting with a first person narration by a murderer and also doesn’t ever feature any menacing phone calls. There is a prologue featuring our main character sleepwalking, in case you weren’t sure why the book was called that. It’s also got cover art by an artist who may have read the book, or at least part of it.

(I’m going to pause to say I adore the covers on this series. The last book in the original run–and the last one I’ll be reading this year–was republished as the beginning of the new series, and I’m a little heartbroken that the copy I found has the new cover instead of the classic cover.)

Mayra Barnes is getting ready to start a summer job with Mrs. Cottler, who may or may not be a witch, but whose home may or may not be based on the home of a number of neopagans I’ve known (or may or may not be based on mine). She appears very young for her age, and her hair is still black instead of grey, which is suspicious because no one in Shadyside has heard of hair dye. She also has a black cat, a huge library, and lives on Fear Street. The job seems to mostly consist of making lunch, going on walks by Fear Lake, and reading out loud to Mrs. Cottler. I want that job.

Mayra lives with her mother, a nurse who previously had the privilege of having Mrs. Cottler as a patient who filed a complaint against her. Her parents divorced and her father disappeared, and I’d like to assume that’s because he’s been arrested on federal charges for being part of that cult from Missing. She also has a little sister who appears exactly twice and does nothing for the story or plot. She’s also recently broken up with Link, who’s a creepy stalker, in favor of Walker, who’s dating the girl with a reputation behind her back (who you know is trouble because she wears band t-shirts, spikes her hair, and has too much jewelry), Suki (who appeared in The Overnight. Of all the characters who’ve appeared in Shadyside so far, I think I’d be most interested in getting a story from her).

Even if he weren’t cheating on her, Walker would still be pretty awful. He constantly seems unhappy to be around Mayra, who is blissfully oblivious because she has even worse taste in boys than Lisa, who finally doesn’t appear in this book. I’ve given up on a Fear Street timeline, but I’m pretty sure Lisa and Corey should have graduated at the beginning of this summer. I also can’t tell if the boys in these books are the worst or if teenage boys in general are the worst. I was really only ever a teenager on technicality and didn’t get them back then, either.

Mayra’s sleepwalking starts shortly after she starts working for Mrs. Cottler, and she entertains the idea that her employer may be a witch or that her ex-boyfriend’s sister, who used to be a good friend of hers, might be one. She starts getting chased around by an angry man who also lives on Fear Street, and when her best friend borrows her mother’s car, she’s run off the road because there weren’t any menacing phone calls, so the inevitable high speed chase had to up the game a bit. Donna gets badly hurt–broken leg, broken arm, broken ribs. Mayra proves she not only has terrible taste in men, but is just the worst friend when she goes to visit and makes every one all about her and her sleepwalking. The narration even mentions how disappointed Donna is when Mayra spends a whole visit on her sleepwalking, then cuts it short.

She sleepwalking keeps escalating, taking her further and further from home, until she walks right out in to Fear Lake and almost drowns. Her mother sends her to talk to a psychiatrist, which seems like a good call, and at one point a police officer picks her up and brings her home. It really is a pity no one around Shadyside seems to want to let the cops do their jobs. They actually seem pretty good at it.

So, the carnage? As light as it’s ever been.

Shadyside death count: 15 total. This time, the death happened before the book opened and is only revealed at the very end.

Additional carnage: No dead animals this time around. Considering how badly Donna was hurt in the car accident, though, it deserves mention here.

Spoiler-laden point at which this all could have been avoided: I’m having a hard time pin-pointing an exact moment. In this case, Mayra really needs better taste in men. And to not get in cars she doesn’t recognize. This book does deserve credit for being one a little like The Surprise Party. The mistakes made were fairly understandable (except accusing everyone of being a witch), and even the consequences were somewhat realistic, up until the big plot device that lead to the sleepwalking. Unlike The Surprise Party, that plot device was kind of stupid, but this is still one of my favorites so far.