Do you know what happens when a car that has crashed catches on fire? RL Stine apparently doesn’t. In the real world, a car that has caught on fire burns. In Hollywood and in Shadyside, however, every car is a Pinto. We’re back in familiar territory when the book opens with a first person narrative from a murderer. In this case, a murderer-to-be, as he’s planning rather than gloating. We then go to Deena Martinson and her friend Jade Smith. The two of them have […]
Didn’t I See That Twist in a Goosebumps Book Once?
I’m not completely clear on the timeline between these books. I’m not sure it’s worth trying to track, but I can’t help myself. This book doesn’t open with a narration from a murderer, either, so maybe I was wrong to expect it to be a standard for these books. This one is told in first person, but it hops back and forth between Mark and Cara. It’s shortly after the school year started, and Mark and Cara Burroughs are new students. As near as I […]
Bad Decisions: the Novel
Can I just say: anyone who goes camping at a place called ‘Fear Island’ deserves anything and everything that happens to them? This includes nothing, because I know if there were a Fear Island close enough while I was in high school, I probably would have tried to get someone to go camping there with me, and I probably would have been really disappointed when nothing at all happened. This being a novel, however, something did have to happen. The third Fear Street book departs […]
The Real Surprise Wasn’t the Party
The second Fear Street book opens with a prologue from the point of view of a murderer. In this case, our killer murdered Evan for the sake of a girl, and apparently murder was quite easy. A year later, we open with Meg Dalton riding her bike with her best friend, Shannon, and her boyfriend, Tony. Evan, murdered in the Fear Street woods because people can’t die in Shadyside unless they’re located somewhere that starts with ‘Fear,’ was Shannon’s brother and Tony’s best friend. Tony […]
The One That Started It All
Here it is: the book that started it all. We open with a first person prologue from the point of view of a murderer gloating over his or her victim: Anna. I have a feeling a lot of these books are going to open this way. In the Shadyside High cafeteria, we meet Corey Brooks, a young douchebag on the gymnastics team who, despite being touted as the star gymnast, proves to be more clumsy than the average realistically flawed YA heroine. He glimpses the […]