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 […]
Murder By Ghost
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 […]
Also Not A Fear Street Book
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 […]
Not How Explosions Work
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 […]