Tag Archives: R.L. Stine

Novel Review: Night Games by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“What the Hell was that!?” I said, as I read the final line of Night Games.

First published in 1996, Night Games is another one of those R.L. Stine books in which a group of otherwise law-abiding, wholesome American teenagers decide to live every teenager’s fantasy and have some fun by harassing one of their teachers.  (No, Lisa Marie, I loved all of my teachers!  Yeah, I hear you but I don’t believe you.)  Mr. Crowell seems like a nice enough guy but he’s constantly giving Lenny a hard time so all of Lenny’s friends decide that it’s time to play some “night games” with Mr. Crowell.  At first, this is limited to breaking into Mr. Crowell’s house at night and moving stuff around and stealing an item or two.  But then Mr, Crowell dies and our narrator, Diane, has to figure out if he was murdered by her ex-boyfriend or her current boyfriend.  At no point does it ever seem to occur to Diane that, in an ideal world, she wouldn’t have a history of dating boys who are capable of murder.

Anyway, the only special thing about this book is the final twist and I’m going to reveal it because, otherwise, this is going to be a short review.  So, consider this to be your SPOILER ALERT.  (I have to admit that every time I type the words “spoiler alert,” I lose a little respect for myself and even more respect for the people who demand that such warnings be used even for a book that is 26 years old.)  Anyway, it turns out that Lenny, despite his temper, is not the murderer.  Instead, the murderer is Spencer and Spencer …. well, Spencer’s a ghost.  He’s come back from the dead just to make Diane’s life difficult.  He starts to strangle Diane but Diane hugs him and apologizes to him for not being a better friend.  Spencer is conquered by love and his spirit is set free.  Yay!  All of Diane’s friends are happy but what they don’t realize is that Diane is now a ghost and now she’s plotting to get  revenge on all of them!

That’s actually not a bad ending.  Diane’s friends were really annoying so they deserve what’s coming to them.  Still, it’s interesting that Diane automatically became an evil ghost as opposed to a mournful ghost or a philosophical ghost or a confused ghost.  She died and she immediately embraced the dark side.  Agck!

Now, that’s scary!

Book Review: The Confession by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What would you do if your friend confessed to committing a murder?

That’s the dilemma that is at the heart of R.L. Stine’s 1996 YA horror novel, The Confession.

No one at Shadyside High likes Al.  He used to be kind of nice but, as of late, he’s been dressing in all black, drinking beer, and picking fights.  Plus, he’s got a really bad habit of blackmailing his friends.  Al is the type who will sell you the answers to a test and then threaten to tell everyone that you were cheating unless you keep him supplied with cash.  (Fortunately, my sister was a year ahead of me so I could just go through her old tests if I needed the answers in advance.)  Al is a real jerk and no one is that upset when he turns up dead and with a rollerblade stuffed in his mouth!

Who killed Al!?  Well, nerdy Sandy tells his friends that he did it.  At first, everyone’s okay with the idea of covering for Sandy because it’s not like Al was a nice guy and Sandy did promise not to kill anyone else.  But then Julie (who also discovered Al’s body) starts to have nightmares about Sandy and she finds it difficult to keep covering for him every time that she speaks to the police.  Julie also notices that Sandy has been acting a little bit differently since confessing to the murder.  Sandy seems to be a little bit more aggressive now, almost as if he might want to try to kill someone again….

AGCK!

Listen, if I was in Julie’s shoes …. well, I don’t know what I’d do.  On the one hand, I have always been against murder and violence in general.  On the other hand, Al was a real jerk and it was kind of obvious that he would have eventually ended up killing someone if someone hadn’t gotten to him first.  I would not want to be the person who sent a friend to death row.  So, in this case, R.L. Stine came up with a plot that actually made me think.  At the same time, he also added a last-minute twist that let almost all of the characters off the hook.  I guess that’s to be expected.  I mean, we’re talking R.L. Stine here, not Dostoevsky,  Still, I was a bit disappointed with the final few pages of the book.  Things worked out …. BUT AT WHAT COST?

Again, there was no cost.  This is R.L. Stine.  All the trauma in the world is worth it as long as you’re dating a cute guy and speaking in quips by the end of the book.  That, after all, is the appeal of Fear Street.

Book Review: The Face by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 1996 R.L. Stine novel, Martha is a popular high school student with a problem.

Ever since she was involved in a mysterious accident, she has had amnesia!  Her friends have been told not to tell her too much about what happened because it’s important that she remember it all on her own.  Her friends agree to not tell her about what happened and, if you know anything about teenagers, you know how good they are not gossiping and keeping secrets.  Martha’s recovery is in good hands!

Martha keeps having flashes of memory, all of which involve some sort of drama that occurred at a cabin between her and her friends.  And whenever Martha tries to calm her nerves by drawing, her hands instinctively draw a picture of a boy who she doesn’t even know, a teenager with a scar over his eyebrow!  (OH MY GOD, A SCAR!  That’s always bad news in any book written by R.L. Stine.  Personally, I think scars are sexy and mysterious.  In Stine’s books, they’re almost always a sign of anti-social behavior.)  Sometimes, Martha discovers that she’s drawn the boy’s face without even realizing that she was drawing at the time.  That’s weird.  Like, how would you not realize that you were drawing?

Anyway, I was really hoping that it would turn out that Martha had been given a hand transplant and her new hands belonged to a murderer or something and now Martha was sleepwalking and strangling people with her new murder hands!  But, to be honest, that’s more of a Christopher Pike type of thing than an R.L. Stine thing.  Instead, this is another R.L. Stine book where the lead character starts to get menacing phone calls and then eventually, she discovers that it’s because all of her friends are keeping secrets and cheating on each other.  There is one surprisingly violent decapitation and some nonsense about hypnotism.  If there’s anything that I’ve learned from R.L. Stine, it’s that hypnotism is very easy to learn.  Despite a promising premise, this is pretty much a standard R.L. Stine rush job, one that efficiently hits all of the expected notes without digging too deep into the characters or the story.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about this book is that the Face itself never comes to life.  From the cover, I figured that the drawing would actually start to move its lips and speak and totally freak Martha out.  I mean, the cover literally says, “He had something to tell her …. from beyond the grave.”  But once again, a talking picture is probably more of a Christopher Pike thing than an R.L. Stine thing.  I really should have read more Christopher Pike this October.  Oh well.  Live and learn!

Book Review: All-Night Party by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

You may remember that, when I reviewed R.L. Stine’s The Overnight, I commented that it seemed odd that Fear Lake would have an island sitting in the middle of it and I even wondered if this was a location that Stine used frequently or if it was just something that he randomly tossed into the book.

Well, 1997’s All-Night Party features yet another group of teens spending a long night on Fear Island so I guess that answers my question.  Fear Island is real!  And apparently, it’s a dangerous place.  This is the second book that I’ve read about an act of violence taking place on Fear Island.  Both books not only featured people getting attacked on the island but they also both featured people randomly falling down hills and stuff while walking around the island.  The island is not safe!  Maybe it’s time bulldoze the cabin and build a barrier around the island or something.  Of course, that’ll never happen because that would require too much commitment from the adults of Fear Street.  I’m not all that sure that the parents of Fear Street really care that much about any of their children.  I mean, someone gets murdered every week and yet, no one ever seem to move.  Instead, almost every book seems to start with a new family moving in!  The Shadyside High School yearbook has got to be 75% in remembrance ads.

As for All-Night Party, it’s perhaps the laziest R.L. Stine book that I’ve ever read, which is really saying something when you consider that R.L. Stine wasn’t exactly known for the great care that he put into coming up with his plots and characters.  This is a novel that, for all I know, could have been written by a computer program.

The plot involves a group of teens who decide to throw an all-night party at a cabin on Fear Island.  They’re celebrating Cindy’s birthday.  Cindy is kind of a bitch and after she assures everyone that she hates their presents, she’s murdered in the kitchen.  Who committed the murder?  Was it Patrick, the member of the group who has a big blood stain on his shirt and who keeps getting caught in obvious lies?  Or is the escaped lunatic that Patrick swears is on the island with them?  Or was it someone else in the party, like the seemingly creepy kid who is actually nice and nerdy or maybe the temperamental rebel who has long hair and drives a motorcycle.  This answer is so obvious that it will totally blow your mind when your realize how little effort was put into creating any sort of suspense.

The book feels a rushed and uninspired.  It was published in 1997 and it’s probably not a coincidence that it was one of the last of the original Fear Street books because it’s obvious that either Stine or his ghostwriter were just going through the motions at this point.  To be honest, the solution is so obvious and the plotting is so lazy that I nearly threw the book across the room after I finished with it.

Oh well.  What can you do?  It’s Fear Island.

Novel Review: The Overnight by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Did you know that Fear Street had a Fear Island?

It’s does.  It’s sitting right in the middle of Fear Lake.  It’s a bit of an isolated place.  For whatever reason, it’s never occurred to anyone to actually make commercial use of Fear Island, even though that seems like the most obvious thing to do.  There are rumors that Fear Island is cursed and overrun with mutants and ghosts….

Unfortunately, even though the majority of the book takes place on Fear Island, there are no mutants or ghosts to be found in The Overnight.  First published in 1990, The Overnight was the third of the Fear Street books and it’s one of those books where nothing supernatural happens!  What a let down!

Instead, it tells the story of what happens when the members of Shadyside High’s Outdoors Club (really?  What a lame club) sneak off and spend some time on Fear Island without adult supervision.  One of the members of the club is approached and then attacked by a strange man who eventually ends up at the bottom of a ravine.  The members of the club leave his body there and return home, determined not to tell anyone.  They’re less concerned with getting accused of murder than they are of their parents finding out that they went on an unsupervised trip.  Soon, the phone calls begin.  “I know what you did,” the voice on the other end rasps.  Next, two of club members are chased by a mysterious car.  Who could it be?

While the members of the Outdoor Club try to figure out who is stalking them, their faculty advisor makes an announcement.  They’re going on an overnight trip and they’ll be camping on …. FEAR ISLAND!

AGCK!

I will admit that I laughed out loud when the club found out that they were returning to Fear Island and that there was no way that they could avoid it.  I think it’s because, by the point I reached that point in the book, I already started to imagine The Overnight as being an episode of Saved By The Bell. 

“We’re going to Fear Island!” Mr. Belding announces.

“TIME OUT!” Zack says, before looking at the audience and saying, “I can’t go back to Fear Island!  They’re going to hack Zack!”

Anyway, as I said before, this book is disappointing in that there are no ghosts or monsters and it’s a bit difficult to really relate to anyone who would want to join something as dorky as the Outdoors Club.  (Shadyside High has a club for everything!)  That said, it’s hard not to be amused by the fact that there’s apparently a Fear Island sitting in the middle of Fear Lake.  Apparently, Fear Island was mentioned in a few other Fear Street books, some of which I do remember reading.  So, I guess I just blocked the island’s existence from my memory.

Anyway, the important thing is that everything work out in the end.  Fear Island?  More like Love Island, right?

Book Review: The Surprise Party by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last summer, after her boyfriend Evan apparently shot himself in Fear Street Woods, Ellen moved away from Fear Street and her friends were left to attend Shadyside High without her.  However, a few months have passed and Ellen now feels safe about returning to Fear Street, if just for a visit.  Her friend, Meg, is super excited!  Meg wants to throw Ellen a surprise party!  Great idea, Meg!  Meg wants to throw it in Fear Street Woods, at pretty much the same location where the dead body of Ellen’s boyfriend was found.  Wait, what?

Meg is shocked when she starts to get phone calls from a mysterious stranger, telling her to cancel the party.  She’s even more upset when someone destroys the invitations that she spent so long working on.  Meg does exactly what I would do in those circumstances.  She makes a list of all the people who she thinks might be responsible.  A few people are put on the list for understandable reasons, i.e., being near the invitations before they were destroyed.  The rest are listed because Meg dislikes them personally.  One kid is listed because he’s way into playing Wizard and Dragons.  Meg’s extremely petty suspect list is probably the most realistic thing about The Surprise Party.  My suspects lists are always a combination of people who have blocked me on twitter and celebrities that I’m sick of hearing about.  My Congressman is usually on the list because he supports the ProAct.

Anyway, it does turn out that there is more to Evan’s death than anyone originally realized.  And yes, the truth comes out at the surprise party.  And yes, all of the twists don’t really make that much sense.  First published in 1989, this was the second of R.L. Stine’s Fear Street books and, to be honest, it’s a little bit disappointing.  There’s nothing supernatural about anything that happens.  Instead, it’s just one of those mysteries that can’t be solved because Stine doesn’t give us all the clues until the very last minute.  I spent the whole book thinking Meg was the culprit because throwing a surprise party in the woods where your friend committed suicide is just incredibly insensitive.  And, if this was a later Fear Street book, I have no doubt that Meg would have an evil twin or something.  But no, this is an early book and Meg’s just dumb.

Oh well.  That’s life on Fear Street!

Novel Review: The Thrill Club by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s hang out with The Thrill Club!

The who club?

The Thrill Club!  They’re the group of high school students who are at the center of R.L. Stine’s 1994 novel, The Thrill Club.  They get together at night and they read the scary stories that they’ve written.  Perhaps the most macabre of all the writers is Talia, who always comes up with stories about people getting cornered by scary ghosts and ripped up into little pieces.  The other members of The Thrill Club are a bit upset because Talia keeps using them as a characters in her gory horror stories.  (Of course, what they don’t know is that Talia’s boyfriend, Seth, has secretly been writing Talia’s stories for her.)  I’m not really sure why that would upset anyone, especially people who are supposed to be horror fans.  Part of the fun of reading a scary story or watching a horror movie is imagining what you would do in that situation and why it would inevitably lead to your horrible death.  Anyway, Shondel asks Talia not to use her name in any more scary stories.  A few days later, Shondel is dead …. murdered …. and somebody’s responsible!  (Yes, that is a line from Plan 9 From Outer Space.)

Who killed Shondel?  Everyone in the Thrill Club suspects that it was Talia and isn’t that the way it always goes?  You write a few stories about your friends being brutally murdered and then, once they are, who is automatically the number one suspect?  Of course, it also doesn’t help that, on the night of Shondel’s murder, Talia comes to the Thrill Club meeting wearing a blood-stained sweatshirt.  And then there’s the fact that someone claiming to be Talia called Shondel’s mother and confessed to the crime….

Oh my God!  Could Talia be guilty!?

The mystery is eventually solved, of course, and it’s all pretty dumb.  Anyone who remembers the episode of Saved By The Bell were Zach thought he had brainwashed the entire student body into wanting to take him to the school dance will automatically see The Thrill Club‘s twist coming from a mile away.  That said, I enjoyed the book because I used to write short stories featuring my high school friends as well.  Of course, in my case, everyone always ended up having fun at the mall or shoplifting makeup from Target.  I enjoyed high school.

I was thrilled to also enjoy The Thrill Club.

Book Review: The Sleepwalker by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the last R.L. Stine book that I read, I was really upset when a cat was killed in the service of the plot.  In fact, I was so turned off that I pretty much just skimmed the book after the death of Mr. Jinx.

So, when I started reading 1991’s The Sleepwalker, I was understandably concerned with a black cat named Hazel made an appearance and started hissing at the main character.  “Oh no,” I said, “not again!”  Fortunately, Hazel not only survived the entire book but turned out to be a total badass!  Hazel is exactly the type of cat that you want on your side.  Not only will Hazel hiss at anyone who tries to go through your stuff but Hazel is also willing to use her claws if anyone gets out of line.  Go, Hazel, go!

As for the rest of the story, Mayra is a teenager who is totally in love with Walker, who is this weird kid who is into magic.  Unfortunately, Marya has a creepy ex-boyfriend named Link, who is also totally into magic.  (Link, I should mention, has a sister named Stephanie who is — get this — totally into magic!)  With Walker on vacation and Link acting all whiny, Marya gets a job working as a homecare assistant to old Mrs. Cottler.  Mayra’s mom once worked for Mrs. Cottler and apparently, it’s good to keep these jobs in the family.

Mayra, however, soon comes to suspect that Mrs. Cottler is a witch!  Afterall, Mrs. Cottler has a lot of strange occult-themed books and she also owns a black cat.  (Yay, Hazel!)  After one of Mrs. Cottler’s neighbors complains about her peach tree encroaching on his property, he suffers a broken hip.  Soon, Mayra is having dreams about walking into the middle of a lake and, when she wakes up, she discovers that she has been sleepwalking!  Could it be because Mrs. Cottler put a spell on her and is now trying to destroy her for some weird reason?

(Actually, considering that Mayra has dated two guys who are both into magic tricks and also how quickly Mayra jumps to the  conclusion that Mrs. Cottler must be a witch, I think it’s far more probable that Mayra herself is using her interest in the paranormal as a way to deal with past trauma.  I mean, it’s kind of remarkable that it never seems to occur to her that there might be a non-magic answer to all of her problems.  I get the feeling that her belief in magic is her way of avoiding having to confront anything.  That’s just my theory.  For the record, I don’t believe in magic but I do enjoy reading about it.)

Anyway, even by Stine standards, this is a silly story.  No one turns out to be who we originally believed them to be and it all links up to a mysterious death that occurred years before.  This is one of those things where almost every issue in the book could have been resolved by people just not being stupid.  But, and this is the most important thing …. HAZEL SURVIVES!

YAY HAZEL!

Novel Review: One Evil Summer by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s summer!  That means that it’s time for the Conklin Family to take a vacation to the lovely resort town of Seahvaen.  Unfortunately, Mr. Conklin and Mrs. Conklin are both bringing their work with them and oldest daughter Amanda is having to take summer school classes because she failed Algebra.  (How do you go on a vacation and so summer school at the same time?)  Despite the fact that I never had to do a day of summer school, I could still relate to Amanda because Algebra was always my worse subject.  Fortunately, my sister kept all of her tests from the previous year so I was able to cheat my way to a passing grade.  I still suck at Algebra and, as Case can tell you, I still throw a fit whenever I have to discuss anything that has to do with math but the important thing is that my summers were mine.

(To be honest, I probably could have done just fine if not for the “show your work” requirement, which always struck me as being fairly nonsensical.  If I got the right answer, why did it matter how I got it?  Usually, I do most of my work in my head and the notes that I jot down are usually written in such a way that only I can understand what they actually mean.  That works just fine for me.)

Anyway, someone has to look after the youngest two Conklin kids during the day so Mrs. Conklin hires Chrissy, despite the fact that Chrissy has absolutely no references and is obviously batshit insane.  Amanda keeps trying to get her parents to understand that Chrissy is crazy and planning on killing everyone but her parents are just like, “That’s what you get for failing Algebra.”  Bleh!

The book has an intriguing premise and the first few chapters were so silly that I thought I was going to really enjoy One Evil Summer.  But then all three of the Conklin family pets died, including a cat named Mr. Jinx and two parakeets that got their throats slit and ended up bleeding all over the place.  That pretty much turned me off of the book, as it all just felt gratuitous and cheap.  I pretty much lost all interest in the story when Mr. Jinx died and the death of the two parakeets pretty much guaranteed that I wouldn’t get that interest back any time soon.  I did skim the rest of the book, just so I could be honest when I wrote this review.  Chrissy turns out to be a witch with a secret!  I figured out the secret pretty quickly.

To be honest, things get pretty silly towards the end of the book.  It would actually have been enjoyably over-the-top if not for all the dead animals.  But the death of Jinx and the birds just kind of made the rest of the book too depressing to really enjoy.  To Stine’s credit, Amanda to get a new kitten and the kitten got a bit of revenge for its predecessor but still, the whole book just left a sour aftertaste.

Horror Novel Review: The Secret Bedroom by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh my God, y’all, this one is so good.

First published in 1991, The Secret Bedroom tells the story of Lea.  Lea’s family has just bought an abandoned house on — can you guess it? — FEAR STREET!  And Lea has just started school at — again, you know what’s coming — SHADYSIDE HIGH!  Not surprisingly, Lea is having a hard time fitting in at her new school.  (To be honest, if I was a student at Shadyside, I would automatically be suspicious of any transfer students because, as far as Fear Street and Shadyside are concerned, they always seem to bring a lot of drama and murder with them.  Seriously, hasn’t that school been through enough tragedy?)  Lea’s problem is that she has a crush on Don but Don is dating the school’s most popular megabitch, Marci.  Lea is already in trouble for accidentally spilling chili on Marci’s sweater.  When Marci sees Don talking to Lea, she decides to make Lea’s life miserable.  I swear, why is it the girls always end up fighting over the same boy rather than considering why the boy was flirting with another girl to begin with?  Lea directs all of her anger at Marci and Marci directs her ire toward Lea but really they should just be mad at Don.  Unfortunately, this book was written years before Spice Girls taught everyone the meaning of girl power so Marci just spends her time making trouble for Lea.

However, there might be a solution to Lea’s problems.  In Lea’s new house, there’s a mysterious, boarded up bedroom.  The room was boarded up because, long ago, someone was murdered in that very room!  However, even though no one has been in the room for years, Lea keeps thinking that she hears strange sounds coming from behind the boarded up door.  Despite having been told to say out of the room, Lea enters it anyway and she discovers that there is someone in the room!

That person is Catherine, who says that she’s the ghost of the girl who died in the room.  She says she wants to be Lea’s friend.  She also says that if Lea allows Catherine to enter her body for just a few moments, they can totally play a prank on Marci!  Lea agrees.  Needless to say, the prank goes terribly wrong and it turns out that Catherine wasn’t being totally honest either….

After being slightly disappointed with the previous two Stine books that I read, I really enjoyed The Secret Bedroom.  This is Stine at his most demented (and, perhaps not surprisingly, it’s also one of the earlier book in the Fear Street series).  Stine crafts a tale that includes ghosts, murder, mind control, false memories, peer pressure, jerky boyfriends, and gentrification.  The twists are nonstop and they’re so entertainingly weird that it doesn’t matter that they don’t always make sense.  In fact, the book plays out almost like a fever dream.  Anyone who has even been accused of stealing someone’s boyfriend will appreciate Lea’s growing paranoia about Marci.  Anyone who has ever heard a strange sound in the middle of the night will relate to Lea’s fascination with the boarded up room.  And, for those of you who love continuity, Wrong Number‘s Deena shows up at Lea’s best friend!  This book is an enjoyable trip to Fear Street.