What a good, interesting book. The premise is a little boy can see dead people (which is familiar), but when he asks then a question they have to tell the truth.

This is a small but significant twist on the Sixth Sense base of the story because the boy goes from random medium to a tool people could potentially use for nefarious purposes.

Honestly, it’s a great story about how if you gained superpowers in any way, you have to keep that shit to yourself or you will absolutely be hunted down because of it, either by people who are jealous and want to hurt you because you have more than them, by people who are trying to use and abuse you to their own ends, or by people who will be negatively impacted by your power(s).

So take note: if you ever get super powers, just keep it to yourself. Only misery lies beyond letting people know.

I loved it.

I also love the storytelling style where it feels almost oral. King did this with Joyland (later with Fairy Tale) and it feels more approachable as in “gather round, kids and let Uncle Stevie tell you a story.”

I know some people aren’t keen on modern King, but I think there’s a swing to these stories that make them not only readable but devourable. The kind of stories you can read and grab another book right away and dive right in.

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It’s got to be unfair that I expect Stine books centered around aesthetically scary stuff to be scary, right?

Alas, I do. Any author should know books centered around Halloween are supposed to be scary. Period. But I have yet to read a single Stine book that takes place around Halloween that’s scary. He has more scary CHRISTMAS books than Halloween ones.

Ugh.

Look, I’ll be honest here: this is a teenage drama and that’s about it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but he’s demonstrated the ability to write fast, exciting books in the past and this one takes a few more breathers.

I want to read a fever dream of horror from him.

Is it good? Kind of. I don’t like that kids portrayed in divorces are always on the border of losing their minds. It’s a lame trope. I know when my parents were splitting up, it was nothing short of relief to me because they were obviously not making each other happy.

Now, all truth be told, without my mom to keep my dad grounded with supervision, he did become emotional, petty, and constantly swinging between threatening suicide because I would one day leave him all alone and being abusively neglectful to me for days or weeks on end and there were issues because of that, but those were his issues, not the divorce’s and look at me: I’m fine.

Mostly.

Anyway, had this book been centered on the drama outside of Halloween, maybe I would have liked it more, but I expected too much and was let down.

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Okay, bargain shoppers: in this book you get not one but TWO twists and they’re both pretty good.

Honestly, me being an adult was what messed up my ability to figure out one of the twists. One of the characters has a condition where they bruise easily and my adult brain is thinking something that’s real.

Turns out no. I was wrong.

But that’s fine.

Now I have to find the last one to figure out if Callie can ever break the hold 99 Fear Street has on her!

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So, I’ve read more than a couple Fear Street books now and this one?

This one’s my favorite.

I’m a sucker for imposter stories (probably from watching The Hand That Rocks the Cradle at too young of an age) and this story is definitely that.

But it’s also FAST and exciting. Spooky and actually kinda logical - a huge ask for Stine.

This was a true pleasure to read.

What’s your favorite Fear Street book?

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I think I’ve reached the point where I’m beginning to look beyond Stine’s penchant for characters who don’t use much (if any) logic or rational thought.

It’s best to just… give in and go with the flow. It makes the story way more enjoyable when I’m not getting hung up on why anyone would, I don’t know, start fires for funsies.

For instance.

And, once I got over that hurtle, I enjoyed the story as a whole.

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My least favorite thing in story-telling is the trope when people aren't open and honest because of some sort of hesitation. It's usually bad news or revealing something about them that they feel betrays a weakness or vulnerability.

I just think the world would be a better place if we were more open with that kind of stuff. If I know I'm a fragile being, why would that sooner mean I'm the ONLY fragile being rather than mean that EVERYONE'S fragile? And, if the latter is the case, why wouldn't acknowledging that make us progress as a society?

My second least-favorite trope is the love triangle.

Third least-favorite is the hunky curmudgeon.

Fourth-place? Set of steak knives.

Anyway, it's an unfortunate pet peeve because I'll admit that the benefits of being open and honest would also take the wind of the sails of thrillers and horrors because there wouldn't be any secrets to keep.

And that's what's tying this book together - the idea that the kids basically snuck away for an overnight alone without adult supervision. There, a completely reasonable series of events happened that ended with a bad guy getting killed and yet none of the kids wanted to go to the authorities because their parents would be, like, SO made at them!

Stine leans hard into a knack for writing super annoying characters to really hammer home the agony of waiting for the reveal, the final act, and the end of the book.

This one wasn't my favorite.

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Talk about a red herring - this book flat-out exposes the killer in the past few pages. If you like the idea of sudden surprises, this is up your alley.

That said, there were a couple of things that were interesting in this book:

1) The weird idea that longevity in your relationship is more important than it really is in high school. Like, if you can just make it longer together than any other couple, you’ll find real happiness. In reality, splitting up and finding someone else would probably make you more happy. But I did see it in high school - hell, I participated in it in high school - and it’s always struck out to me as one of the weirder things we did. Like we were really giving it our best to be grown-ups as children.

2) Abusive relationships. In this book, the abuser was portrayed more as a “wild card,” than anything else, but the words were there. He cracked a pool cue over a friend’s head and said his hand must have slipped. The next paragraph said sometimes the guy would be fun and the life of the party and sometimes… his hand would slip.

But the guy who got his head cracked open never faltered in his dedication to his friend. He WAS going behind the guy’s back with his girlfriend, but he wouldn’t let anyone talk shit about his bud and wouldn’t hear that maybe he was dangerous.

It was clear to everyone else, though.

This one’s a whole lot of drama, but it still works. It was a fun time.

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Ooh, a Fear Street enters the reading log, eh? I wonder where this could lead!

You just don’t see covers like this anymore. Now it’s all stark lines and cartoony stuff - where did all the paintings go?!

I promise I’m not one of those guys who insist that the past was better just because it was THEIR past, but just look at this cover! This one’s insane with the amount of things to look at but Fear Street books featured covers that, while definitely not timeless, did such a good job of capturing a mood that you really have to wonder why they stopped. Or why Fear Street specifically shifted to easier covers that said nothing about the book inside.

*sigh*

Anyway, this book was okay. I’m not generally a historical fiction kind of guy (especially when it comes to colonial times as the real history is almost always more interesting), and I feel like explaining lore - especially for a subject like Fear Street - will only bog stuff down later on with continuity and logical problems, but this does scratch a real itch for RL Stine for me. Here was violence. Here were stakes! Here was a twist that was pretty decent!

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To be honest, I never really expected body horror in the Goosebumps series, but here we are.

And this is one of the better ones in the series that is also more intense than usual.

Part of me wants to think Stine is trying to graduate the horror with an aging audience to keep them and hopefully bridge the gap between Goosebumps to something harder in Fear Street. I know that it could be said that there’s an overlapping age range for the series (there sure was for me), but it’s jarring as a kid to jump from something like Monster Blood to dealing with murderous cults and kidnapped parents (which we’ll get to later).

But the thing I want to believe a little more than Stine wanting bridge books is that he had a case of senioritis. He knew his time with Scholastic was up, they were giving him a rash of shit about ghostwriters and taking him to court, Parachute wasn’t pulling in NEARLY as much money as they should have, and the end of it all was in sight. With this in mind, he just kind of took his foot off the brakes a bit more and let more unfiltered horror into the Goosebumps series.

I don’t know. I don’t know the guy so at this point it’s just wild speculation. But I’ve worked jobs - even jobs I liked - where I felt more free to be more of myself (not a jerk or anything) when my notice had been given.

We’re almost done with the series, folks. Just one book to go and, I hate to spoil it, but it’s one of the biggest wet farts in the series and a HUGE disappointment as a closer.

*sigh*

Oh well. We’ll get through it.

Together.
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Continuing the trend from the last book that felt more intense than your average Goosebumps book, we have this gem.

Do you remember how I said Scholastic accused Stine of having ghostwriters? This book might be the strongest case for it.

1) It’s WAY more violent than other GB books. Deer and rabbits are torn apart with graphic detail about the corpses.

2) It ends with the protagonist getting attacked and bitten by a werewolf.

There was a misconception that nothing bad ever really happened to the protagonists, but there have been plenty of instances where the sting ending was the kid losing. One turned into a chipmunk, supposedly for the rest of their life. One was attacked by a venomous (called poisonous which is amusing because that’s what we used to say) snake as a ghost watched and waited for the kid to die. And this one ended with a werewolf diving in and biting a kid’s chest.

Maybe to death? Probably more likely to infect him with the curse.

Regardless, this book felt way more hardcore than other GB books. That’s definitely not a bad thing. At this point I feel so saturated with soft fake-outs and sting endings that I’m ready for more violence and actual repercussions.

Anyway, I’m not saying Stine actually used ghostwriters (beyond his own statements of using freelance authors’ detailed outlines for books in this specific series). Maybe he too was bored with the low stakes of most of the books.

But if I were Scholastic and I really want to point to a different tone as an indicator that there was another cook in the kitchen, this would probably be the book. Honestly, besides the last Monster Blood, I’d probably point toward the last FEW books in this series!

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