As a kid I read a LOT of RL Stine. I started with Goosebumps, moved to Fear Street, then his stand-alone novels, and then, unfortunately, his adult novel.

And beyond the adult novel, “Superstitious” - which I seem to remember having VERY awkward sex scenes - this is the book I remember the best.

Because this book is bananas.

Not in a bad way. During this re-read, I have been less than hospitable to Stine and my own memories because a LOT of them don’t hold up but this is just as bananas and FUN as I remember.

The idea of coming home to your parents being missing is intriguing. As a teenager, you’re in that awkward stage where you know a lot of what’s going on and you know people should be listening to you and treating you seriously but everyone is hung up on the idea that you’re still a kid.

Because you are! Kind of! It’s an awkward time where you have zero power, aren’t treated seriously, but you aren’t oblivious like a younger kid would be. You see the threats, you know the danger, and you wish someone would listen to you.

It’s weird in the series. A protagonist kills a dog (weird in this series), two people die (also weird in the series), and this is before the CULT pops up. The cult that thinks America is on the wrong track and wants to use violence to take over the country and “Make America Great Again.”

Basically.

*shudder*

I never thought I’d say this, but RL Stine CALLED IT in a fuckin’ YA horror novel.

Y’all! Whodathunk?!

Also, there’s a lot of head-hopping between chapters with no chapter names to let you know who’s head you’re in and that slows you down as you figure it out. That’s the worst part of the book, though.

The rest is just a bananas, weird, fun time.

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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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For those that don’t know, the Fear Street series and the Goosebumps series were published by different houses, which explains why Stine didn’t end the original GB run with a kid moving to Fear Street or even Shadyside (where Fear Street sits).

My conjecture here is that the lawsuits from Scholastic left a bad taste in his mouth and he tried to get a GB-ish series off the ground as a spin-off called Ghosts of Fear Street.

And there were other spin-offs as well. Fear Street, Ghosts of Fear Street, 99 Fear Street, Fear Street Saga, etc.

But at some point, Stine stopped writing them. Some sources say that it’s because they just weren’t selling well anymore.

Stine sat.

And waited.

And then he came back with a vengeance and new Fear Street books. They were longer and more graphic than the Fear Street books of the 90s.

This is one of those new books (published in 2018).

And it was a lot of fun, it feels like Stine riffing on The Shining (movie). Room 237 is mentioned, it mostly takes place in a hotel in Colorado that has a sort of time warp and curse attached to it, and there was even a photo from 1924 that had people from modern times.

It might be unfair of me to compare Stine’s stories to King’s so often (I did it with at least two Goosebumps books) but I’ve read a lot of King and he’s been around for so long - has written so much - that it’s tough not to see similarities and call them out.

His changes to the series (longer and more violent) are plenty visible and I didn’t mind the additional violence but this book did stretch on a bit and felt a little bloated. Stine can write tight stories and pack a punch. Sometimes this feels like there’s character development lacking, but the extra length here isn’t exactly adding to it - it’s just making the book longer. There’s more repetition and, in some books’ cases, a couple different chances to end it.

All that said, it was still fun to read and I’m glad I did.

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If there was ever a toe-in-the-water to the Fear Street series, this is it. It’s also the only copy of a classic Fear Street in size, cover, and price at my local Books-A-Million and I can’t help but feel that’s because it doesn’t bring the scares (or, really, much of anything).

The story centers on a douche of a dude who is so self-centered and full of himself that he challenges himself to date twins within a specific time frame. They both fall in love with him and begin to play off each other while a third sister - an EVIL sister - is thrown into the mix.

The only thing I kept thinking throughout the whole book is that SURELY sisters would talk to each other more. I mean, I wasn’t particularly close to my brother when we were teenagers, but we knew who each other was dating.

It wasn’t a dumb book per se, but it wasn’t anything special.

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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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You know what? Let’s go back to the beginning. To Fear Street #1.

I keep getting thrown with the Columbo/Law & Order: CI openings where a crime is committed by SOMEONE and then the story actually starts, but it’s fine. I like Columbo and I LOVED CI.

I will say that a common critique you’re going to hear from me is a plot driven by poor communication. It’s a pet peeve of mine and just lazy writing. It’s also all OVER the Fear Street series.

Anyway, this book centers around a kid in high school who falls in love with the new girl, Anna. It IS a little strange that none of his friends know who she is, has her in their classes, and everyone that DOES know Anna insists that Anna…

Is dead.

I looked this up on Wikipedia to make sure I remembered the plot since I read this a couple years ago and it says that the boyfriend was convinced she was alive with her “human-like kisses.”

I literally laughed out loud.

Anyway, it turns out “Anna” isn’t Anna at ALL and she’s actually WILLA, Anna’s sister who killed Anna out of jealousy and assumed her identity. There’s a brother, Brad, and he plays a pretty important role. He shoved a girl down some stairs and I think he even killed a cat to stuff in a locker as a warning, but I don’t care about him.

My mind got snagged HARD on the idea that a teenage girl killed her teenage girl sister and just ADOPTED her personality. Where were her parents? Where was Brad? Why had nobody heard of Anna? Why is Willa going to school?

I just think that if you’re going to murder a sibling and assume their identity, high school years are the WORST years to do it.

That said, it was fun to re-read and still way better than Goosebumps.

I’m excited for the next one.

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I really don’t want to be overly critical here, but the motive behind the bad guy’s decision was questionable at best.

That said, it was still a lot of fun. I really thought I would have enjoyed reading Goosebumps more than I actually did so when I finally got out of the kiddie pool and into an area where stakes are higher, there’s more violence, the threat of death is a thing, and the ghosts aren’t cool girls next door but malevolent beings that want to kill you, it’s so much better.

It’s not life-shaking literature but it IS a lot of fun and this feels way more like my comfort zone when it comes to horror for a younger audience.

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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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Sorry, I suffer from hyper-fixation. It’s part of the autism.

Anyway…

Talk about a breath of fresh air after 62 Goosebumps books! In this one we have stakes (pardon the pun) because there’s actual violence! There’s also talk of sex, cigarettes and not one but TWO curse words!

And, honestly, I think this is where Stine shines. This is the sweet spot for his writing. A little violent, a little mature, but even with the increased violence, still fine for kids to read.

Maybe it was because I just got done reading all the Goosebumps books, but the twist was pretty obvious and, frankly, I loved it.

It’s really tough to talk about these books without ruining them and I haven’t decided how spoiler-ish I want to be.

No spoilers today, I guess.

Sisters go to camp where a counselor who happens to be a vampire (no word on how a counselor could not be around all day) seduces and bites a girl but can’t complete the ceremony to turn her into a full-fledged vampire. So now there’s a ticking clock for him to finish the job or for her and her sister to find the cure. But as bodies begin to pile up around them, the sisters turn to each other for support and try to survive. But will they succeed?

It’s a good book. Absolutely dreadful cover art, but a really good book. The characters felt a little more fleshed-out than normal and everything had way more gravity than… oh man, ANY of the Goosebumps books.

It is a longer book, so maybe it was because Stine could stretch out, but I honestly think that Goosebumps became a weird weight to Stine where he couldn’t write what he really wanted and excelled at but it was also the thing that had made him a ton of money. Why else would he keep trying to recapture the glory days?

Sorry, I got sidetracked. This book was a fun time. I genuinely enjoyed it and, if you’re looking for a teenage vampire book, you could certainly do a lot worse. ;-)

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The last book in the original Goosebumps series! I don’t really like the Monster Blood story and I REALLY don’t like the characters so it didn’t exactly end with a bang (and it also didn’t end on Fear Street, which is a disappointment).

I started re-reading this because in the 90s there was a big scare amongst parents that things like Doom, Mortal Kombat, and Goosebumps would create deviants of the youth - youth that is, today, edging pretty close to 40.

You have to wonder what was causing all the concern. But here I am, over 40, father of two, and married for 20 years, and I don’t think I’m a deviant.

That said, I AM extremely critical of commercials and propaganda and I don’t like the idea that the old ways are the best ways SOLELY because they’re old. I think respect is earned. I think everyone deserves a fair shot. And I don’t think that elders can say “because I said so,” and have it hold any water.

Is this from reading Goosebumps?

I suppose there might be some merit to the idea that Goosebumps bred a distrust of authority figures because most of them turned out to be bad guys. And maybe it bred a sense of self-reliance because the kids were usually right and had to handle things themselves.

Maybe parents really took issue with the idea that in zero Goosebumps books the kids went to the authorities and the authorities fixed the problem. Or that none of the stories were telling kids to blindly obey elder/authority figures.

Ultimately, though, I think that the parents clutching their pearls about scary things like Doom (where you killed demons from Hell), Mortal Kombat (where you protected Earth from dark forces), and Goosebumps had more to do with a lack of confidence in their own parenting and a desire to lay whatever happens in the future at someone else’s doorstep.

In short, they were hedging their bets and covering their own asses.

It was fun to read all of these, but I’m definitely ready for something with some more substance.

#goosebumps #rlstine

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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The first Deep Trouble was a bit of a miss for me because it wasn’t Jaws. It WAS a very interesting book that tackled (albeit in a simplified junior way) the ethical dilemma of capturing endangered species for study.

So, while I didn’t get a maniacal hammerhead shark stalking kids, I did get a thinker of a book and I ended up really liking it.

When it came time to read this one, I went in with zero expectations and it was also pretty good. It didn’t have the same depth (see what I did there?) as the first one, but a genuinely interesting thing happened in it:

A family gets stranded on an island.

Oh man, THIS is my jam. I love books about people stranded on islands. The need for survival, the inventing of solutions to problems unique to that island, time, and person (or people) so the characters(s) can get what they need to stay alive, and the struggle to not only live but to maintain the WILL to live… That’s some awesome stuff. Having societal obligations stripped away leaving only humanity always makes for an intriguing story.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last long in this book before they were off the island, the problem was solved, and the book was done.

It was still a good book. As a matter of fact, I’d say out of all the stories that have sequels, this is probably my favorite.
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Last camp book in the original Goosebumps series!

This is definitely my favorite camp book in the Goosebumps series. It has everything: gaslighting, ghosts, attempted murder, snakes, and betrayal.

It was also scarier than a LOT of other Goosebumps books and it made me start thinking about JK Rowling.

The genius of (the morally questionable) Rowling was that her books graduated in difficulty, subject matter, and characterization as they went on. Kids who were eleven when the first Harry Potter book came out got to grow up WITH Harry and deal with more and more mature things right next to him as they had to deal with more mature things in their own lives.

It was brilliant.

And I’m not saying Stine is Rowling or anything (Stine is OBVIOUSLY better than Rowling even if he never read the story I sent him as a kid. At least he’s not a TERF. That I know of. Please don’t correct me), but the books have been getting scarier and it would be WILD if the last one served as a bridge to the scarier and far more violent Fear Street books.

Imagine: A kid goes through a scarier than average Goosebumps story and the family moves in the end like Welcome to Dead
House only pull up to a new house in a new town and the kid gets out to survey the scene. It’s quiet and he realizes that there aren’t any birds singing. And it’s chilly even though it’s summer. And what does that street sign say?

“Fear Street? What kind of town names a street like that?”

And then nothing. That’s the end.

I think that would have been the coolest thing Stine could have done but, alas, it didn’t work out like that. But we’ll talk about all that later.

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When I originally read this, I was impressed that the kid could basically fall asleep on command. I’m pretty quick to fall asleep and my wife gets pretty jealous of it, but I can’t just zonk out when I’m super stressed about things - like I can only imagine this kid was.

And I really enjoyed the fever dream state of this book. Absolutely dreadful episode of the show, but the book was good.

Except for one thing: You know how in movies they sometimes try to be cute and slip in names as an homage to the movie-maker’s influences? Like how in Friday the 13th, Tommy was at Karloff’s Garage? Or how in Scream, Rose McGowan said “Wes Carpenter?”

And you know how it NEVER feels natural? These names are critical to the point where they seem almost unique to that individual. Are there other people named Wes? Sure! But in the context of horror movies, is there really any other Wes? Or a Karloff?

It takes me right out of the story.

It’s even harder in books because I can’t exactly read when my eyes are rolling in my head.

That said, Stine has avoided it almost entirely until this book. He fell HARD in this book.

Two characters. One named Bruce. One named Wayne. They’re always together so it’s “Bruce said,” “Wayne added.”

Ugh.

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This was a frustrating read. And it wasn’t frustrating because the story was weak or anything - it was frustrating because this kid needed real parents and the Stine trope of absentee parents hit hard. I’ve never wanted to grab a kid in a book and give him the mentorship he DEFINITELY needs more in my life.

But, if I could, I would have told him that:

1) Girls (or anyone, really) aren’t prizes and it’s weird that he’s competing against someone for a girl as if the girl has no say in this.

2) MOST girls are into people who are genuine rather than people putting up facades.

3) It has to suck to live your whole life in competition with a neighbor and this will never stop unless YOU stop it.

4) Be content with yourself. You’re good enough and you don’t need the external validation of your neighbors to feel good about yourself.

This was a sad book for me because Stine wrote a sad kid so well I felt bummed I couldn’t help him out. That’s pretty good on Stine’s part. ;-)

It was also way better than the cover or title would have led me to believe. It felt like there were more fleshed-out problems and characters in this one.

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I am forty-one. Okay? Fully grown, husband, father, about to wrap up his first career, and old enough to get freaked out and buy a red convertible.

A Miata. Cool car but Jesus, get used to buying batteries.

I say that because the next part sounds a little kooky:

I thought this one was a little spooky.

I don’t mean the actual story, but little details here and there. The cold is scary because you can’t go far from your threat. Snowmen are NOT scary, but I think ANYTHING where everything is pointed the same way or doing the same thing is SUPER creepy. When I drive (in my Miata) past a pasture with sheep and they’ve all got their heads down eating, I like HARD for one to lift their head.

I don’t know. Call it a quirk.

So these little details kinda creep me out. Cold, snow, uniform snowmen, a town of suspicious locals, all of this is creepy.

But then the last half of the book happens and we’re back to a silly book.

This is one of those books where a different author could take these bones and make a FAR different book. A far SCARIER book.

Actually, I think this book might have a practical purpose. You could give this to an aspiring horror writer and ask them to take the bones and make their own story. Every writer would take it somewhere new but these bones hold a lot of promise.

It’s a good start, a disappointing end, and a whole lot of promise.

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Full warning: I’m a sucker for all things Halloween. I find the holiday to be endlessly interesting and genuinely enjoy dragging out a spooky version of a Christmas village to stare at for a month or so before I need to put it away, take a breath for Thanksgiving, and then put the Christmas stuff up.

Halloween feels like the gateway to the celebration that is the last quarter of the year.

I love it.

Because of this, I’m super keen on Halloween-related stuff and get really excited when I see books like this.

The problem with this is that it sucks to be disappointed if things aren’t awesome.

Fortunately, this book was fine. I’m generally not keen on pranks or practical jokes, but I get it - it had to be done. And I keep telling myself that Stine’s goal with Goosebumps was never to terrify kids so he couldn’t lean way into horror.

It was fine. Definitely one of the coolest covers and I like the core of the story.
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