For the month of October, instead of Tordotcom novellas, Tuesdays will be devoted to the (equally short) works of Mr. R. L. Stine. (You can find pt. 1 here, if you missed it.) Tinka’s been enjoying the change-up, and she can’t wait to dive into 2 more entries this week. So once again, without further ado…
The Secret Bedroom
Summary [courtesy of Goodreads]: Lea Carson can’t believe it when her family moves into the creepy, old house on Fear Street. Most creepy of all is the secret room up in the attic. The room has been locked and boarded up for at least a hundred years. A murder was committed in that room, the story goes, and it has been closed up ever since. Lea knows she should stay away. But she thinks she hears footsteps inside the secret room. And voices. Someone—or something—is waiting for Lea in there. Should she open the door? Can she resist?
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Ok so this one was…not great? But not terrible? It DEFINITELY had some creepy moments, and the final stuff was BONKERS and pretty gory for a Fear Street, but man, our MC Lea is a whole dumbass.
(Never fear, though. The book takes pains to assure us EXPLICITLY that at least she’s pretty: “Sure, she was pretty enough. Cute, everyone said, with her sparkling green eyes and her dark brown hair cut in a shaggy pixie cut style with bangs that grazed her eyebrows.”)
But back to the not-so-smart: when she learns her crush, who asked her out because he’s an easily manipulated weirdo, has stood her up, she CALLS HIS MOM and asks where he is. THEN, when the mom says he’s with his GIRLFRIEND, Lea goes completely wild and CALLS the girlfriend, aka evil meangirl Marci, who cackles at her evilly. WUT. [Repeat ad infinitum in the background of the book, as the main ghost plot takes center stage until…
SPOILER TERRITORY
‘Nice’ ghost Catherine takes Lea’s lead, goes over to Marci’s house, and PUSHES HER OVER THE BANNISTER, KILLING HER INSTANTLY. Lea is mega-traumatized, Marci is completely dead, and Catherine is fucking delighted. Damn, Stine, this is a pretty steep escalation over Haunted, where the only dead person was the future-ghost.
Turns out (who would’ve thought…), nice-ghost Catherine is really EVIL ghost Catherine, and she lied about her victimized past to get Lea to trust her. (She’s also MASSIVELY obsessed with Lea’s hair and won’t stop touching it, which is…a thing. I do not know why it’s a thing, but it persists for awhile.) The ending is bananas, with the secret bedroom finally being opened (since, turns out, Lea’s former entries into it were all HALLUCINATIONS VIA CATHERINE’S MIND CONTROL), only to reveal the partially decayed corpses of Catherine’s parents, who’ve been waiting for a century to get revenge on their ungrateful bitch of a daughter, who murdered them and walled them in because she was HELLA EVIL. (Also, they’re still rotting, because time [and smells?] are paused on Fear Street? I don’t know, just roll with it.) They grab their half-corporeal daughter and take her to…hell? I assume it’s hell.
It’s all very dramatic, though it happens in like 3 short pages. And then it ends with…I don’t even remember, and I read this less than a month ago. Probably with Lea getting together with her crush, since his mean-girl girlfriend is now dead (thanks mostly to Lea, so…I guess it’s a win?!)
Rating: OOOOOOOKay.
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First Date
CWs: gratuitous kitten murder, to show the evil guy is evil (So you KNOW this book pissed me off.)
Summary [courtesy of Goodreads]: Chelsea is the typical shy girl. Always home on a Saturday night, she would give anything to have her first date. Finally, Chelsea’s luck begins to change when two new guys move into town and both ask her out. Too bad that one of Chelsea’s new boys has a terrible hobby — murder. Now Chelsea may be looking for love, but he’s looking for a new victim.
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Lord above, this one was a lot. From the really fucking disturbing kitten murder, to the really fucking disturbing hardcore misogyny, not to mention the serial killing, this book’s plot seemed more like a contemporary adult thriller than ‘90s YA horror. There’s NOTHING supernatural here, just a truly evil boy who has mommy issues and who’s decided to kill all shy girls because of it. Or something. This book was pretty depressing, actually.
(Also, I’m using “boy” wrong here, since the murderer is 20 years old, and his intended victim–our MC Chelsea is FIFTEEN FUCKING YEARS OLD. So we get some nice pedophilia on top of our serial femicide. Fun times.)
Ok, so the premise of this is that Chelsea is shy and never-been-kissed, never-been-on-a-date, and she’s itching to find a BOY. Unfortunately, she finds two: seemingly shy Will, the new boy at school, and hoodlum bad-boy Sparks, who visits her father’s diner and asks her out immediately, in a not-at-all suspicious manner. I’ll give you a second to guess which guy is actually our killer, whose POV we get in brief, alternative chapters.
Ready?
SPOILER TERRITORY
Big fucking surprise, it’s nice-guy Will. (Ok, props where they’re due, this is a solid message to send about “nice guys” and “shy guys,” so…I’m ok with this.) Will gives us such incel gems as ““What choice did he have [to murder] if girls looked like that? If they asked him questions and wouldn’t let him breathe?” and “Of course, there were girls in this town who needed to die. Girls just like you, Mom.”
See, he’s gone postal because his mom abandoned him at 4 (taking his baby sister with her), leaving him to live with his abusive, alcoholic dad. So now women need to pay. And *I* get to read about it.
The fact that he’s stumbled onto Fear Street seems like a vast coincidence, really, so I’m not sure WHY this is in the series. Though it’s frankly much fucking scarier than a future-ghost, so what do I know?
Like in Haunted, there are tons of violent, sexually menacing boys in this story, and some of them even beat Chelsea’s dad over the head with a pipe (!!) and rob the store. Here, that shit is used as weird misdirection to make Sparks look more threatening (as opposed to good ol’ boy-next-door Will), and it certainly works. It helps that Sparks actually has massive anger management issues and is shown slamming a phone against the wall, clutching Chelsea’s hand so hard she yelps, and drunkenly trying to force her into a date. He’s…not great.
He’s shit, in fact. BUT in a world where Will is actively trying to murder you, I guess Sparks starts to look pretty good. So good, in fact, that they reunite at the end, with Chelsea apologizing TO HIM (for thinking he was the serial murderer) and committing to go on a date. (These books have a real problem with embracing toxic masculinity, even as they show how hellish it can be. You’d think the lesson here would be DON’T DATE BOYS, but apparently not. It’s the lesson I’m taking away, in any case.)
Before the reunion from hell, though, Chelsea DOES get to whack the murder boy upside the head, knocking him out and saving herself and her new BFF, which is certainly progress for this series.
(She also effectively plays dead–due to some oft-metioned-saxophone-playing-skillz–and freaks him out, and it’s nice to see a Fear Street heroine get some agency in her final survival here.)
(Also, Chelsea’s mom sucks so hard. She’s a constant jokester, which is definitely NOT a mother-daughter dynamic I’ve seen…in anything before; but she’s a wretched caregiver and delivers such classic dysmorphia-inducing lines as, “You’re a very attractive girl….If you’ just lose a little weight and put on some lipstick–” Thanks, I hate it.)
Rating: Typical contemporary thriller, aka, Incels ‘R’ Us…
