Sunday, July 11, 2010

R.L STINE BOOK OF THE WEEK: Fear Street: The Overnight

They shared her terrible secret - but could they get away with murder?

From the back cover:

Nightmare Island

"Nothing bad will happen," Della O'Connor assures her friends in the Outdoors Club. So what if their advisor can't go on the overnight to Fear Island - won't it be more fun with no adults around?

But it's no fun at all when Della gets lost in the woods, and the dangerous stranger appears, whispering threats, driving her to a violent act.

Suddenly all of her friends are involved, prisoners in a conspiracy of silence, trying to conceal the terrible truth. But someone saw what Della did. And he's threatening them all, forcing them back to Fear Island to find the evidence they forgot to bury...

My thoughts:

This is one of the first Fear Street books - #3 to be exact. It was published in 1989, just two years after I was born.

If you've seen the movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer, you know the basic plot of this book. Teens share a horrible secret: one of them accidentally killed a man and they covered it up to not get in trouble. So if you've seen that film, the "surprise" at the end of The Overnight is predictable.

But the setting of the woods on Fear Island is eerie. Stories about camping trips and feature people getting lost in the woods always give me the creeps.

Although the setting was interesting and there were a few creepy scenes, the story was too predictable for me. And there were no deaths other than the initial one. Not even one of Stine's trademark animal deaths. I guess those start later on in the series....

Rating: 2/5

PG-13 gore: She was right on top of him.

I'm going to be sick, she thought. A wave of nausea rolled up from her stomach. She took a deep breath and held it, waiting for the feeling to pass.

Dizzy. I'm so dizzy.

She tried to push herself up with her arms, but her hands slipped on the wet leaves.

I'm right on top of him, on top of his dead, decaying body.

She forced herself to her feet, still holding her breath, still feeling dizzy.

I was lying on top of a dead man.

Next week: Goosebumps: The Horror at Camp Jellyjam

2 comments:

Stewart Sternberg (half of L.P. Styles) said...

I remember when Stein first started publishing. Parents raised eyebrows but said: "Well at least they're reading." Oddly, a few years before, if you would have looked around at some of the older students, you would have seen them reading the disturbing work of V.C. Andrews or (god forbid) John Saul

Melissa Helwig said...

Yeah, that's true. I started reading V.C. Andrews when I was 12.