Focusing On Fear Street: Sunburn

WELCOME TO FOCUSING ON FEAR STREET WITH THERESTHEGIRL

 

Book #19 in the Fear Street Series

Published June of 1993

Cover Art by Bill Schmidt

 

 

Might not be the best image of the cover seeing how on mine the redheaded girl lying face down in the sand and surf has a purple swimsuit not a metallic blue like this one. The colors are mostly blue, red, black and flesh tones. Obviously the girls haven't gotten much sun yet and there are two more not pictured but the redhead is Claudia and the blonde is Marla. A scene like this sort of happens in the book but a little more blood and a little less seaweed but that almost feigned look of horror yeah it's there. The other US cover I found is well:

 

 

Um yeah a skeleton with sunglasses and a fiery background? Does the skull have a tan? I find this more funny than frightening because you know it's grinning at me and the blank pits of the eye sockets are covered by shades! Nice try, cover artist but those Bill Schmidt artworks far surpass this mess. You want something actually creepy? Check out this French cover:

 

 

That face of terror, those blue/green color tones of the skin almost give an undead look and that full moon are a perfect cover to give you chills. Kudos for also depicting a scene that happens in the book! My only hang up is that it's a log and not a rope bridge but still points for effort. I always love the German covers and I found two of them (one was a reprint I believe) but can't decide which I like better:

 

 

Both of them are bleak, dreary and menacing: a pair of hands holding on for dear life upon a dreaded peak to keep from falling on the rocks below and a girl running away from something or someone terrible with foreboding clouds and an eerily calm surf. I guess I like the second one best just because it goes more with the beach theme though the first one is good but not even close to anything depicted in the book.

 

Taglines

 

On the front we have "The perfect tan...or the perfect murder?" and on the back we have "You could get burned..." I guess both of them are okay and a little creative to the title of the book and might grab my attention.

 

 

The First Lines: "Claudia Walker surfaced slowly from a deep sleep. She felt something cool and damp covering her chest and legs. She could smell the salt air of the sea."

 

Okay I extended it past one sentence for a paragraph just to get a good description for any beginning reader. Also, some Fear Street books actually have titled chapters and well when you see the title of this one...*chuckles* We'll come back to that in a minute since that's exactly what the story does and it's not even a prologue!

 

Claudia receives a letter from her camp buddy Marla Drexler inviting her and the rest of their bunkmates to a reunion at her beach house in Summerhaven. Marla is stinking rich with a guest house and tennis courts along with a private stretch of beach and it sounds like a nice getaway from a messy breakup and the dreariness of Fear Street for Claudia. Besides Marla and Claudia we have Joy, an exotic looking girl with black hair and Sophie, frizzy brown hair with glasses but not described as "not pretty" so basically a makeover montage away from hottie town.

 

 

 

So in going back to that first line? Apparently the girls visited the beach and buried Claudia in the sand! They kind of forgot about her I guess and left her to not only fry in the sun by falling asleep but to then wake up screaming her head of in terror. I don't really blame her for that but it is kind of her fault as she did volunteer to be buried in the sand and her antihistamine for her allergies knocked her out. Don't worry about Claudia she gets free from her wet, sand prison thanks to a mysterious, tall, dark and handsome boy on the beach! He introduces himself as Daniel and helps Claudia back to Marla's mansion where he mysteriously knows the security code to let her inside. The other girls race out to meet Claudia and before she can introduce him...he's vanished like a ghost! Seems it was just a little misunderstanding as Joy and Sophie were told by Marla that Claudia had already gone back to the house...oh well mistakes happen!

 

Over the next couple of days, a few events happen that seem to make the week of fun and sun a little strange and unsettling. The girls go for a picnic on the beach and run into a pair of really hot deep diving hunksters named Dean and Sam...I mean Carl. Both Joy and Sophie get flirty and Claudia would too if not for her face being burned by her little "accident" the other day and having her face slathered in pink sunscreen. Marla on the other hand seems more than pissed about their arrival and tries her bitch best to get them to leave which isn't like her. The girls go to the boardwalk later and run into Carl and Dean again but Claudia goes off on her own and runs into Daniel! The two of them go to ride the Ferris Wheel and being up so high when they stop to let other people on breaks the romance as Claudia remembers just maybe why Marla is being so...weird.

 

I want an episode of Supernatural with Sam and Dean at the beach damn it!

 

 

The previous year at Camp Full Moon (nice subtle name huh?) the four girls were pestered all summer by Marla's sister Alison. She was a tag-a-long that was so bratty she even got under Sophie and Claudia's skin being the nice ones. When Alison threatened to tattletale if the older girls didn't let her participate in their Truth or Dare game, Marla dared her to cross a gorge at night. Sneaking out that night, Marla got caught but Claudia, Joy and Sophie met Alison at the gorge where she made it out halfway on a large log but got hit with vertigo. Trying to come back, the other girls got scared off by the counselors' flashlights and the last thing Claudia heard was a scream. The next morning, only Alison's bloody shirt was found on a jagged rock jutting out from the water.

 

 

 

This begins to make Joy think that Marla only invited them to get back at them for letting her sister die even if it was an accident and not directly their fault (it was Marla who dared Alison remember?) when Sophie almost gets electrocuted by the security gate and Joy finds leeches in her bed! Things come to a head when both Sophie and Claudia almost drown while water skiing but are saved by Carl and Dean. The tow rope had been cut but by whom? Is Marla really out for revenge at Alison's death or could Daniel, the boy who mysteriously vanishes be behind all of these nasty tricks?

 

I always enjoyed this book but you can see the ending coming from a mile away once the backstory is revealed but maybe not in the way that you think. There are some scenes that made me just as paranoid as Joy, Sophie and Claudia. Anything horror driven involving the beach does that to me and well let's just say there is a shark involved as well as a dog and a lot of detail and leave it at that. As I said you'll probably figure out the twist and of course you get a nice ending but it's more bittersweet then happy depending which characters you like. There's not really a reason to dislike any of the characters but again it's all up to your own opinion.

 

Body Count: Well there is a dead body or two and unfortunately, a poor Irish wolfhound meets its end in a scene that still has me traumatized to this day.

 

I'm beginning to think R.L. Stine doesn't like dogs?

 

 

Cameo Time!: Again another story around a main cast of characters set in a town that isn't Shadyside so no cameos the second time around.

 

 

THE SHADYSIDE HIGH TIME CAPSULE

 

 

So we aren't in Shadyside this time but there are still gems to highlight the nostalgic summer of the early 1990s! It's always nice to imagine that the teenage characters in these Fear Street books are/were just like us with their music and movies.

 

Not a part of the 90s but it is mentioned in the book that the girls rent the movie Bye Bye Birdie to watch. A 1963 movie musical based on a stage play that stars Dick Van Dyke, Ann-Margaret and Janet Leigh its one of my favorite films thanks to my mom!

 

 

 

Marla also mentions that there is a movie theater on the Boardwalk that does play some pretty good movies. Hopefully, Summerhaven plays the latest movies and doesn't wait to release them about two or three months later. If that's the case, there are a couple movies I think the girls would enjoy (I mean I love them!) from that certain summer:

 

 

 

 

 

As for the music that the girls could have been listening to in Marla's Mercedes or in her bedroom is unknown but I know for me the music of that summer I was listening to isn't completely forgotten because I still like them today:

 

 

 

 

 

NEXT TIME, NEXT BLOG: What's a girl to do when the terror that is high school has you facing...The New Boy?