Focusing On Fear Street: Double Date

WELCOME TO FOCUSING ON FEAR STREET WITH THERESTHEGIRL

Book # 23 in the Fear Street Series

Published April of 1994

Cover Art by Bill Schmidt

Our male protagonist Bobby Newkirk sitting on a bench in the park with Samantha, one of the Wade twins, In the background her sister Bree looks on with a very unhappy look on her face. It's a nice detailed cover and set in bright daylight but not very scary. You could switch this out with a teen romance cover! Of course German editions always give us something dark and bleak on the covers and this time we get two! One is an original and one is a reprint:

The top cover has a scene which does happen in the book and the bottom one does involve a cabin in the woods both with a very bare yet terrifying concept. As always you can get a very nice cover for Brazil editions:

Still dark even with some bright hues and almost blank faces. One of the Wade twins leading Bobby into a cabin in the woods as the other watches on with maybe some sinister intentions. Got some midriffs and boobs on display for the male readers and certainly eye catching. The one from Russia is kind of cool too:

Looks more like an advert for a Nightmare On Elm Street film with the way the girl is clawing and ripping at the poor guy's shirt. This dude isn't Bobby...he's got dark hair! You'll learn quickly that Bobby is a blond pretty boy. Besides some flaws it still has horror elements and is creepy.

Taglines: On the front we have "Two's company. But three can be murder." and on the back we have "2 Cool 2 Live 4 Long". The one on the front is kind of clever if cheesy but the back one...oh boy! You'll know you are definitely reading a book from the 1990s with that one and if you are lucky enough to find a used copy that someone decided not to take the temporary tattoos from. My copy is a later Simon Pulse print but the original Archway Paperback had blue butterfly temp tattoos because they play an important part of the story with the twins! It was very cool but very 90s...radical!

The First Line: "Bobby Newkirk pressed against the locker door with one hand, squeezing Ronnie Mitchell into her locker."

This is how we meet our main character, ladies and gentlemen. Manhandling a poor girl into her locker with aggressive charm to get a kiss and admiring himself in her mirror. Bobby is blond, broad-shouldered and boorish. He may look like Mr. All-American but he is Mr. Arrogance who dumps and dates all the girls at Shadyside High like they are trends going out of style. Right now, he has cheerleader Ronnie eating out of one hand and fellow cheerleader Kimmy Bass eating out of the other. He once dumped a girl just because she spilled Coke in his car and when his friends pick up his scraps, Bobby kind of hopes to have them come running back to him.

Bobby is in a band with his friends Paul and Arnie and is the lead guitarist who loves his guitar as much as he loves himself but doesn't take it as seriously as Paul and he even thinks Arnie stinks on the drums and they constantly change their band name more than they practice...mainly because Bobby can't say no to going on a date with a girl just to string her on. One day, the Wade twins interrupt band practice looking for the music teacher and Bobby is taken with shy Bree and sexy Samantha.

They just moved to Shadyside and are the only girls Bobby hasn't dated yet but he bets Paul and Arnie he can date both girls at the same time. In no time, Bobby is going out with both girls and finds that Bree is shy at first but she begins to fall for Bobby very easily. Samantha on the other hand is not shy but she may just be a little too wild for Bobby to handle driving his car recklessly without a license and even getting Bobby to steal her a bracelet from the mall after she five-finger discounts some earrings on one of their earlier dates!

Things get heavier when Sam tells Bobby he needs to drop Bree saying that she isn't right when she gets hurt and that she wants more time with Bobby...guess the twins were never taught to share their toys! Besides the trouble with the twins, Bobby finds that his perfect existence is falling apart in a disturbing manner after the tires on his car are slashed and he almost gets electrocuted to death by his own guitar! There's a way to tell the twins apart but soon not even that can help Bobby discover which twin is doing this to him...or could it be someone else? Bobby's friend Arnie is dating one of his old flings Melanie...could she be jealous enough or hate Bobby so much to kill him?

So the story is pretty much like a crazy Lifetime movie in the beginning but it has some good points where there are some characters that could be the real culprit besides the twins. There are a few twists and turns but when you get to the end it is just the best! Now this may just be me being a female but you can't help but liking karma biting someone in the ass! True it may seem a little harsh but it's not evil or malicious and as long as no one gets hurt fatally...you just have to see it for yourself without me spoiling it (worth it!)

Character wise, the only two I can't stand are of course Bobby and Arnie. Not too much hate for Arnie he's just simply immature and annoying with his only good point being he seems to actually care for Melanie. Bobby Newkirk is the worst male character I have seen so far in a Fear Street book. He is vain, egotistical, treats women like dirt, thinks everyone likes him and just like so many guys I went to high school with. His only good points are that he likes classic rock music (like back to 1950s Chuck Berry) and likes animals (he has a science experiment with two monkeys and treats them very humane).

My biggest reason for hating him is he makes fun of Melanie for being a little overweight and says that if she lost a few more pounds he might go back out with her! I am slightly chunky myself so I take offense to that (especially in high school and college) but maybe it's his fault she is. Bobby went out with her for three months before she found out he was going behind her back with other girls and broke up with him crying so obviously a year ago she was just fine to go out with.

I for one know what it's like to be heartbroken and drowning my sorrows in tubs of ice cream and candy bars so maybe that's what happened and Arnie seems to like her the way she is. I think Bobby gives her crap for her weight just because she won't go back to him because he mentions that she does still look good...I still don't/will never understand boys/men!

Body Count: No human casualties and no animals were harmed either. There was a scene where you thought some one was actually deranged enough to cut off the head of one of Bobby's monkeys (named Wayne and Garth...so 90s!) and leave it in his locker! Don't worry it was real, gross smelling blood but a plastic, realistic monkey head but effective enough that Bobby tossed his cookies! Now I don't particularly like Bobby but that was messed up just like electrocuting him! Also, I do not like monkeys but I would never hurt one especially by decapitation...sick!

THE SHADYSIDE HIGH TIME CAPSULE

Bobby mentions taking Samantha to see a movie called Eradicator Five. Sounds cool but not a real film sadly. I think if they wanted to catch a flick they could have gone to see a nice romance:

Or with the way this story is going maybe some dark comedy?

Maybe the Wade twins would like a very female driven cast - they seem like some tough girls who can take care of themselves?

So that's a great time at the movies we could have had! Driving in the car or dancing at the club, I've got some tunes you might enjoy as well!

NEXT TIME, NEXT BLOG: Dead men and dead women tell no tales in this club...The Thrill Club!

Focusing On Fear Street: Bad Dreams

 WELCOME TO FOCUSING ON FEAR STREET WITH THERESTHEGIRL

Book# 22 in the series

Published March 1994

Cover Art by Bill Schmidt

This cover is probably one that male Fear Street readers had to keep hidden from Mom under the mattress. Besides the showing of some skin it's still pretty modest but two girls in nighties in bed looking like victims of one of those Slumber Party Massacre films might have Mother wondering about her little boy. It's also actually a very girlie color scheme with reds, pinks and whites kind of almost a Neapolitan ice cream of terror but very detailed with girls and the four poster bed.

Is it just me or do the girls look like Shannon Elizabeth and Alyson Hannigan from American Pie 2? (but not in this pic obviously!)





I'm kind of glad you can't see what has the girls are afraid of because less is always more but it also is a lot more pulpy than some of the other covers I found from around the world. I always go to Germany first and I am never disappointed with what I find:

A bloody knife stabbed into a feathered pillow...so simple yet so terrifying! The only color you have is the blood everything else is just pure white...virgin white. That is also one very deadly but sleek looking knife! Next up, Brazil always has some very interesting covers in a style that shows faces but very obscured and just gorgeous:

Dark, foreboding atmosphere with more subdued shades of pink but a girl asleep in a canopy bed with another girl watching in the shadows. Is she a friend or is she something sinister about to hurt the obviously, sleeping girl having a bad dream? Also another cover you might want to keep out of mother's eye line...a little more cleavage outlined. I kind of like the cover for the French edition that I found or one of them anyway. I found one that has a young girl in bed with a shadow looming over her but the girl in question looks really...young. I have some reservations about that seeing how Fear Street is more oriented to the older teenage crowd so I won't post it (if you want to see it just leave a comment below and I will if anyone is interested.) Here is the one I do like:



 A little bit of the American cover, a girl asleep in a very luxurious canopy bed and a dagger looming in front of a creepy home you could surely find on Fear Street! Gorgeous, creepy and almost with a noir style to it...c'est magnifique!

Taglines: On the front we have "Don't go to sleep!" and on the back we have "It's just a bad dream-but it seems so real.". Not the most attention grabbing or wittiest way to grab the readers attention but the blurb on the back is good and not full of any blatant spoiler. I think the covers are good enough to get your attention on their own.

Totally unrelated plot but a movie worth checking out

So before I get into the first line of the story and begin my review I have to warn you that there will be spoilers for a previous Fear Street book I talked about The Prom Queen. There are recurring characters from that book that appear in this one and not as little one shot cameos so if you haven't read the previous book and don't want it spoiled, this may not be worth reading. If you have already read both books I'm sure it will be no problem for you. I'll try my best not to spoil it but once I start writing my thoughts are going to pour out so just letting you know before hand. That being said I am also skipping the prologue and its first line and going straight to the first chapter. Why? It's my opinion that if you read the prologue you may get the story spoiled only slightly. Not a bad prologue so I'm not saying don't read it but I only talk about the prologue if I don't think it will spoil the book for you.

The First Line: "Maggie Travers' bad dreams didn't start until the night she slept in the canopy bed for the first time."

Seventeen- year old Maggie Travers, her sixteen year old sister Andrea, their mother and Golden Retriever Gus move into a new house on Fear Street from the rich North Hills neighborhood in Shadyside after their father dies from a heart attack. The two sisters don't really get along like most sisters with Andrea I guess being jealous that her sister is prettier and gets the attention of boys while Maggie thinks Andrea is a brat who always whines and it's shown that she is known to treat others snobbily because of  where they live or rather...where they use to live.

The girls are also both on the swim team and Maggie is of course one of the stars while Andrea struggles. Once inside to unpack in their pre chosen rooms, Maggie finds a gorgeous, four-poster pink canopy bed in hers and Andrea gets totes jealous trying to make their mother give it to her but of course you know finders keepers. Besides the stress of sibling rivalry, there is also a big swim meet coming up and Maggie is determined to win and show up her best friend but rival by ego, Dawn.

As stated soon Maggie begins to have dreams about a blonde girl crying out for help in the same bed which soon become darker with an unseen attacker. Maggie learns from the old couple next door that the girl was named Miranda and she was murdered in the canopy bed! This makes Maggie a little paranoid and rightfully squicked out but she begins to think that maybe Miranda is sending the dreams beyond the grave to find her killer.

Soon, Maggie imagines seeing Miranda's ghost in the house at night hiding in the shadows, a malevolent presence stalking her and then going after her friends on the swim team! Is all of this in Maggie's head like her boyfriend Justin possibly thinks or is possible that little sister has finally gotten fed up with Maggie always getting everything she wants?

The story is pretty good and I like Maggie as the protagonist. She isn't annoying and relatable and even her sister Andrea has good points. They fight but both of the Travers sisters share in the loss of their father and do care about each other so Andrea isn't that bad of a character. We don't spend a lot of time with their mother but she seems caring and rightfully at her rope when her girls fight so I like her pretty much as a side character.

WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS! - Maggie's boyfriend is Justin Stiles from The Prom Queen and he seems to have changed slightly. Known for being a male whore when it comes to girls he appears to really care about Maggie and doesn't have a roaming eye for anyone else but when things get creepier he seems to become distant. I suppose this happens when your current girlfriend is friends with one of your ex-girlfriends and the one before that was a psycho killer who went after all your little flings.

The one character I still don't like and doesn't seem to have made any kind of progress is Dawn Rodgers, another Prom Queen alumna who is Maggie's friend and Justin's ex. She is still very competitive and doesn't seem to be as boy crazy but she is annoying and gets on Maggie's case if she does better than her than be supportive. She tells Maggie that Justin has a roaming eye but maybe she is just jealous that Justin isn't her boy toy anymore and is more faithful to Maggie than he was to any of the girls before her.

When Dawn becomes a victim of one of the accidents caused in the book to blame Maggie, she does blame her and avoids Maggie the rest of the time but caught giving her sour looks. By the book's conclusion, we never learn if Dawn forgives Maggie or if Justin stops being weird around her but at least I care if he and Mags get back together. I couldn't care less if Dawn continues to be a bitch and they stop being BFFs I'd rather have Maggie get closer to her sister Andrea.

Cameo Time!: Deena Martinson and Jade Smith from The Wrong Number appear in Maggie's geology field trip group exploring a cave and Claudia Walker from Sunburn is also on the swim team. I have to give these Shadyside teens a hand they are resilient when it comes to situations of almost being murdered to tackle dark places and water.

Body Count: Poor Miranda :( There is almost an instance when you think good old Gus is going to be hit by a truck but he lives! Maggie states she couldn't handle if they lost another family member (Gus is her dog but kind of became her father's dog...so sad).

THE SHADYSIDE HIGH TIME CAPSULE

So it is mentioned that Justin and Maggie go out on a date and it is some screwball comedy film to try and get Mags out of her funk and it doesn't work. Now there were a lot of good comedies out about this time but I think they went to see Naked Gun 33 1/2 The Final Insult it's about as screwball as you can get.

If not that then it definitely had to be Major League 2 another sort of spoof film and well Justin likes baseball...

This also was a great time for music and I would like to share some of my favorites. One to honor the late Mr. Travers, a personal favorite and one to honor the late and great Tom Petty.

NEXT TIME, NEXT BLOG: You know it's never a good thing when your friend asks you to go out on a Double Date...

Focusing On Fear Street: The New Boy

WELCOME TO FOCUSING ON FEAR STREET WITH THERESTHEGIRL

 

Book #20 of the Fear Street Series

Released January of 1994

Cover Art by Bill Schmidt

 

 

 

 

Okay it's not the best quality picture of the cover but I do like this cover. It has a good amount of suspense with Ross (the titular new boy) and Janie (our main heroine) playing almost a game of cat and mouse...they both know the other is there. The jean jacket and white sweater Janie is wearing are very detailed and realistic even if you can't see it here. As I have constantly said I love the German covers of the Fear Street books with their always bleak and dark covers...and this one is no exception to the rule.

 

 

A young man standing at the grave of some departed love one holding a blue scarf against a cloudy sky with the sun trying to beam through. Now the guy standing at the grave may or may not be the new boy because yes if you can believe it there are two separate blue scarves mentioned in the book and well it's a major spoiler. It's somber and melancholy, bittersweet and just priceless again so much in such simple imagery. Another country that I have discovered so far that has some great cover art is Brazil with bright yet thrilling atmosphere:

 

 

 

The only brightness is of course the yellow and skin tone of the main characters with little bits of brightness in the background. I like how all the main characters of the story are depicted because they do all play parts be it victims, killer and some red herrings. Going clockwise its Ross, Janie, Faith, Eve, Ian and Paul because you get some pretty good descriptions of what they look like and then throw in the artist's own interpretations. Another country that published Fear Street was Russia and even though most used the American cover art (some not even from the same book) a few had their own covers with interesting takes like the one for The New Boy:

 

 

 

 

It's nice, simple and creepy with showing the two different sides of the new boy that we do get to see in the book: brooding and good looking but with a dark side and a dark past. Of course not all covers can be good and even have some sort of subtlety and symbolism found within the story. I'm not really sure if these are alternate U.S. covers or maybe U.K. editions but the covers of these...I'm glad they stopped popping up.

 

A skull in a green science beaker...um...scary? Why do people think just putting skulls on something equals horror? I know that in the horror paperback age of the 80s and early 90s skulls were every where but *sighs* I don't know. We do find out in only one part of the book that Ross is good with chemistry but yeah that's it so um moving on...

Taglines: On the front we have "He was a hunk of trouble..." and on the back we have "He stole their hearts...Does he want their lives, too?" If you aren't familiar with early 90s speak a hunk was what you called a good looking guy and yes even though I have used that phrasing (hey I was eleven when this particular book came out) it really does date the series. I like the one on the back better it's more creative. The blurb will have me wanting to read the book for sure but it may be slightly full of spoilers.

The First Line: "Two weeks before the murder, Janie Simpson saw the new boy at Shadyside High for the first time."

So it's lust at first sight for Janie when she sees Ross Gabriel. He has dark hair and dark eyes, brooding features and the body of an athlete and poor Janie has no boyfriend so she is smitten. She's described as having long, red hair, blue eyes and if the illustration on the cover is any indication Janie is not that bad looking and her wardrobe is on point! Of course she has a little bit of low self esteem because both of her best friends Faith and Eve have boyfriends and are a lot more "pretty" as Janie explains in her thoughts she doesn't wear make-up and if she did she would only look like a "washed-out" version of her blond, cheerleader friend Faith. Also Eve has dramatic looks, blue-black hair and olive green eyes and did I mention they both have boyfriends?

Besides the obvious melodrama of teen romance, Janie, Eve and Faith just got done organizing a huge and very successful dance at school and have about twelve hundred dollars to show for it! Wow Shadyside seems to have the best parties and dances even if murder and paranormal activities are about in spades! So of course you know the money is going to play a back seat to this tale because well that is a lot of dough and it is established that both Eve and her boyfriend Ian are not the most financially set of their friends. Faith is described as filthy rich and it seems that her boyfriend Paul just might only be going out with because of her money even though he is a basketball player and could just get a scholarship anywhere he wants. If you couldn't see it coming a mile away, the dance money ends up stolen!

 

Oh no that's bad but the girls do not get in trouble as the principal was close at hand and doesn't suspect any of them as taking it even though Eve and Faith left at opportune times to take it. This is of little importance when you have a hot new guy at school as you see both Faith and Eve also had a chance to get to know Ross while taking him to the nurse's office earlier that day while shy Janie couldn't even muster up the courage to say two words to him. The other girls notice that Janie totally is into Ross and decided to make a game out of exploiting that crush by betting to see which one of the three can ask him out first. What great friends huh? They already have boyfriends and decide to use the obvious affections Janie has for Ross to get to first base with him...I knew all these girl code rules were made up to the advantage of the pretty girls and the disadvantage of their less than confident peers!

 

Janie has the chance to ask Ross out first because she shares chemistry class with him and her regular partner just happens to be sick...you go, Janie! Of course, she can't get up the courage fast enough and Eve ends up winning the bet which also doesn't sit well with Faith because even though she says she's joking when they talk later, she tells Janie she just might let her boyfriend Ian know his girlfriend is going out with another guy while he is working two jobs to try and save up for college. You know what I seem to think that Paul, Eve and Faith are the worst people in this book no matter how much farther we have to go.

 

Eve wins the bet, gets to go on the date and asks Janie if she can borrow her blue blazer to wear and is going behind her boyfriend's back? I don't care how poor you are that just is so not cool in my book! So what's my beef with Paul you might ask? Right now he just seems to be a cocky jock jerk who doesn't like Ross just because at his old school Ross was a football player who put on a the same kind of attitude Paul has now...pot calling the kettle black much, Paul? We don't know much about Ross and even though he was kind of big headed in chemistry class earlier everyone else but Janie were making jokes about taking the dance money which is missing and well it's just my honest opinion.

 

So the next morning after Eve's date with Ross, Ian calls Janie frantically saying that Eve never came home and that Ross is missing! Trying to go out and search for her they make a gruesome discovery of the girl's dead body and suspicion falls on Ross from pretty much everybody at school except for Janie. She just can't believe that the man of her dreams could be a killer but if not Ross then who? A complete stranger roaming about town? Could it have something to do with the stolen dance money? Is it someone from Ross' past trying to set him up or could it even be one of the people closest to Janie? Will it  take more murder to figure out the answer?

 

The New Boy is a pretty good read with more thrills than chills and not a lot of gore. It's a murder mystery and you might figure it out pretty quickly. In the end, the only character I like is Janie because she doesn't really do anything jerky to anyone and when she starts to think that maybe Ross did kill Eve, it's not out of spite but real fear that he could hurt her. Despite her friends having very weird morals, Janie is relatable to girls like me and out of everyone is never nasty or psychotic.

 

Body Count: It's the first line in the book and in the blurb on the back that there are murders in this book. Eve's murder is what sets the story in motion for suspense as the robbery of the dance money sets you up for what is to come. What other characters bite the dust? Let's just say I give this book four out of six stars with one more down to a dire fate.

 

 

THE SHADYSIDE HIGH TIME CAPSULE

 

 

The beginning of 1994 was not really a good year for movies but I believe it was an awesome year of music regardless. So it's established that there was a dance and that they actually had a live band and not just a DJ. Now they had 1,200 dollars spent on tickets and concessions but probably not some big named headliner in a small town like Shadyside. So if you'll indulge me, I have a playlist that I would have been more than happy to dance to thanks to my taste but in my case, I probably would have been crying in the corner with Janie that I didn't have a boyfriend either.

 

 

 

NEXT TIME, NEXT BLOG: It is the Halloween season so I thought perhaps you would have me wish you some Bad Dreams ? I most certainly will...