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...