A Book Review - Funhouse by Diane Hoh (Point Horror)

It's funny, Funhouse was so full of holes and places that required great suspension of disbelief. Yet I really quite liked it. Maybe that's due to my nostalgia; Funhouse was one of the earliest Point Horror books I owned as a kid. (That said, The Fever was the first one I had, and was one of my favourites as a 9 and 10-year-old, yet my adult self didn't like it at all. So nostalgia doesn't account for everything.)

The basic plot points are as follows: Tess lives in a small coastal town along with her group of friends, all of whom are from rich families whose parents are part-owners in The Boardwalk, an amusement park on the beach. At the beginning of the book, the Devil's Elbow roller coaster flies off its tracks, killing at least one person (a boy Tess' age; I don't think it's mentioned whether any others died) and injuring many, including a girl and boy implied to be from Tess' group of friends. Tess sees a shadowy figure underneath the roller coaster just after the accident, which she mentions to her friends. Later, at home, she receives a taunting note that implies that the accident was not, in fact, accidental, and asking Tess who she thinks will be next. Will it be her?

One by one, Tess' friends are attacked, and it soon becomes clear to her that someone is after the kids whose parents own The Boardwalk.

Spoilers abound for the rest of this review, because it's impossible to review this particular book without them, so be warned.

I said at the beginning that this book is absolutely FULL of plot holes. The biggest concerns the initial roller coaster disaster. The killer's aim is to punish the parents who own The Boardwalk by harming their children. Indeed, Tess shouts words to this effect at her cynical, disbelieving ex - "Haven't you even noticed that the kids hurt the worst so far all have parents on The Boardwalk's board of directors?" Yet - and I'm not particularly technical, so correct me if I'm wrong here - I see NO POSSIBLE WAY to engineer a roller coaster crash so that I can choose who will be killed or badly injured. Short of convincing your friends to ride it at the same time, and keeping too many other people from getting on, I can't even see a way of even ensuring that the right people will be on it. I suppose there's a faint possibility that those three kids rode it a dozen times every day, all together, but I doubt it. Most likely, IMO, is that causing the crash was a spontaneous decision by the killer, but the chapters that are written from the killer's perspective belie this.

Later in the book, the killer steals the heroine's keys, so that she'll go and look in the Funhouse for them and fall through the floor onto the beach below. This just seems like a sloppy trick to play on someone, as a) she may not even notice her keys are lost; b) she may not care / may have a spare set; c) she may not think to look in the Funhouse; d) she may fall through the floor and land on cushiony sand without much injury, unless it's a really long drop (and how far can it be, from boardwalk to beach? Fifteen feet, max?); and e) her best friend may volunteer to look instead. Which is what happened. Sloppy sloppy.

So yeah, the killer really didn't seem to know what s/he was doing. And her / his motivations were pretty suspect. Without giving away the ENTIRE plot, I gotta say that most teens I know, if they discovered what s/he discovered, would most likely be shocked for a while and then shrug it off. Unless s/he already had huge, hidden mental problems - which is never mentioned - I don't see how they could turn into a murderer from learning what was, ok, a pretty rotten secret, but not really a life-destroying one.

I snark, I admit it. My navy SEAL always yells at me for being bitchy about enemy weaknesses. Be thankful, he tells me. Every time the bad guy messes up makes one less battle you have to fight. In person, I get his point, but I still find it hard to tolerate idiocy, and when it's a fictional villain who's acting like a moron, I reserve the right to snark about him / her.

Snark aside, though, I did think this was a cool book. With the isolated feelings that Tess has, staying alone in her stepmother's condo and having no real relationship with her father or stepmother, an overbearing ex-boyfriend and only one friend that she really gets on with, it's a recipe for an uncomfortable Sati, yet something about the book was quite fun. It was certainly fast-paced and kept my attention. The ending hurt my heart a bit, but it was certainly unexpected the first time I read it.

Verdict: Simple, easy-to-read cotton candy for the brain.