A Book Review - The Body by Carol Ellis (Point Horror)

Having just reviewed Carol Ellis' Silent Witness, I feel funny about giving this a lower score, because it's got a much more interesting plotline. Melanie is new in town, and gets a job reading to Lisa, a teenage girl who was paralysed after a fall a few weeks (or months?) back. Nobody knows quite why Lisa fell, but she's scared of something or someone. Through a series of incomprehensible (to me) events, Mel realises that Lisa is trying to tell her something, and they work out a system where Mel reads to Lisa - Jane Eyre - and Lisa makes subtle (so the cameras  - she lives in a mansion with security cameras everywhere - don't catch them) hand signals when there's a place in the book that pertains to her accident.

Lost? Yeah, so am I.

I like the idea. I do. I just think it's too ambitious for a short teenage book. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, but I'm fairly sure that if I were reading to a paralysed, mute girl - Jane Eyre or any other book - I wouldn't interpret her lifting her hand on certain sentences to mean anything other than that she was trying to move. And I'm almost certain that I wouldn't be conspiracy-minded enough to make a list of all the places she signalled - sentence fragments like "somebody has plotted something" or "and dangerous he looked: his black eyes darted sparks" or "the stranger who might be dying" - and put them all together and work out that Lisa's "accident" was a result of her fleeing from someone who'd already murdered someone else.

I actually do like this plot. I just don't like it for a 195-page teenage book. I think it would work really well if it were a) 200-400 pages longer; b) aimed at a slightly older audience; and c) the characters either had some sort of pre-existing relationship, or the protagonist was a codebreaker or a linguistics specialist or something that would give them an edge on solving puzzles.

But I can't buy that an eighteen-year-old girl, with no experience at this sort of thing, who had never met the paralysed victim, could firstly figure out that Lisa was trying to communicate, secondly place the fragments together to work out that a crime had taken place, and thirdly work towards figuring out who the criminal was, just because Lisa lifted her hand a bunch of times.

Mel does do all this, though, and discovers that Lisa fell while running to get home because she herself had discovered a terrible secret - that someone had committed a murder and buried the body on her property. Worse, Lisa knows who the murderer is - and s/he's close to home...

So yeah. Readable, even intriguing, but not believable.

Verdict: Too ambitious, although points for trying. The bare bones would be a good start for a longer adult novel.

A Book Review - Silent Witness by Carol Ellis (Point Horror)

I liked this, and I'm not sure why.

Lucy's friend Allen died recently, in what's believed to be an accident, and Lucy's been asked to give out his personal items to friends. With the items is a video tape - Allen was an avid video photographer (is that the right term?) - that Lucy plans to have edited and voiced over, as a sort of memorial.

But before she can watch the tape, strange things start happening - someone locks her in a cupboard at school, steals the original recording (but misses a copy) and attacks and mugs a friend who's wearing Lucy's jacket - and it becomes clear that someone doesn't want that tape to be seen. 

It's hard to explain why I liked Silent Witness, because it's such a simple book. Usually the books I like the best have intriguing plots or heartbreakingly wonderful leads, and this book didn't. It was just a basic, slightly formulaic but well crafted suspense novel. But it worked for me. I liked Lucy - she's a straightforward, undramatic heroine who's undeveloped but surprisingly likeable. Jon, her romantic interest, is reserved and moody enough to be intriguing, but friendly and light enough to not really be threatening. Most of the characters' actions were believable, which is always a plus for me - I hate when characters seem to have no common sense and go off making the most random, illogical choices.

Arrgh. It's hard to write this review, because even though it's only been a week or so I don't really remember the book that well. It's not one that will stick in your head and haunt you. But I know that at the time, I enjoyed it enough to give it four stars (although the lower end of four). I shall refrain from making comparisons to a certain other Carol Ellis book that is on my favourites list - anyone who reads these reviews of mine will know which I'm talking about - but I will say that despite not having as memorable a plot as some of her books, this is one of her better efforts.

Verdict: Simple and forgettable, but very enjoyable at the time.

A Book Review - The Diary / Let Me Tell You How I Died by Sinclair Smith (Point Horror)

I always think of this book as one that I don't really like, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it was too subtle for me as a kid. I know that I didn't remember it terribly well, and it took a little while to get into this time, but once I was in I found I really liked it.

Delia is one of those introverted girls - shy, bookish and tied to a life with an ageing aunt who doesn't seem to like her much. She has no idea what she wants to do with her life after she graduates in a few weeks. When she finds a diary in her locker, she assumes it's a present from her boyfriend - she's an avid journaler, and it's just the kind of gift she'd love to get. But it turns out that the diary isn't blank, it's full of the life story of another girl, and there's a mystery as to where and who it came from.

Delia reads the diary, more and more of it every day, and slowly she starts becoming more and more like Laura, the girl who wrote it. Her personality changes and she becomes an extroverted party-girl. She dresses like Laura and gets her hair cut and dyed and her nails painted the way Laura had hers done. She picks up a paintbrush and discovers that she's a talented artist, despite never having painted before. All good things, right? But she also starts skipping school, and being mean to her friends, and having violent fantasies about people who upset her...

A past life regression from the town psychic indicates that Delia has lived before, and she finds out that Laura died in a freak accident the day Delia was born. Except it wasn't an accident - it was murder...

Delia starts having visions of the past, including Laura's murder. And Laura's murderer seems to know that something's rotten in Denmark (or Pleasantville - yes, that really is where this is set) because s/he is leaving threatening messages for Delia.

I hope I've got the gist of the book down, and apologies if I got anything wrong. It's quite a complex story for a teenage horror book, and I've only read it once or twice so it's not etched into my memory the way childhood favourites are. It's a good book, though, and I'll read it again in the future. Delia's a great character, and deeper than most of the protagonists in Point Horror novels. The transformation she goes through as Laura's personality takes over is eerie and surprisingly believable. I also didn't suspect the killer, which is always nice.

On the whole, I thought it was a pretty great book. This is the Sinclair Smith I know and love, which is why The Waitress was such a bitter disappointment. But The Diary, as well as other Smith novels like Second Sight, Amnesia and Dream Date are inventive and well-written, and reaffirm my faith in the author.

Verdict: Eerie, compelling and nicely crafted.

A Book Review - Halloween Night II by R.L. Stine (Point Horror)

In many ways, this is a rerun of the first book. After becoming friends with Brenda in the end of Halloween Night and promising to be a nicer person, Halley's turned into a brat again and is doing exactly the same things as in the first book, including stealing Brenda's boyfriend Jake - despite the fact that she's already dating Ted, the guy she seduced away from Brenda last time.

(Good Lord, R.L. Stine, where do you get these douchebag teenage boys from? Are high school boys just like this in the States? It's been ten years since I was in high school, but if my foster kid had behaved like any of these guys he'd have been in for some serious verbal whipping.)

So the pranks continue, as in the last book. Halley "accidentally" pours sulphuric acid over Brenda's hand in Chem. Someone sticks rotten pumpkin flesh in Brenda's locker. And Brenda and Traci and their new friend Angela decide to humiliate Jake - and maybe Halley - by setting up a haunted house and then pretending that they're going to kill him. A bit weak really.

Brenda's parents are marginally less scummy than in book 1, although they don't seem to have any real sympathy for Brenda's sulphuric acid burn. Halley is insensitive enough to bring the person who tried to kill Brenda last year into the house, saying that everyone deserves a second chance. Now that shit is wack. If someone brought the guy who tried to kill me into my house, I'd scream bloody murder. And then I'd kick them both out. And if I were a teenager without the authority to do that, I'd call child protective services, because clearly Brenda's parents are neglectful to the point where their daughter nearly gets killed TWICE, after receiving threats each time that the parental units didn't take seriously.

Even though Brenda's a whinger, I just feel so bad for her.

I'm tempted to up the rating again, because even though these books were uncomfortable to read, R.L. Stine obviously has talent - he makes me feel for these (annoying) characters, and get angry on their behalf. But I'll leave it down, because I'm trying to grade the Point Horror books against each other, in the context of teen horror, and these certainly aren't the best.

I don't know, maybe I'm just getting too old for Stine. He writes so many really unpleasant characters, and I like to surround myself with nice people, of both the real and the fictional variety. Some of his Fear Street books are still great, but I'm still looking for a book this autumn that makes me happy the way Beach Party did.

Verdict: Arrgh! It's Night of the Living Rerun! But with more death.

A Book Review - Halloween Night by R.L. Stine (Point Horror)

Spoilers abound for this book; it's too hard to review it without them. Also swearing. Sorry.

I originally gave this three stars, but had to go and change it to two, because I've been thinking about it this week, and it's been grating on me. I hate having to decrease a rating. Sigh.

I wanted to like this book so much. I ordered this and number two three years ago, having never read them in my younger years, and I was so excited. Halloween is my favourite time of year - one of my favourite things in general - and Halloween-themed books are a huge pleasure of mine. I have Stine's Halloween Party, from the Fear Street series, and that was a really fun book, so I was hoping that Halloween Night would be something similar.

Instead, we have a book that runs along similar plot lines to The Stepsister, but with some of the most unlikeable characters I've encountered lately.

Basic plot points: Brenda's cousin Halley has moved in with Brenda's family and basically taken over Brenda's life. She's got Brenda's room - and Brenda's now sleeping in what appears to be a closet - and she steals her clothes and borrows her car and all that sibling stuff that's supposedly normal but is actually really irritating. Then she goes after Brenda's boyfriend. And Brenda's friend Traci's boyfriend. So Brenda, Traci and other friend Dina decide to kill her.

Or not. They're planning a murder mystery for English class, so they murder Halley's character in their story. And then Brenda starts having nasty tricks played on her - dead birds in her room, writing in blood on her wall, maggoty meat in her bed - and of course she assumes it's Halley who's doing it. And her folks don't believe her. So she decides to kill Halley for real. Or something.

First: Brenda. I want to sympathise with her, because Stine does that - he has a talent for making you angry on the part of the characters who are getting stiffed. But I can't understand if she's genuinely getting a raw deal, or if she's just a whinger. I also can't figure out if she was ever genuinely planning to kill Halley, or if it was all a ruse. If it's the former, then she's sick and twisted. If it's the latter, she's sick and twisted and just s bit awesome.

Halley is a bitch, pure and simple. I do feel for her a bit, because her home life is miserable, but being miserable doesn't give you carte blanche to treat others like shit. Now I realise I may be overreacting here, because I'm a) a spoiled only child (four sisters and two brothers, but I wasn't raised in the same house) and b) someone who grew up poor, without a lot of money for stuff. The combination of these two things has made me territorial when it comes to my things. Mine is mine. I'm (almost always) happy to lend people stuff - if they ask. And if I have a pretty good idea that it'll come back in the same condition it went out in, or that it'll be replaced if it's damaged. YMMV here; I'm sure some of you are more generous than I am when it comes to friends and relatives "borrowing" (ie stealing) your things without asking. But just the description of Halley as someone who thought it was okay to take Brenda's things without permission - that made me hate her, just like I hated Jessie in The Stepsister for the same reason.

Well, I did say I was probably overreacting.

The other characters? Traci's fine. Dina's fine. Ted (Brenda's boyfriend) and Noah (Traci's boyfriend), who both end up hooking up with Halley, are pretty much jerks. I don't know how Stine continually writes these teenagers with no conscience. Thankfully I never knew boys like this in high school, although I'm sure there were a few around.

My main contempt, though, is saved for Brenda's parents. They take in their niece, because her parents are going through a bad divorce - but then they find they have no room. Their solution? Give the niece their daughter's bedroom, and shove the daughter into a closet. Harry Potter, but in reverse. Someone carves a threatening message on their daughter's walls, in blood, and instead of comforting her, or questioning the niece, or calling the freaking police if they believed it was done by an intruder, they get upset with their daughter for being angry about it. Repeat pattern with the burnt carcass of a bird thar shows up in a Jack O'Lantern on Brenda's desk. Someone's threatening their kid, and they're more concerned with her hostility towards her cousin. Point Horrors are full of absent parents and absent-minded parents and naïve parents and sometimes just BAD parents, but these ones get the Scumbag Parental Units Of The Year award.

The plot is just too confusing for me. After Brenda finds maggoty meat in her bed, she decides that she needs to kill Halley for real. Then Halley overhears Brenda talking about it, apologises for being rotten, and cries. We're led to believe that Brenda's continuing with the plot to kill Halley, but then at the party they switch costumes and Brenda gets stabbed instead of Halley, cleverly drawing out the prankster and potential killer. The problem is that it's never made clear whether a) Brenda actually planned to kill Halley, and just changed her mind when Halley apologised, or b) the whole killing-Halley thing was one elaborate plot to draw out the prankster. There are too many red herrings in this book, and the amount of twists and turns make it damn near impossible - for this girl, at least - to know what's going on.

So, two stars. Although it's a bit higher on the two-star rating than, say, Hit and Run.

Verdict: A big disappointment, due to an overly complicated plot and unlikable characters.

A Book Review - The Baby-Sitter III by R.L. Stine (Point Horror)

Luckily this is the last Baby-Sitter book to review - I don't have #4 - because I don't have much to say that I didn't write in the review for the first book. (See reviews for #1 here and #2 here.)

This entry in the miniseries focuses less on Jenny and more on her cousin Debra. Jenny goes to stay with Debra's family for the summer, to recover from the last year. But she's still having nightmares, and she's starting to see Mr Hagen everywhere, even when she's awake. Then Debra - also a babysitter - starts getting the same phone calls. Has one of Jenny's stalkers moved onto stalking Debra?

Debra's quite a different character from Jenny - more of a flirtatious, extroverted party girl - so having her as the protagonist makes a nice change. Despite this, the book is darker and scarier than the previous two, with potential threats appearing from all sides - the ghost of Mr Hagen, a sinister ex-nanny who still has a key to the house where Debra babysits, and Jenny's odd boyfriend Cal, as well as the final showdown.

Poor old Jen, she really doesn't deserve to go through this again.

Verdict: Not great, not awful. A decent continuation of Jenny's story.

A Book Review - The Cemetery / The Ripper by D.E. Athkins (Point Horror)

Oh Em Gee this book scared me when I was a kid. The British title for this is The Cemetery (US title: The Ripper) and I first read it when my Papa bought me a copy when I was 9 or 10, and sleeping alone on the top floor of my father's gothic Hampstead almost-mansion, right next to - you guessed it, a cemetery.

Yeah, nightmare central. I've never been so glad for my bratty baby sisters to wake me up at 4am.

This time around, it's still a pretty horrific read. I've read it enough times by now, and remember it well enough, that it doesn't shock me the way it did. Yet it is still quite chilling.

On Halloween, a bunch of friends - well, sort of friends - have a private party on the Point (a sort of rock promontory thing) right next to an ancient cemetery. They get the bright idea to have a séance, but then move onto hide and seek - during which one of them is brutally murdered. They don't know whether to suspect each other, or some crazy stranger who might have been lurking around, or if it's something more sinister. Then a second one of them is murdered, and a third, and a house is set on fire. And Charity - the lead character, as much as there IS a lead in this book - has to find out what's happening and how to stop it.

As Point Horrors go, this one is a bit bizarre. For starters, there isn't one single protagonist who the action focuses on - we start with eleven characters, who all get their own sections where we see the action filtered through their eyes and thoughts. This makes for a lot of info-dumping, but as I've mentioned before, I LIKE an info dump - I find it more interesting than conversation a lot of the time. It also make for shallow characters - eleven leads all wanting page time in a short book means that nobody gets explored in depth. Yet, in this particular book, I think having shallow characters works. It keeps the focus on the action and fear. Don't get me wrong, some of them are very likeable. (And others are loathsome - which, to me, is always better than boring.)

These are not squeaky-clean teenagers. They drink and smoke, and allusions are made to sex - even promiscuous sex - although nothing is stated outright. I kind of like this - it makes a nice change, keeps things fresh. The book itself is not squeaky-clean either: the violence is nasty and often graphic. All in all it's a much darker book than most Point Horrors.

There are little details that I like about the book, things that you wouldn't miss if they were absent, but having them present provides that little extra zing. For example, the names really suit their characters. Cyndi Moray - sleek and dangerous, like the eel. Lara Stepford - classically perfect, at least on the surface. Jane Wales - plain Jane, sweet and old-fashioned. Dorian Moray - elegant and handsome and refined, hiding the nastiness underneath. I suppose someone who chooses a nom de plume like D.E. Athkins (Death Kins) knows the importance of names.

Athkins' writing style is often cynical, sometimes humorous, and brilliant at capturing the essence of the character whose thoughts we're hearing. Take this passage from Cyndi's brain:

Her father, who was inexplicably home tonight, would probably keep the guys trapped in the library, pouring out drinks, and weird fatherly charm. And Wills, who was Lara's current entertainment for, oh, the next ten minutes, would drink his, making that careful, idle, polite, endless conversation that boys with names like William Lawrence Howell were so good at making. Dade, on the other hand, who was all lies and laughter, would say no, thank you, he was driving. But the truth was, he just liked saying no. He liked being in control. Dade was very big on control.

I personally find this style of writing to be excellently entertaining, while my friend finds it frivolous and overblown. I guess you need to make up your own minds.

Verdict: As scattered as my review of it - but it makes it work. Pretty darn scary.