Sneaking out every night to join her friends in a series of pranks, Diane becomes alarmed when her boyfriend, Lenny, plays a joke on a hated teacher that proves fatal, and she realizes that she and her friends have gone too far.
If there is one thing I always complain about the Fear Street novels, it’s the fact that too often there is nothing worthy of being deemed horror happening in them. Another would be the fact that very little happens on Fear Street and out of the few things that do happen, very few are paranormal-based. That leaves a lot to be wanted from these books. As a child I enjoyed the series, but I don’t recall ever being scared of any of them. I just enjoyed them as thrillers.
This particular book is one of the few that has a true paranormal element to it. It’s also one of the few books I distinctively remember reading when I was younger. Ironically, a few years later, I, too would have to deal with an awful math teacher that everyone despised. In fact, there are so many things that are similar that it’s almost spooky. I know nothing of my teacher’s life outside of school, but within those walls he acted as if he was a god and we should be lucky enough to have him in our presence.
Diane and her friends are just a bunch of bored kids who happen to run into an old friend, Spencer, in the middle of the night. When he invites them to play along with what he calls “Night Games”, it’s obvious this group is on a one way trip to trouble. But honestly, I’m not sure I would call what they did as fun or even a game. Every night they return to their math teacher’s house. Besides that they never do anything else. Realistically they would have spied on several people they knew, not just focused on this one teacher. In fact, if it weren’t for the twist at the end of the book, I would have probably rated this as one of the worst books in the series.
Only when the truth comes to light and you realize the kids are not playing a game, they are the pawns, does it all begin to become interesting. I almost wish it would have continued on, because it does end on such a high note. Sadly, there’s no second book for you to even discover what happens next. But still overall, this book is a solid read, at least for the age group it’s intended for.
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