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3.18 AVERAGE
3.18 AVERAGE
A different sort of cheese but something a little more robust, I think. Hoh’s characters are a bit more fleshed out, have better personalities, aren’t crappy people to each other. So already things are looking up.
What I will say against the Nightmare Hall books as a whole is that sometimes it can’t decide if it wants to be in high school or college. Talk of being in home room (not a thing in college) and just the general feel of the setting a lot of the time felt more high school when directly related to the classes themselves. It really wasn’t too sure of itself in that regard. And then it would talk about roommates and the campus and off-campus housing and it felt a little more college there but then SCHOOL would come back up and it would flip flop again. It made for a kind of jerky read from a setting standpoint.
As for the story Hoh does a good job of setting up suspense. All signs definitely point to Quinn doing these things while she’s sleepwalking but the only thing we don’t have is why and you’re left to claw through everything to figure that out while more people get attacked. Once other clues start getting dropped that work against Quinn, the suspense around her sleepwalking starts to crack and before long that theory is disproved. Even then that opens a whole new can of worms because who could it be then and still, WHY?
I wouldn’t say NIGHT WALKER was so much scary as it was suspenseful. People got hurt but no one actually died, there was never any kind of supernatural element to the plot, and all you had was, essentially, a murder mystery without the murder. Which is fine. I didn’t mind that at all. But it’s not horror. It was creepier when the potential was on Quinn possibly doing these things in her sleep and not knowing about it, or why she was doing it. Once that dissolved the suspense kind of went with it. It tapered off after that for me and once all the clues clicked into place to reveal who it really was it was just kind of meh. Standard fair, really.
THE NIGHT WALKER is still better than the later Fear Street books just because all of the characters are better and more realistic but I definitely wasn’t scared reading it. Suspenseful, sure. But not scary.
3.5
What I will say against the Nightmare Hall books as a whole is that sometimes it can’t decide if it wants to be in high school or college. Talk of being in home room (not a thing in college) and just the general feel of the setting a lot of the time felt more high school when directly related to the classes themselves. It really wasn’t too sure of itself in that regard. And then it would talk about roommates and the campus and off-campus housing and it felt a little more college there but then SCHOOL would come back up and it would flip flop again. It made for a kind of jerky read from a setting standpoint.
As for the story Hoh does a good job of setting up suspense. All signs definitely point to Quinn doing these things while she’s sleepwalking but the only thing we don’t have is why and you’re left to claw through everything to figure that out while more people get attacked. Once other clues start getting dropped that work against Quinn, the suspense around her sleepwalking starts to crack and before long that theory is disproved. Even then that opens a whole new can of worms because who could it be then and still, WHY?
I wouldn’t say NIGHT WALKER was so much scary as it was suspenseful. People got hurt but no one actually died, there was never any kind of supernatural element to the plot, and all you had was, essentially, a murder mystery without the murder. Which is fine. I didn’t mind that at all. But it’s not horror. It was creepier when the potential was on Quinn possibly doing these things in her sleep and not knowing about it, or why she was doing it. Once that dissolved the suspense kind of went with it. It tapered off after that for me and once all the clues clicked into place to reveal who it really was it was just kind of meh. Standard fair, really.
THE NIGHT WALKER is still better than the later Fear Street books just because all of the characters are better and more realistic but I definitely wasn’t scared reading it. Suspenseful, sure. But not scary.
3.5
challenging
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Quinn Hadley thought she had left her sleepwalking behind when she turned 16. However, it has come back. Her long-suffering roommate Tobie Thomason has had to stop her several times. The condition is not only embarassing, it's dangerous. As a teenager, she was told the condition was caused by stress, and Quinn admits that life in college hasn't been easy so far. There are difficult classes and her main squeeze Simon Kent is seriously ghosting her. She has her friends' Ivy, Suze, Danny's support, and a sympathetic ear from some residents of Nightingale Hall, but Quinn is determined to not be a burden and deal with the problem herself.
Things are about to get worse, however. As Quinn discovers that she's getting up to a whole lot more mischief asleep then she could have dreamed of. Or something.
'The Night Walker' is one of my favorites so far in the series. It's well plotted and as ridiculous as some events become, the sense of danger here is much more realistic here, and therefore more scary. Quinn is herself proactive about her problem and takes some steps to get a handle on her condition instead of falling to pieces. She is a bit unreliable at times about giving us information, but that's part and parcel with most thrillers, so that's probably a plus to most other readers. As to where this fits on a greater timeline within the series, I can't say exactly, though there are character references to the first book and 'Scream Team' so we're still talking about a devastating level of attacks and/or deaths on campus in a small time frame.
Nightmare Hall
Next #10: 'Sorority Sister'
Previous #8: 'The Experiment
Things are about to get worse, however. As Quinn discovers that she's getting up to a whole lot more mischief asleep then she could have dreamed of. Or something.
'The Night Walker' is one of my favorites so far in the series. It's well plotted and as ridiculous as some events become, the sense of danger here is much more realistic here, and therefore more scary. Quinn is herself proactive about her problem and takes some steps to get a handle on her condition instead of falling to pieces. She is a bit unreliable at times about giving us information, but that's part and parcel with most thrillers, so that's probably a plus to most other readers. As to where this fits on a greater timeline within the series, I can't say exactly, though there are character references to the first book and 'Scream Team' so we're still talking about a devastating level of attacks and/or deaths on campus in a small time frame.
Nightmare Hall
Next #10: 'Sorority Sister'
Previous #8: 'The Experiment
informative
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No