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tiffyboomboom's review against another edition
2.0
I felt like some of the literary devices and the descriptions in this book were kinda un-needed,a nd I really didn't care for some of the plot twists
ectracy's review
4.0
3.5 stars:
3 stars for terrible characters
4 stars because it kept me guessing the whole time
3 stars for terrible characters
4 stars because it kept me guessing the whole time
helena5657's review
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
3.5
sammah's review
3.0
Not Stines best effort, because he's questionable at best when it comes to writing in first person. The plot was somewhat interesting I guess, and I must admit I didn't really see the ending coming which was nice. I vaguely remember this one from the 90s, but didn't remember enough to recall specific details.
dtaylorbooks's review
3.0
I know I read this in some Super Chiller anthology or something. Like one that combined three or four similar stories of Stine’s. But this is not the first time I’ve read THE DEAD LIFEGUARD in the last couple of years, and it was just as cheesy as I remembered it being.
The broader premise is a girl named Lindsay is starting her summer job at the country club as a lifeguard, but she shows up with a two year old ID and not on the list of lifeguards. While the other lifeguards are dying she’s finding out that maybe, just maybe, she might already be dead. DUN DUN DUN.
THE DEAD LIFEGUARD is classic Fear Street, with superficial characters that say huh a lot, weird characters that don’t really know how to people but act like how they’re acting is completely normal, and a really thin premise and resolution that, especially reading with today’s eyes, is laughable at best.
I’m not going to get into how Stine likes to play around with mental illness for the sake of plot (he does, especially in this one), or how he writes really weird teenagers as if he’s never come in contact with one and has no idea how they act. I’ll just say that this was actually a fairly creepy story as it built, until the big reveal happened and then it was just like “oh that’s dumb.” Proof that endings are everything and can kill an otherwise decent story if done poorly.
Not my favorite Fear Street book. Definitely not one of the best. Maybe somewhere in the middle, because it’s not the absolute worst, but it’s still kind of bad. Be sure to check out my recap of THE DEAD LIFEGUARD over on The Devil’s Elbow on the 23rd!
2.5
The broader premise is a girl named Lindsay is starting her summer job at the country club as a lifeguard, but she shows up with a two year old ID and not on the list of lifeguards. While the other lifeguards are dying she’s finding out that maybe, just maybe, she might already be dead. DUN DUN DUN.
THE DEAD LIFEGUARD is classic Fear Street, with superficial characters that say huh a lot, weird characters that don’t really know how to people but act like how they’re acting is completely normal, and a really thin premise and resolution that, especially reading with today’s eyes, is laughable at best.
I’m not going to get into how Stine likes to play around with mental illness for the sake of plot (he does, especially in this one), or how he writes really weird teenagers as if he’s never come in contact with one and has no idea how they act. I’ll just say that this was actually a fairly creepy story as it built, until the big reveal happened and then it was just like “oh that’s dumb.” Proof that endings are everything and can kill an otherwise decent story if done poorly.
Not my favorite Fear Street book. Definitely not one of the best. Maybe somewhere in the middle, because it’s not the absolute worst, but it’s still kind of bad. Be sure to check out my recap of THE DEAD LIFEGUARD over on The Devil’s Elbow on the 23rd!
2.5
millennial_dandy's review
2.0
'The Dead Lifeguard' has an incredibly strong start; the phone call 'Mouse' makes to his dead friend, Terry, is delightfully deranged. However, given that he's supposed to be keeping it together enough while at the pool that no one knows he's the killer, his subsequent deranged phone calls feel out of character; there's no way the guy on the phone and the lifeguard he turns out to be could be the same person, especially considering how quickly he breaks character once caught. There's no reason to think that that guy could have held it together all that time. The biggest misstep, though, was including him as a POV character in a first person story and having him be completely normal even in his own mind except during the chapters where he's 'Mouse.'
The other glaring issue with 'The Dead Lifeguard' is protagonist Lindsay's entire plotline. By all accounts, what you think is happening should have been what was happening, and the plot twist about who she really is relies on such a heavy bucket-load of coincidences that it feels less 'aha--that explains everything!' and more 'I'm sorry, what?'
Third, why was Danny even a POV character other than to let the reader know how hot all the lifeguard girls were? And perhaps most frustratingly, what was up with May-Ann? The answer to the question of where she kept going at night tracked, so that wasn't the problem, and she honestly felt the best fleshed-out out of any of these people, but why was she so obsessed with the ghosts of swimmers past except to fuel the main tension of 'is there or is there not a ghost?' It did not for any reason need to be her entire personality.
Finally, and this flaw honestly surprised me, none of these characters react like real people to the brutal murder of not just one, but two of their own. Suspension of disbelief allow the pool to stay open despite all the murders, but it does not allow these kids to have a pool party afterwards and have it brushed off as 'they're just trying not to think about it.'
Teenagers are hormone driven, certainly, but I, someone who has in my life been a teenager around teenage boys, doubt highly, that days after his slam piece got her head melted off in a fire, any person, teenager or otherwise, would be out flirting with some hotties at the pool, much less going off to have relations with them.
The one moment that warranted 'The Dead Lifeguard's' inclusion in the 'Super Chiller' subset of the 'Fear Street' series was the dream sequence. If you've read a lot of Stine's work, you'll know his penchant for writing rotting flesh sliding off of faces, and he does it here to pretty good effect. Indeed, the strongest subplot (up until the 'reveal' at the end) was easily 'why does Lindsay keep seeing a drowned girl in the pool that no one else sees?' It's not hard to figure out (or at least, figure out what the text leads us to believe), but the isolation, the setting of the pool at night, all the elements around it are great.
All in all, there were some good individual ideas here, but the ambition of a multi-First-Person POV narrative was a, dare I say, a (belly)flop.
The other glaring issue with 'The Dead Lifeguard' is protagonist Lindsay's entire plotline. By all accounts, what you think is happening should have been what was happening, and the plot twist about who she really is relies on such a heavy bucket-load of coincidences that it feels less 'aha--that explains everything!' and more 'I'm sorry, what?'
Third, why was Danny even a POV character other than to let the reader know how hot all the lifeguard girls were? And perhaps most frustratingly, what was up with May-Ann? The answer to the question of where she kept going at night tracked, so that wasn't the problem, and she honestly felt the best fleshed-out out of any of these people, but why was she so obsessed with the ghosts of swimmers past except to fuel the main tension of 'is there or is there not a ghost?' It did not for any reason need to be her entire personality.
Finally, and this flaw honestly surprised me, none of these characters react like real people to the brutal murder of not just one, but two of their own. Suspension of disbelief allow the pool to stay open despite all the murders, but it does not allow these kids to have a pool party afterwards and have it brushed off as 'they're just trying not to think about it.'
Teenagers are hormone driven, certainly, but I, someone who has in my life been a teenager around teenage boys, doubt highly, that days after his slam piece got her head melted off in a fire, any person, teenager or otherwise, would be out flirting with some hotties at the pool, much less going off to have relations with them.
The one moment that warranted 'The Dead Lifeguard's' inclusion in the 'Super Chiller' subset of the 'Fear Street' series was the dream sequence. If you've read a lot of Stine's work, you'll know his penchant for writing rotting flesh sliding off of faces, and he does it here to pretty good effect. Indeed, the strongest subplot (up until the 'reveal' at the end) was easily 'why does Lindsay keep seeing a drowned girl in the pool that no one else sees?' It's not hard to figure out (or at least, figure out what the text leads us to believe), but the isolation, the setting of the pool at night, all the elements around it are great.
All in all, there were some good individual ideas here, but the ambition of a multi-First-Person POV narrative was a, dare I say, a (belly)flop.
manwithanagenda's review
dark
tense
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
1.5
Fear Street # 37
Amanda flunked Algebra. This means she's enrolled in summer school in the town where they're renting a cabin. It also means her mother, busy writing some article about teens and stress all summer, has to hire a live-in "mother's helper" to take care of Amanda's younger siblings.
Chrissy is perfect. So perfect her parents hire her without checking references, despite Amanda's reasonable objections. Weird things are happening around the house, but only Amanda notices them. The family cat hisses at Chrissy, the canaries are struck dumb, and some people have blood boil out of their facial orifices when Amanda enlists them to help her do a background check on Chrissy. Weird.
This is one of the blatantly supernatural books, and gets lots of crazy points, but there isn't much suspense to the story due to the narrative conceit of the book being a flashback in Amanda's head while she's sitting in juvenile detention. So, we know she's fine.
Note: We have a brief phone cameo with Carter Philips, the heroine of 'The Cheater'.
Fear Street in Publication Order
Next #38: 'The First Horror', 99 Fear Street Trilogy #1
Previous #36: 'The Dead Lifeguard', Super Chiller #6
Amanda flunked Algebra. This means she's enrolled in summer school in the town where they're renting a cabin. It also means her mother, busy writing some article about teens and stress all summer, has to hire a live-in "mother's helper" to take care of Amanda's younger siblings.
Chrissy is perfect. So perfect her parents hire her without checking references, despite Amanda's reasonable objections. Weird things are happening around the house, but only Amanda notices them. The family cat hisses at Chrissy, the canaries are struck dumb, and some people have blood boil out of their facial orifices when Amanda enlists them to help her do a background check on Chrissy. Weird.
This is one of the blatantly supernatural books, and gets lots of crazy points, but there isn't much suspense to the story due to the narrative conceit of the book being a flashback in Amanda's head while she's sitting in juvenile detention. So, we know she's fine.
Note: We have a brief phone cameo with Carter Philips, the heroine of 'The Cheater'.
Fear Street in Publication Order
Next #38: 'The First Horror', 99 Fear Street Trilogy #1
Previous #36: 'The Dead Lifeguard', Super Chiller #6
gabrielarincic's review against another edition
4.0
Ah to moje djetinjstvo. Znate onaj osječaj kad odjednom otkrijete da u knjižnici ipak postoji nešto za vas i onda provedete cijelo ljeto čitajući Fear Street romane.
E za moju prvu knjigu je kriv časopis OK!
Kako li sam samo tada bila oduševljena, ovo je bio vrhunac pisanja u to doba, jednostavno nisam mogla vjerovati da takvo nešto postoji.
Da mi se sada vratiti doma u Hrvatsku i negdje u ladicama pronaći sve romane koje imam, rado bih ih ponovo pročitala.
E za moju prvu knjigu je kriv časopis OK!
Kako li sam samo tada bila oduševljena, ovo je bio vrhunac pisanja u to doba, jednostavno nisam mogla vjerovati da takvo nešto postoji.
Da mi se sada vratiti doma u Hrvatsku i negdje u ladicama pronaći sve romane koje imam, rado bih ih ponovo pročitala.