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A review by dtaylorbooks
The Surprise Party by R.L. Stine
4.0
I’ve found with the older Fear Street books versus the newer titles (this is #2 against, let’s say #25 and on just for a number) that the characters aren’t so obnoxious, they aren’t caricatures of people, they aren’t all that awful to each other. I don’t know why that shift happened but I find myself liking these older titles better than their newer successors just because the characters seem more real.
Here Ellen, the girlfriend of a boy killed the year before, is coming back into town and her old best friend, Meg, wants to throw her a surprise party. Once she sets that in stone scary things start to happen and she starts to get threatened. Someone’s trying to force her to call off the party but she’s stubborn and won’t do it. She refused to be cowed. I liked that about her.
The warnings escalate and Tony, Meg’s boyfriend, starts to get weirder and weirder and we’re led to believe that Tony was the one who actually killed Evan. The red herring does a good job until the twist comes into play and that’s where we see a little bit of the crappy characters that are far more prevalent in the later books. At least it wasn’t pervasive and it was only for a moment. Doesn’t make the character any less crappy but it’s not shoved in my face either.
The real murderer is at least present in the story and more than just a background character, which I liked. In later books twists where the real antagonist is someone you had no clue even existed in the story become the norm. At least here it’s not such a mind-boggling revelation and with hindsight you can actually connect some dots (at least I think you should be able to do that, being completely blindsided by the real antagonist because they weren’t actually in the story at all isn’t a twist, it’s just crappy writing). Not too many but enough to go ‘I had a feeling . . .’
I felt the characters reacted in more natural ways to situations, they felt more real as I read about them, and it all grounded the story pretty well in that, at times, it actually felt creepy instead of a parody of a horror story like the later Fear Street books are. I think these original Fear Street books are the real meat of Stine’s writing, when greater care was given to the story and the characters and in making the reader feel scared. Books like THE SURPRISE PARTY are why I like old school YA horror. A bit cheesy, not fully as developed as YA horror now but fun and freaky and a good time to read. More realistic, despite everything.
This one was definitely one of the better Fear Street books.
4
Here Ellen, the girlfriend of a boy killed the year before, is coming back into town and her old best friend, Meg, wants to throw her a surprise party. Once she sets that in stone scary things start to happen and she starts to get threatened. Someone’s trying to force her to call off the party but she’s stubborn and won’t do it. She refused to be cowed. I liked that about her.
The warnings escalate and Tony, Meg’s boyfriend, starts to get weirder and weirder and we’re led to believe that Tony was the one who actually killed Evan. The red herring does a good job until the twist comes into play and that’s where we see a little bit of the crappy characters that are far more prevalent in the later books. At least it wasn’t pervasive and it was only for a moment. Doesn’t make the character any less crappy but it’s not shoved in my face either.
The real murderer is at least present in the story and more than just a background character, which I liked. In later books twists where the real antagonist is someone you had no clue even existed in the story become the norm. At least here it’s not such a mind-boggling revelation and with hindsight you can actually connect some dots (at least I think you should be able to do that, being completely blindsided by the real antagonist because they weren’t actually in the story at all isn’t a twist, it’s just crappy writing). Not too many but enough to go ‘I had a feeling . . .’
I felt the characters reacted in more natural ways to situations, they felt more real as I read about them, and it all grounded the story pretty well in that, at times, it actually felt creepy instead of a parody of a horror story like the later Fear Street books are. I think these original Fear Street books are the real meat of Stine’s writing, when greater care was given to the story and the characters and in making the reader feel scared. Books like THE SURPRISE PARTY are why I like old school YA horror. A bit cheesy, not fully as developed as YA horror now but fun and freaky and a good time to read. More realistic, despite everything.
This one was definitely one of the better Fear Street books.
4