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A review by motherbooker
Beach House by R.L. Stine
2.0
From my review at motherbookerblog.com:
"I’ll be honest, my recollections of this book basically just focused on the shark attack so I was surprised by the additional time period. In fact, everything but the beginning and the ending were a complete mystery to me upon rereading… which is probably a good thing. It meant I was perpetually confused by the plot instead of just waiting for stuff to happen anyway. Although, it’s hardly the most complicated plot to follow. Or the scariest. The fact that I remembered it as the pinnacle of my adolescent brush with horror is a sorry state of affairs. I was even more pathetic than I let myself remember.
What I can say now, as an adult 30 year old, is that this book is so worrying for so many reasons. I know fiction has moved on since the 90s but the fact that we were able and, in most cases, encouraged to read these books is something to be ashamed of. For a start, the way that Stine approaches gender is just bad. As I’ve already made plain, the guy’s obsession with a skinny blonde’s tiny bikini’s is uncomfortable but, on top of that, non of his female characters are presented in a positive way. In fact, all of them are awful. The girl of the infamous shark attack is killed because she dares to go on a date with another man. The dirty whore. Now I’m not suggesting that Stine is trying to say promiscuous teenagers deserve to be eaten by deadly fish but he doesn’t exactly portray her as innocent. Then there’s the fact that one of the main female characters is in a “loving” relationship with a guy who is so jealous and potentially violent that she’s scared of him. It’s all so wrong.
Quite frankly, all of these characters are terrible in their own way and, quite frankly, I’d have supported all of them being killed horribly. I’m not sure what teenagers did to Stine during his life but he certainly was more than happy to kill them off in horrible ways in his books. Horrible and utterly preposterous ways. I mean I’m all for stupid plot twists but this one was just so random. It doesn’t work with the rest of the story and is just insane. It kind of feels like Stine had one two separate ideas that were both too short for a full book so found the flimsiest possible premise to stick them together. However, as a nostalgic read, Beach House was a bit of fun. The 1950s storyline is far more engrossing than the modern day one and it far less troublesome. But it’s a stupid 90s YA horror film. And It was nice to finally get some fucking closure. It’s just a shame realising the book I’ve been getting wistful about was such a stinker."
"I’ll be honest, my recollections of this book basically just focused on the shark attack so I was surprised by the additional time period. In fact, everything but the beginning and the ending were a complete mystery to me upon rereading… which is probably a good thing. It meant I was perpetually confused by the plot instead of just waiting for stuff to happen anyway. Although, it’s hardly the most complicated plot to follow. Or the scariest. The fact that I remembered it as the pinnacle of my adolescent brush with horror is a sorry state of affairs. I was even more pathetic than I let myself remember.
What I can say now, as an adult 30 year old, is that this book is so worrying for so many reasons. I know fiction has moved on since the 90s but the fact that we were able and, in most cases, encouraged to read these books is something to be ashamed of. For a start, the way that Stine approaches gender is just bad. As I’ve already made plain, the guy’s obsession with a skinny blonde’s tiny bikini’s is uncomfortable but, on top of that, non of his female characters are presented in a positive way. In fact, all of them are awful. The girl of the infamous shark attack is killed because she dares to go on a date with another man. The dirty whore. Now I’m not suggesting that Stine is trying to say promiscuous teenagers deserve to be eaten by deadly fish but he doesn’t exactly portray her as innocent. Then there’s the fact that one of the main female characters is in a “loving” relationship with a guy who is so jealous and potentially violent that she’s scared of him. It’s all so wrong.
Quite frankly, all of these characters are terrible in their own way and, quite frankly, I’d have supported all of them being killed horribly. I’m not sure what teenagers did to Stine during his life but he certainly was more than happy to kill them off in horrible ways in his books. Horrible and utterly preposterous ways. I mean I’m all for stupid plot twists but this one was just so random. It doesn’t work with the rest of the story and is just insane. It kind of feels like Stine had one two separate ideas that were both too short for a full book so found the flimsiest possible premise to stick them together. However, as a nostalgic read, Beach House was a bit of fun. The 1950s storyline is far more engrossing than the modern day one and it far less troublesome. But it’s a stupid 90s YA horror film. And It was nice to finally get some fucking closure. It’s just a shame realising the book I’ve been getting wistful about was such a stinker."