Scan barcode
A review by paulabrandon
The New Boy by R.L. Stine
4.0
I can still remember when I read this for the first time! I would always miss lunch a couple of times a week and save the $5. So, armed with about $10, I could go to the bookshop and grab the latest Fear Street on the weekend! I was a resourceful lass. And my, books were cheaper back in January 1994, weren't they? Anyway, I read this on a Saturday night, a horror movie on the TV in front of me, but my 14 year-old eyes only had room for the book in front of me. In it, three girls make a bet about dating hot new boy Ross. But after a date, Janie's friends start turning up dead!
The nostalgia surrounding this probably makes me rate it higher, but I still believe it's one of Stine's better Fear Street books. Everything isn't as it seems, and the plot actually bears a lot of similarities to the domestic noir thrillers we get nowadays, with a woman unsure if she can actually trust the man she digs. Stine borrowed the "I think I'm in a closet with a dead body" cliffhanger chapter ending later on in I Saw You That Night.
If I didn't have literally hundreds of books on my to-be-read pile, I'd revisit this one. It's another Fear Street book I can still remember vividly despite it being so many years since I last read it.
The nostalgia surrounding this probably makes me rate it higher, but I still believe it's one of Stine's better Fear Street books. Everything isn't as it seems, and the plot actually bears a lot of similarities to the domestic noir thrillers we get nowadays, with a woman unsure if she can actually trust the man she digs. Stine borrowed the "I think I'm in a closet with a dead body" cliffhanger chapter ending later on in I Saw You That Night.
If I didn't have literally hundreds of books on my to-be-read pile, I'd revisit this one. It's another Fear Street book I can still remember vividly despite it being so many years since I last read it.