This is definitely my favorite camp book in the Goosebumps series. It has everything: gaslighting, ghosts, attempted murder, snakes, and betrayal.
It was also scarier than a LOT of other Goosebumps books and it made me start thinking about JK Rowling.
The genius of (the morally questionable) Rowling was that her books graduated in difficulty, subject matter, and characterization as they went on. Kids who were eleven when the first Harry Potter book came out got to grow up WITH Harry and deal with more and more mature things right next to him as they had to deal with more mature things in their own lives.
It was brilliant.
And I’m not saying Stine is Rowling or anything (Stine is OBVIOUSLY better than Rowling even if he never read the story I sent him as a kid. At least he’s not a TERF. That I know of - please don’t correct me), but the books have been getting scarier and it would be WILD if the last one served as a bridge to the scarier and far more violent Fear Street books.
Imagine: A kid goes through a scarier than average Goosebumps story and the family moves in the end like Welcome to Dead
House only pull up to a new house in a new town and the kid gets out to survey the scene. It’s quiet and he realizes that there aren’t any birds singing. And it’s chilly even though it’s summer. And what does that street sign say?
“Fear Street? What kind of town names a street like that?”
And then nothing. That’s the end.
I think that would have been the coolest think Stine could have done but, alas, it didn’t work out like that. But we’ll talk about all that later.
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