April Fools - Richie Tankersley Cusick

Oh, RTC, you know I can’t stay away for long. And here I am back again, unable to resist your loving arms with April Fools. And you know what? It’s pretty pretty good. If you replace the word ‘good’ with the word ‘shit’, that is. SLAM!




So, let’s set the scene – Belinda is best chums with Hildy and Frank, who are a couple. Belinda once had the hots for Frank herself but he chose Hildy. I don’t know why anyone would have the hots for Frank as he is an absolute imbecile. Exhibit A: the book opens with Belinda, Hildy and Frank driving home from an April Fool’s party (is this a thing?! How come I’ve never been invited to an April Fool’s party?!). Frank is drink driving because drink driving is totally 90s.


Upon reaching a hairpin bend, another car approaches them, honking away, and Frank decides to “give these hotshots a scare.” That’s probably the only time you’ll ever get to read the word ‘hotshot’ and the word ‘honking’ in the same sentence. W00t. And give them a scare Frank does, basically running them off the road and into a gorge. Why is there always a gorge? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a gorge.

Anyway, Belinda wants to help the people in the gorge but Hildy and Frank are all like, “Belinda! Noooo.” And the car in the gorge goes KABOOM, but not before Belinda catches a glimpse of someone burning to death in the car. And also spots a man watching the three of them from above, who suspiciously remains unresponsive to Belinda’s cries for help.

Two weeks later, Hildy and Frank are ragging on Belinda for being upset. Jesus, it’s only been 2 weeks since they basically killed a carful of people Hildy totally tries to justify it by being all, “you know Frank, he’s always joking, that was totally just a joke, and those people should have watched where they were driving, as if their fiery death was EVEN our fault” Umm, Hildy? It kinda was your fault. She even accuses Belinda of being “dramatic”, saying “you’re acting like this is some kind of huge tragedy or something,.” Speechless.

Hildy also thinks they totes did the right thing by not telling the police about the accident, because Frank would get chucked off the swim team for drink driving, and Hildy was meant to be grounded so her parents would be pissed. Yeah, and the prison thing. Don’t forget the prison thing Hildy. Hildy doesn’t believe Belinda when she says there was a man there watching them. Belinda’s worried this man’s going to come after them. I'd agree that that’s a pretty safe bet

Belinda’s super smart, so she gets hired to be a tutor by some chick called Mrs Thorne. She needs a tutor for her stepson, Adam Thorne as he’s ill. The reason he’s ill is…because of the car accident he was in 2 weeks ago. Dun dun dunn. Mrs Thorne was also in the accident and escaped with just a few bruises, together with her husband, Adam’s dad who wasn’t so lucky and is currently in a coma. She’s a really cold bitch and she makes no secret of the fact that she hates Adam and really doesn’t give a shit about him.

Belinda tells Hildy but Hildy’s a psychopath and still doesn’t understand why she should care. There’s something about that Hildy that I really like. Hildy actually finds the whole situation hilariously funny. Like, irony or whatever. Frank and Hildy both think Belinda is insane for even thinking that this could be the SAME car accident. Okay psychos, either way you’ve definitely killed someone though, right?

Hildy actually thinks it all sounds incredibly romantic and encourages Belinda to agree to tutor Adam Thorne. He might be cute, right? And Frank thinks everything’s okay because there’s no way anyone could have survived their car accident. Him and Hildy are really made for each other.

Belinda goes to meet Adam at his super swish mansion and is warned by Mrs Thorne that he’s pretty hostile. Sure enough, Adam slinks in on a walking cane and talks to her from the shadows. It's kind of a beauty and the beast type bonding moment. Pathetically, Belinda actually faints. And then as she comes round she sees his face hovering over her and he’s all covered in gashes and icky looking. Understandably, Adam’s a bit upset that she actually fainted and Belinda leaves. There’s a spark between these two through, a spark I tells ya.

On her way out of her house, Belinda meets the butler or whatever, Mr Cobbs. Its quite a dramatic meeting, given that he’s raising a bloody meat cleaver over head. But don’t worry, that has a perfectly innocent explanation I guess. She also discovers shitloads of boxes full of poisonous snakes. Sigh, rich people, eh?
Cobbs make Belinda a lovely cup of tea. She figures out that he’s English because of : “Your accent of course. And you’re very…stiff.” Well, excuuuuuse me for having manners, Miss USA.

Belinda discovers that Adam has a stepbrother called Noel, who is Mrs Thorne’s son. She also sees a picture of Adam from before the accident. He’s a hotty mctotty. “He looked beautiful and evil at the same time and Belinda’s eye filled with tears.” How romantic.

So Belinda decides to take the job, and a bunch of weird stuff starts happening to her – she finds a doll’s head covered in blood and entrails in her mailbox, she gets sent a calendar with April Fool’s day marked in blood etc etc. Belinda suspects that hilarious prankster Frank may be behind all this but he totally flips out when she confronts him and is all, “you’d better not go to the police, cos if you do….”

A couple of days later, Belinda walks through the park to get to the Thorne’s house and a “windblown leaf” makes her jump. This girl really needs to toughen up. Then she realises that she’s wearing the jacket from the night of the accident, and it has a rag she picked up that fateful night in her pocket, it’s a blood-soaked hankie with the initial A on it. Gasp! A for….Adam?

When Belinda reaches the house, Mrs Thorne’s leaving for a business trip for a few days. Adam freaks Belinda out and she runs out of his room – bumping into his step-brother Noel. Who is also a hotty mctotty, but in more of a laid back, less…DANGEROUS kind of way. Noel offers to drive Belinda home.

They talk about Adam – Noel says he really doesn’t know Adam very well – their parents only married 3 years ago and they’ve been at separate schools. Noel doesn’t even know where Adam’s mother lives. Noel says that Adam’s always been kind of weird and scary, that has nothing to do with the accident. He also tells Belinda that his own mother (Mrs Thorne) is a massive bitch who only married Adam’s dad for the money. A girl’s gotta hustle for a living, yo.

A few days later, Belinda goes back to the Thorne house and Cobbs acts all weird, and is like you should leave and never come back and Belinda kind of laughs and then he’s like, I need to shut the door now, so come in, and I’m like WTF is going on here. Cobbs is properly dry. I think he’s meant to be super witty. He’s not. Belinda decides she likes Cobbs after blabbing on to him about her problems whilst he listens politely. These Americans huh. Belinda doesn’t even bother visiting Adam. Hmmm, maybe RTC has upped the inappropriate relationship stakes and Belinda’s going to start macking with the ancient British butler.

On her walk home through the park, Belinda sees a car there “waiting for her”. This book really makes very little sense. The car doesn’t move or anything but Belinda just totally loses her shit and runs back to the Thorne house, to the safety of Cobbs. But Cobbs doesn’t open the door, Adam does.Oh yeah, he also has a snake hanging around his neck. As you do.

Belinda’s bleeding from when she spazzed out and fell over after the horror of seeing a stationary car, so Adam fixes up her cut. Adam reveals all this creepy knowledge he knows about Belinda and he’s all stroking his finger down her face and stuff, and kind of hinting that he’s seen her somewhere before and that she might have a secret and also keeps going on about how gross his accident was. What a downer.

Luckily, Noel appears and saves Belinda from the weirdness. He drives her home and she tells him that someone in a car was ‘chasing’ her (which, frankly, I think is stretching the truth.) Belinda’s suspicious that it could have been Adam in the car. Noel thinks this is a ridiculous idea as Adam can barely even walk.

Hildy arrives round at Belinda’s house, thankfully sans her douche bag boyfriend Frank this time. Belinda tells Hildy that now she’s sure that it was the same accident, and that Adam may have seen her and is now wreaking some terrible revenge. Noel arrives at Belinda’s house again like 5 minutes after dropping her off. Why? And then they spot Cobbs, standing outside the house and staring creepily inside. Never trust the British, am I right? Noel and Hildy convince Belinda that her eye(s) may have been playing tricks on her.

Noel decides to tell Belinda some stuff about Adam – Adam has a history of imaganing things and being a compulsive liar. Noel also tells her that Adam is having a delusion that someone else started the car accident. Ummm, that ain’t no delusion, bro. And Mrs Thorne doesn’t even remember what happened, she’s always on a shitlaod of pills. Buzzing her tits off, mate. Oh, there’s also some picnic thing that people keep going on about and Noel asks Belinda to be his date.

Next day, Belinda’s back at the Thorne house and she marches right up to Adam’s room, having decided not to put up with any more of his creepy shit. She’s all, turn on the lights, yo! I feel so empowered! Adam’s all creepy as usual, and the bloody handkerchief that Belinda found in her pocket about a million years ago falls out her pocket. And Adam, sees it, and we knows that he knows that this means Belinda was definitely at the accident. Or something.

Belinda freaks out and uses the phone to call a cab. She overhears Adam on the phone to his dad’s doctor, and he’s all, when’s the old guy gonna hurry up and die? And basically drops massive hints that he’s going to kill his dad somehow. This kid’s not even TRYING to act sane.

At the picnic, Belinda and Noel are all laughter and joy. They suck face. Noel drives Belinda home,. They get rammed from behind by another car. They end up skidding and just miss landing in a ditch. Belinda tells Noel she thinks it was Adam and he loses his shit, all Adam can't even walk, as if he’d do this, and how comes you’re always going on about Adam anyway?

They drive back to Noel's house together, as Belinda doesn’t feel safe staying at home. Steamy. Adam and Cobbs are both out, having gone to the movies together. Hmm. I wonder if they DROVE to the movies. Noel lends Belinda a silky nightgown of his moms, then comes back and gets all cosy with her in the nightgown, and he’s all, mmmHMMM, this is even better on you than it is on mom. So. Very. Wrong.

Belinda ends up telling Noel the whole horrible story, and the subsequent attempts that someone has been making to terrify her. Noel suggests that the man watching from the cliff could have been Adam, and that he just lied about being in the car when the accident happened. Belinda seems surprised by this possibility. I thought that’s what she was thinking all along but WHATEVER. They come to the conclusion that Adam could have caused the crash on purpose to kill his dad and step mom. As they discuss it, they hear a door slam in the house. Uh oh, is that Adam listening in?

Belinda has a nightmare and then wakes up to find one of those pesky poisonous snakes in her bed. Oh the horror, the horror etc. Cobbs comes to fetch it. Yeah, I bet he “fetches” it good if you know what I mean.



Next morning, Belinda quizzes her homeboy Cobbs about Adam some MORE, asking him if he thinks that Adam is crazy. Cobbs tells her a little story: Adam’s parents fought loads when he was a kid, but he adored his father. Adams parents sent him away for a while to live with a mean aunt and uncle, Adam tried to run away and claimed they were abusing him, which they denied. Adam’s parents were too busy divorcing to bother with Adam, so they just left him there, until one night Adam and his aunt and uncle were in a car accident that killed the aunt and uncle. With her dying breath, Adam’s aunt gasped out the words “Adam…steering wheel…” but nothing was ever proved.

On her way out, Belinda spies Adam ruffling through some papers in his dad’s study and laughing evilly. I’m a little bit worried that Adam might actually be retarded.

Belinda goes to meet Hildy at the mall and now she has a new hypotheses – what if the car accident really wasn’t their fault, but the man on the hill was Adam, and he caused the accident and now he’s hunting down the witnesses – eg Belinda, Frank and Hildy. Despite the fact that they didn’t even witness him DO anything. And they clearly believe it’s their fault. Oh well, character motivation never WAS RTC’s strong point.

Belinda lets slip to Hildy that she told Noel all about what they did and Hildy goes nuts and tells Belinda that Frank played all those silly pranks on her such as the doll’s head one and the calendar one and the other ones that I can’t be bothered to write about. Frank is such a dick. Belinda agrees with me on this one, and goes to find Frank at the school’s pool to give him a stern telling off. Frank isn’t there – but his jacket is, floating ominously in the water. Hildy and Belinda have a total bust up, Hildy goes totally below the belt but for some reason Belinda keeps trying to apologise. They are NOT friends anymore.

Noel arrives at Belinda’s house later and drives her round to Hildy’s and Frank’s – neither of them are at home. Some random man shows up at Belinda’s door with an envelope for Belinda that’s he’s been paid to deliver by some guy. Inside the envelope is a braid of Hildy’s hair.

Belinda is now convinced that something terrible has happened to both Hildy and Frank, so Noel drives her round to his creepy house to calm her down. Cobbs isn’t in, he’s left a note to say that Mr Thorne has taken a turn for the worse so he’s gone to the hospital to be with him. Noel gets a call from Adam to say he is also at the hospital. Noel decides that he should go too, so off he pops, leaving Belinda all alone in the house….or IS she?!

Belinda does a bit of snooping and finds Mr Thorne’s last will and testament. She comes to the terrible conclusion that Adam has lured Noel away from the house to kill him, so that he will be the sole beneficiary of the will.

The phone rings and Belinda answers. It’s Cobbs – Noel isn’t at the hospital. And neither is Adam. Aaargh! Belinda hears someone moving around in the house - and out pops Adam, looking all scarred and inhuman and gross. She jumps back and somehow lands into Noel’s arms (I guess Noel has also arrived back home)

Adam suddenly stops limping and Noel reveals that he’s in on it too – Noel was the man watching from the hill! Noel and Adam force Belinda into a car with them, and in true villain style, they spill all. Adam explains that the car accident was all Noel’s idea as a way of killing their parents and getting the cash. Noel had worked it all out, exactly where to crash so Adam would be safe but the others would die (sounds like kind of a shonky plan to me), and then Belinda and her friends rocked up in a car tootling away and threw everything of balance. Meaning that Adam had to crash the car in the wrong spot and he got all injured and his stepmom survived and he’s totally pissed about it.

They take Belinda to a road with a gorge and they shove her into another car, containing Hildy and an unconscious Frank. Adam is going to push the car over the edge of the gorge to make it look like an accident. They also reveal that they’ve already killed Mrs Thorne, and she’s waiting for them at the bottom of the gorge. As the car starts rolling towards the gorge, Adam suddenly turns the gun on Noel and for some reason Belinda cares enough about this scumbag to be like, noooooo! And Noel and Adam start tussling, and then suddenly the police arrive with Cobbs and pull Belinda and her friends to safety. Hurrah!


Cobbs had suspected Noel and Adam were up to something, and then he sneakily listened in on some call and figured it all out or something? He drove to the Thorne house, saw Adam and Noel shoving Belinda into a car and rang the police straightaway “on the car telephone.” Heehee, good old car telephones.

Three days later, Hildy, Frank and Belinda are all A-OK. Hildy finally apologises to Belinda for her shitty behavoiour. Noel and Adam are “going through tests to see if they’re competent to stand trial” Which I guess is a nod to Adam’s possible retardation.

Cobbs arrives to speak to Belinda’s mom. Ok, this bit is fucking RIDICULOUS,. Cobbs barges in acting all British and cute and making tea for everyone and basically asks to come work as a butler for Belinda and her mom for FREE. Because Mr Thorne has left him a shitload of money in his will so he doesn't need payment. What the FUCK. Who decides they want to be a butler FOR FREE. Belinda sobs all over Cobbs about how much she misses Noel even though the guy is scum and Cobbs is all stroking her hair and she’s like, I love you Cobbs, and he’s like, I love you too, miss. And they make out. Well, OK, maybe not the last bit. But STILL!



"would you like some penis with your tea, miss?"

Conclusion: What the hell does this book actually have to do with April Fools day? Apart from the PROLOGUE, which happens to take place on April Fools day. I guess the publishers were just trying to cash in on that lucrative April Fools day merchandising market.

The Bride - D. E. Athkins

What can I say? D.E.Athkins more than lived up to her name, The Bride is a jaw-droppingly fabulous piece of art. It was more like reading an episode of a trashy 90s soap opera than a Point Horror, and for that, D.E.Athkins, I salute you.




Jamie is our lead character, and there really isn’t much to say about her past the fact that she lives in a small town (Point Harbour. Which is kind of distracting to keep reading, give how similar it sounds to Point Horror) and her cousin is Blaine Harrod, hell raising ex-wild child supermodel extraordinaire. Already this book rocks so hard it hurts. The opening scene is Blaine stabbing a fellow supermodel (Alison) through the hand with a letter opener. On a photo shoot. And the photographer is all , “this is fabulous, darlings, we'll sell millions. Millions I tell you! Bwa ha hah ha.” Maybe I’ll send Tyra a copy of this book, I think ANTM could really benefit from a bit more bloodshed, a sprinkling of Battle Royale if you will.

Anyway, Blaine is getting married to Pres Alden, upper crust playboy socialite, in the wedding of the year and Jamie is gonna be a bridesmaid. The wedding’s being held in this big posh hotel just outside of Point Harbour and Jamie gets there a couple of days early so she can p.a.r.t.y. The other bridesmaids include Alison (the supermodel who Blaine stabbed in the opening scene, and who she supposedly has a feud with), Kelly (another supermodel), Pres’s bitchy (but in a fun way) little rich girl sister whose name I forget, and Patricia, Pres’s ice queen ex-fiancee and first cousin (ick) who hates hates hates Blaine with a passion for stealing her man. Ummm, what the fuck. By my counting, Blaine has at least two people she hates acting as bridesmaids for her. I guess that’s just how supermodels roll.

The other characters of note are Clara, who’s Blaine’s PA, and Drew, Kelly’s little brother who’s a totally buff hunk and is Jamie’s love interest. Although Jamie also has the hots for Pres, even though he’s this gross sleazy old man. She’s always like admonishing herself for being a pervert because whenever she sees Pres she starts imaging him naked and stuff. Hands off Jamie, he’s Blaine’s! Here’s a little example of the kind of prose that made me fall in love so deeply with this book. Blaine notices Jamie and Pres flirting and she gives them a supermodel death stare: “At that moment, Blaine had never looked more beautiful. Or more deadly.” Be still, my beating heart.

Later, in her hotel room, Jamie sees…a mirror ghost! Any book that includes a mirror ghost gets an instant thumbs up from me. This mirror ghost is a weeping BRIDE ghost, holding a bunch of roses, and she starts climbing out the mirror. Aaaaarrrghhh! Oh, and the roses kind of glow, and the ghost drops these glowing roses out of the mirror! I’ll repeat: this book includes glowing ghost roses. Now that's what I call classy.

Naturally, Jamie freaks out and runs out of her room, and ends up in Alison and Kelly’s room. Alison is totally a bitch, but in a fun kind of snidey way and you can just tell that she actually has a heart of gold beating beneath her beautiful supermodel exterior.

Kelly tells the story of the ghost bride – years ago, when the hotel was a house, the owner’s daughter fell in love with a gardener in charge of the rose gardens. When her mum found out she paid the gardener to leave and arranged for her daughter to marry some other dude. The daughter died of a broken heart, and was found still wearing her wedding dress. Oh, and the daughter’s name was ROSE (overkill much on the rose thing.) Alison is more sceptical, and she convinces Jamie that she was probably just dreaming.

Kelly and Alison take pity on Jamie and lend her a super swish outfit so she’ll fit in at the glamorous party that evening: “velvet pants and a cropped cashmere top woven with sparkling thread.” Oh, and “an elastic rhinestone bracelet.” What the fuck?

Before the party, they have to get through a boring old wedding rehearsal. Which is livened up considerably when a bunch of dead doves rain start raining down on everyone from a canopy above (they had planned to release live doves as part of the super glamorous supermodel ceremony, natch.)

Apparently, the poor little birdies were all smothered. Is it an accident?? Or is somebody after Blaine??!! Shhrriiiieeek. Hey, Blaine – maybe you shouldn’t have let any of your mortal enemies be your bridesmaids. Just an idea.

Later, at the party in the ballroom, Patricia acts like a total tool and makes all these digs about Blaine just marrying Pres for his money. Poor deluded Patricia is blates still in love with Pres and would take him back in a heartbeat. Let it go honey, he’s a total dog!

Drew ends up taking Jamie to a secret hidden alcove overlooking the ballroom. They kiss, obviously. And then a fire starts. They decide to wait the fire out in their alcove rather than bothering to escape. Nice move guys. And THEN suddenly the ghost bride appears, hovering over another balcony: “a shimmering figure high above the crowd, hovering there like a flaming angel.” Everyone’s like 'aaaaahhh a ghost bride!' And suddenly the fire goes away or something.

Jamie hangs out in Alison and Kelly’s room later. Jamie is surprised to see Allison wearing “plaid flannel pj’s and fuzzy scuffs.” Anyone know what fuzzy scuffs are? I’m pretty curious here. Kelly decides that the ghost bride has definitely come back to haunt Blaine’s wedding. I’ll be pretty happy if there’s some elaborate Scooby Doo style explanation for this ghost. I’m thinking there must be, since nobody seems that nervous about being haunted.

Jamie lists through all the suspects who may want to sabotage the wedding(basically all the bridesmaids) all you need to know is, they all sorta have reasons for maybe wanting to get revenge on Blaine. Jamie even considers the possibility of Blaine staging all this stuff herself in order to get more publicity.

Jamie sneaks into the ballroom in the middle of the night to do some ghostbustin’ . She goes to the top level of the ballroom and finds the box that the ghost appeared to be floating in, inside the box is… Drew. He also wanted to catch a ghost and had fallen asleep, without finding any clues.

At breakfast, Patricia arrives, bringing with her her usual bitchily cool demeanour and a newspaper bearing the headline "Hot, Haunted Wedding.” Weird headline huh. But the point is that the wedding’s getting loads of publicity.

Oh, and bbs, you just have to know what Patricia’s wearing: “a skin-tight silver unitard, over which she'd pulled a pair of navy compression shorts with silver stripes down the side. Over it all she was wearing a silver and navy supplex jacket. Compression shorts?? Supplex?? Fuzzy scuffs??? Oh baby, I love it when you talk nonsense to me.

Jamie visits the hotel gym and finds a hot tub on a terrace and is all relaxed when Pres creeps up and asks to join her. He’s really flirty and gross, I did a little sick on this page of the book and now it stinks of vomit. So Jamie removes herself to the sauna and Pres follows her. Jeez, give it a rest old man, she’s not interested ok. The sauna door gets stuck and they get trapped in there together. Arrrrrgghhhhh! They both start sweating even more and panicking loads, like aarrrrgghhh we’re going to die!!!! Jamie starts acting all loopy, and I think we're meant to think that’s she’s in mortal danger and Pres is all like noooooo, I wont die this way! Anything but death by sauna! So undignified.

Luckily, Blaine finds them in the nick of time. Blaine’s all angry and she says that when she got there, the door opened easily and wasn’t stuck at all.

Later, Jamie gets a call on the hotel phone. Its Blaine and she’s like "come meet me at the hotel entrance and don’t tell anyone." Blaine drives up, nearly running Jamie over in the process, and she’s all, get in the car. Which is a gleaming black Porsche, naturally. This is the 90s, baby! And we’re jiving with supermodels!

Jamie can tell that Blaine is in the mood for trouble, but she’s kinda excited by that. Me too! Blaine drives them back to Point Harbour and they go to a deserted pier. A Mercedes turns up at the pier. Inside it is Patricia, Pres and Alison, they followed Blaine because they were kind of worried about where she was going. Patricia wasn’t worried about Blaine, she just loves following Pres around. Good move, guys love it when you follow them everywhere like some kind of demented psychopath, trust me, I know what I’m talking about here.

Pres gets all angry with Blaine for running out of the party. Blaine starts yelling at Pres, all this nonsense about life and death and truth and lies and not going through with the wedding, blah blah, Jamie thinks it looks like Blaine is trying to pick a fight with him. They make up,and end up all driving back in the Mercedes together, with Alison alone in the Porsche.

Alison drives ahead of them, super fast and risky. Of course, she drives the Porsche off a cliff and it catches on fire. Ka-BOOM! Buh Bye, Alison!

Eventually, after calling the police and everything I guess, they arrive back at the hotel. Patricia speculates to Jamie that maybe it wasn’t an accident, that Alison wanted to die – because they didn’t see the brake lights and there were no skid marks. Patricia says that Alison may have been suicidal because she loved Pres once too. Gasp!

The wedding is going ahead anyway, and Blaine gets sent a package that makes her react thusly:

“’Noo!’ sobbed Blaine. She turned, flailing like a madwoman out of control. She grabbed a lamp and hurled it against the far wall of the bedroom, She pushed over the table it was standing on.”

That’s a little example of why I fucking love this book. The whole thing's written like this, it’s amazing, it’s like a rollercoaster ride….for my brain.

The picture Blaine freaked over is the one from the photo shoot at the beginning where Blaine stabbed Alison with the letter opener, except the figure of Blaine is all singed and scorched, and someone’s written IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU on it.

Clara tells them that there’s a police detective at the hotel, here to question people after the wedding because it would seem that Alison’s crash wasn’t an accident but the brakes had been tampered with. Presumably meaning that the accident was meant to happen to Blaine, since it was Blaine’s Porsche.

Kelly arrives at Jamie’s room, begging to get ready there as she can’t cope with all the memories in the room that she had been sharing with Alison. Kelly tells Jamie that Blaine and Alison were really tight knit friends, like sisters, despite the apparent feuding between them which was mainly just for publicity. Hmm, I wouldn’t be too happy if someone stabbed me through the hand just for the publicity. Although there was a real feud between them for a while when Pres started dating Blaine after breaking up with Alison, but they apparently worked it out.

There are all these insanely brilliant dramatic interludes of the main characters/suspects getting ready for the wedding and acting like psychos. I just have to give you a flavour of this. Patricia gets a bit of lipstick on her hand, and:

“She looked down at the crimson gash the lipstick had made across the back of her hand.
At the crimson gash it had made from the corner of her mouth.
‘here comes the bride” she hummed softly, and went back to work on her face.”

It totally reminds me of that bit in Cape Fear where the mum is just randomly putting make up on in the darkened room and it's super creepy.

Eventually, everyone’s ready, and Blaine’s all done up in her wedding dress , although sadly, there isn’t a description of the dress beyond the fact that “the train of her gown spread out like a lacy sea behind her.” So I assume that it’s fabulous.

The ceremony goes ahead, and then they get to the bit where the minister asks for any objections, and right at that moment a wind sweeps though the hall, the doors slam shut and candles go out. The minister’s all, chill out dudes, this has happened before. The smell of roses and fire fills the room, and Kelly’s all screaming out like, its her! It’s the ghost bride!

And the ghost bride does indeed appear at the back of the hall, all done up in her wedding gown, which also glows. As the ghost bride walks down the aisle the smell of smoke increases, and the ghost is all “I OBJECT.” Not since Rochester and Jane have I been so breathlessly excited by a wedding. The reason the ghost objects? “Pres was already married. To me.”

Pres is all freaking out and flailing around, like, nooooooo, you’re dead, it cant be! And the ghost bride goes all flamey and Pres is all, noooo, I couldn’t have survived the scandal it wasn’t my fault she died! And he’s also trying to run away from this flaming ghost that totally wants to make out with him.

Once Pres has fled, the lights suddenly come on. Blaine is all serene as she watches the burning bride. Clara does something to help the flames go out on the ghost bride, and then the ghost bride starts peeling make up off, and its actually ALISON! She’s not dead! Hurrah!

Later, Kelly, Jamie, Alison, Clara, Drew and Blaine are in Blaine’s suite together. And we get the whole story. Clara isn’t really Blaine's PA, she’s some kind of lady scientist. Clara had a younger sister who moved to New York to become a model. The sister was called Dove, and she actually lived with Blaine and Alison when they were all first starting out.

Dove met Pres and they decided to get married in secret (for some reason, Pres’s family is really weird about supermodels and I guess they wouldn’t have been happy about it. Not sure why, it’s not as if he was marrying the help.) So, they went to a remote island to do the deed, there was a car accident and Pres survived but Dove was killed. Umm, it kinda seems that it really WASN’T his fault. He didn’t report it though, he ran away and Dove’s body wasn’t discovered and identified for weeks, it must have looked pretty gnarly. Luckily, Dove kept a journal and Clara read it and found out all about Pres.

Clara needed to get revenge on Pres, she wanted him to admit what he had done, and Blaine and Alison also hated him because he’d just dumped Alison and then asked her best friend (Blaine ) out, so they were like yeah we're in, why the hell not! Umm, that doesn’t really seem like a strong enough reason for Blaine to have to actually make this guy fall in love with her. I mean, Pres and Blaine must have been together a reasonable length of time to be getting married. Presumably, she actually hates this guy but she must have done it with him and stuff. Also, why not just show the police the diary?

So basically, all of the weird stuff that happened was set up by Blaine, Clara and Alison to try to freak Pres out into admitting the truth (Kelly wasn’t in on it though, she’s all surprised because she actually thought Alison was dead. Niiice. ) The legend of the ghost of 'Rose' was a lie made up by Alison, and its apparent appearance in Jamie's mirror was just “a trick done with mirrors”. And that was a mistake anyway, the mirror ghost was meant for Pres. This explanation is soooo retarded, I actually love it, as if you’d go to the trouble of making all these elaborate plans and then not check you actually have the right room. The ghostly bride floating in the ballroom was made of “asbestos clothes and special effects”. Good old special effects. And nobody killed the doves, the were actually stuffed birds that had died ages ago. And Blaine and Alison were also the ones who locked Pres in the sauna to shake him up a bit, but they’re all like, oh sorry Jamie, we totally didn’t know you were in there too. For elaborate hoaxers, these guys sure do make a lot of mistakes. Poor Jamie.

Alison’s car crashing was, obviously, also a stunt. I’m not sure what the police would think about that. But you know what, I can’t even bothered to have to think this through anymore, I’m too blinded by my love for this book.

For some reason they all start laughing loads: “They laughed for a long time. Hard. Until their sides ached and they couldn’t breathe. Until they cried, some of them.” Come on, share the joke guys.

And then Drew and Jamie wander off together, presumably to have sex.

The end.

Wow. I feel like I’ve learned so much from this book. Number one, supermodels are not dumb okay, they’re fiendishly clever and sneaky so DO NOT MESS WITH THEM. Number two, you can achieve a hell of a lot with special effects and asbestos clothing. Number three, socialite playboys are total jerks. Numbr four, fashion can be FUN. I’m still left with a few questions though, namely what the hell are fuzzy scuffs, compression shorts and supplex?! Answers on a postcard please.

What do my fellow lovers of The Bride on Amazon think. Well, I’m in exalted company:

“at the start of the book you would realy get in to it at all time there is a bit of some thing to keep you on the edge of your set so if you get throug the first bit you are shure to fined another bit of exsitment waiting just for you and i think this book should be graded one of the best becouse i do read a lot and this one is one of the most fab books i have read as thay say do not juge a book by its cover so i did not i read it and i think it is one of the best one i have read .”

Us The Bride lovers are an eloquent bunch. And who needs full stops anyway, full stops are for the kind of losers who aren’t deeply in love with The Bride.


Oh, and this week I’m super excited because I found two old Point Horror books I didn’t realise I still had! It’s like a sign or something. Although I think the sign may be that I should really tidy my flat more often. Anyway, one of them is a Nightmare Hall book called The Wish, although it’s number 4 in the series or something so I don’t know if it would be weird to do it out of sequence? As far as I remember, it stands alone pretty nicely. I think it’s about an evil talking ventriloquist doll or something. The other one I found was Hide and Seek, which is a very very strange and unorthodox Point Horror indeed, but if I say too much I’ll totally give away the ending.

Blood Sinister - Celia Rees

Ok, so only by the loosest of definitions could this be called ‘Sunday.’ But what can I say, I’ve been busy travelling through time back to Victorian London and busting some serious vampire ass. Oh wait, maybe I’ve gotten my life mixed up with something else.



Blood Sinister is a Point Horror Unleashed, which I BELIEVE means that it was published for the UK only. So us Brits get to feel all warm and snuggly with superiority for having a Point Horror all to ourselves, and the rest of you get the excitement of reading an EXCLUSIVE recap that you can boast to all your friends about, now that’s what I like to call a win-win situation.

Sixteen year old Ellen is our lead character, and the main thing you need to know about Ellen is that she’s really really sick with a mystery illness. Nobody knows what’s wrong with her, she’s constantly having her blood tested etc. but to no avail. And she’s getting weaker and weaker, definitely more at the ‘Death’ stage of an illness rather than the ‘it’s Monday morning and I just cannot be bothered to get out of bed, lord love me’ stage. A sickly heroine, how fabulous.

Ellen is staying with her dear old granny for a couple of weeks in London whilst her mum does, I don’t know, something or other, I really can’t remember. Let’s spice things up and say she’s currently travelling with a circus as a bearded lady, yeah that’ll do.

Ellen’s grandma’s house is, naturally, super creepy and backs onto a cemetery. Oh yeah, and her grandma asks Ellen if she wants anything from the shop and Ellen’s all, just get me a copy of Mizz or Just Seventeen. Just Seventeen! I totally used to read that even though I was nowhere near seventeen at the time. It took me a pretty long time to work out that the title wasn’t indicative of some kind of new fangled magazine licensing law and I used to get really nervous buying it, like ‘Gawd, I hope I don’t get ID’d, I really need to read up on some new ways to practice kissing techniques.'

Anyway. Ellen goes for a little snoop around Granny’s attic and finds a mysterious trunk that she’s never noticed before. In the trunk is a whole bunch of old diaries from 1878, written by someone who was also called Ellen. Oh great, way to make life difficult for a recapper. Old Diary Ellen is modern sickly Ellen’s great great grandmother, a “pioneering woman doctor.” All female doctors should totally have to refer to themselves as ‘woman doctors’, like on their passports and stuff, occupation: woman doctor.

Ellen starts reading Old Ellen’s diary, and it’s written in that tiresome prose that authors of teenage books use to make something feel olde worldy. Old Ellen’s dad is a doctor and they live in some grim old hospital in a poor part of town, which Ellen pretty much thinks just sucks. Olde Timey Ellen also has a crush on Tom, her father’s assistant. I guess in those days you probably were pretty much limited to having a crush on whatever non-blood relatives find their way into your house. Unless you were like a whoring wench or something, but that was probably less glamorous than it sounds what with the syphilis and all.

Anyway Olde Timey Diary Ellen’s dad has some weirdo guests over. An exceptionally pale man and a busty voluptuous woman with dark eyes. A Countess and a Count. Foreign. Very likely candidates to be vampires. They may as well just go around introducing themselves to people as The Obvious Vampires.

Modern Ellen’s reading is interrupted by a visitor arriving - Andy, a guy who lives nearby and who she used to play with when they were kids. “His hair was cut in a recognizable style, instead of looking like his mother had been at it with the bacon scissors.” What the fuck are bacon scissors. I mean, I can guess pretty accurately what they are, but I sooooo did not know that that was a thing.

Back to old Ellen’s diary: the woman leaves but the Count stays. The Count requests that old Ellen keeps him company to help improve his English. The Count is very ill, he’s dying and her dad is going to try to help him. They’re old friends and the Count and Countess helped her dad when her mother Isobel got ill in foreign-land, even though she eventually died, so he feels like he owes them a debt of care. Even though if you ask me, the fact that she died doesn’t exactly make it sound like they helped a great deal.

The diary skips forward a month later and Future Woman Doctor Ellen is loving spending time with the Count, although his condition has worsened so she is super worried about him. They’ve totally bonded, but there’s just one little weensy thing she doesn’t like about him: his teeth. Which are too sharp looking. Modern Ellen has way more smarts than olde worldy Ellen and she quickly figures out that the Count was totes a vampire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Back in modern times, Andy comes round, and him and Ellen go shopping at some second hand market. Ellen handily finds a book called Women in Medicine, and indeed there’s an entry on oldey timey Ellen, famed Woman Doctor. Woman Doctor Ellen specialised in the ‘study of blood.’ Ellen tells Andy about the vampire diaries, and he eagerly asks to read them as well. Supposedly, “Andy had his own reasons for believing in vampires.”

Andy walks Ellen home, taking a shortcut through a graveyard, Ellen reminds him of a time when they were kids, and Andy went into the graveyard at night time as a dare and came out all pale faced and trembly and weird. He tells her that he ended up in a mausoleum and heard a scratching sound, like a dead person scratching at their tomb. So, a pretty bullet proof reason for believing in vampires then. And he subsequently did some “research” and found loads of “articles” about vampires being spotted in the area. Hmm. If I were Ellen, I’d definitely ask to see his sources.

Back in the diary, olde worldy Ellen gets roped in to helping her dad and Tom operate on the Count . What daddy dearest doesn’t tell her is that her help will comprise of Tom and daddy transfusing Ellen’s blood into the Count. Tom isn’t happy about it but Ellen agrees to donate her blood. Man, Ellen’s dad really sucks Luckily, Ivan (The Count’s manservant) intervenes and tells them to use his blood instead. The transfusion is a success.

A corpse is found in the river. Why were corpses always found in the river in the olden days? You don’t get that quite as often anymore do you. Ellen has a little cut on her wrist and good old Cook applies a herbal remedy to get rid of it, the main ingredient of which is garlic. Come on, as if you’d write all this shit about garlic in your diary.

The Count gives old Ellen some crazy junk wine and tells her a story about someone who I think is meant to be Dracula. When he goes to kiss Ellen’s wrist as is his foreign custom, the smell of garlic totally grosses him out. I’ll be really happy if the twist is that he actually isn’t a vampire.

More and more kids are going missing/getting killed in Diary world, turning up all corpsey and drained of blood. Ellen and Tom drift apart.

Modern times: Andy and Ellen find a picture of dead Ellen from when she was a girl, and the two Ellens look identical. Andy and Ellen whoop it up, watching vampire films and umm, throwing ice cream at each other? Kids nowadays, huh.


It starts getting weird that night after Andy leaves: a bat crawls into Ellen’s window and bites her whilst she’s sleeping, Ellen is completely oblivious to this. Hmm, I wonder if this is perhaps related to the origin of her mysterious illness.

For some reason, we are suddenly plunged into part two of the book. If breaking Point Horror books up into parts isn’t a delusion of grandeur then I don’t know what is. It’s not even as if any time has passed, or anything really major has happened to warrant splitting it into parts. Its literally just half way though the book. Sorry, I’m going on about it now, I know. It just really really bothers me.

Anyway, MOVING ON, modern Ellen has a dream that she is old Ellen, and she meets someone new in her dream: The Countess’s companion, Grace, who is also thin and bloodless looking etc. Modern Ellen wakes up and checks the diaries, and Grace is actually a real person. Hmm, that’s weird. Ellen thinks “it was like something out of ‘Strange But True magazine.’ Is this a real magazine? I like the sound of it.

Oldey timey Ellen is being taken on loads of shopping trips, which makes her suspicious: why is her father buying her all these new clothes? Also, she finds out that Grace hates the Countess and she only stays with her because she has no other options for earning money, except becoming a prostitute. Grace warns Ellen to keep away from the Countess and the Count, telling her that they are dangerous and corrupt.

Oldey timey Ellen goes out with the Count and he ends up taking her to see a show, then to a restaurant for champagne and oysters. And they dance. And oldey timey Ellen feels all dirty and disgusted buy it, even though she’s kind of confused by her own disgust. Modern Ellen totally scoffs at Old Worlde Ellen for her prudishness.

More women are killed in olde timey London, etc. Tom comes to tell oldey timey Ellen that her father is firing him over a disagreement so he will be leaving. And he gives her a crucifix and just comes right out with it, telling her that the Count is a vampire. Ellen kind of thinks he’s crazy but still agrees to wear the crucifix. That’s a pretty sweet technique for getting love rivals out of your way, just spread a tasty little rumour that they’re The Walking Undead.

Oldey timey Ellen’s dad reveals that he fired Tom because of Tom's belief that the Count is a vampire. The man is an absolute penis breath. Insufferable. Anyway, Dr Dad says that The Count is just suffering from a rare blood disease. And he drops one more bombshell: he wants Ellen to go to the continent with the Count and Countess to travel and see the world. Ellen does NOT want to go, and she resumes her friendship with Tom, who vows to try to find some evidence about the Count's nefarious blood sucking ways so she'll be allowed to stay.

The countess is all grossed out by Ellen’s crucifix and insists on giving her some gnarly old ruby necklace that spells out a dragon or something instead. Grace shows Ellen two puncture marks on her neck, and tells her she needs to get away from the Count and Countess before it happens to her too. Ellen gives Grace some cash and the gross dragon necklace to sell so that Grace can escape.

Modern Ellen’s illness gets considerably worse and she passes out.

Ellen dreams of being olde timey Ellen, and together with Tom, she's following the Count and watching as he gets all bitey bitey with some impoverished broad before Ivan the manservant steps in and rescues the woman from being eaten.

In modern day, Ellen is really seriously ill – like, knock knock kocking on Heaven’s door. She gets taken to hospital in an ambulance, and is passing in and out of consciousness the whole time, sometimes as herself and sometimes as oldey timey Ellen.

In the old days, The Count kidnaps Ellen onto his ship, sneaking her aboard in a coffin so nobody could possibly know where she is and potentially rescue her. The Count and Countess are offering Ellen the chance to become one of them – and have immortal life etc, if she says no, they’ll kill her. They have CHOSEN HER because of her dead mother. Turns out her mum was all set to become one of them but then she got pregnant with Ellen and that somehow interfered with the process and she ended up dead. It’s not really made clear whether or not Ellen’s mum wanted to be a vampire, which would certainly be one of the first questions I’d be asking. Ellen whips out her crucifix and, as is pretty par for the course for a Point Horror heroine, winds up starting a fire. And then Ivan the man servant steps in and saves her from burning. Good old Ivan. And she jumps out the ship and escapes. And we find out later that olde timey Ellen ended up marrying Tom and becoming a Famed Woman Doctor etc., so happy endings all round.

Modern Ellen wakes up in hospital with all tubes and shit down her throat. And inexplicably, we now move into Book Three. Ellen is still in hospital , and her nurse is called Jenny Cheung,. Jenny Cheung “has creamy clear skin and slanting eyes. “ Ellen is unduly fascinated by her eyes and spends ages staring at them. Awkward. As a treat, Jenny Cheung offers to cook Ellen some Chinese food when she recovers. OK OK, WE GET IT, JENNY CHEUNG IS CHINESE.

Jenny Cheung tells Ellen that her doctor is a big shot specialist from the states called Dr Stacey, Everyone thinks he’s The Shit, but Jenny Cheung is kinda wary of him. And Ellen recognizes him as being ….. The Count! So clearly, she's also sorta wary. Ellen decides there’s no point even trying to tell anyone, which for once actually seems like a sensible move. Ellen’s mum tells hr that soon she’s going to be transferred to Dr Stacey’s private hospital, The Blooditorium. Well, it’s not actually called The Blooditorium but that would be pretty neat right?

Dr Stacey comes to see Ellen in the night and he knows she knows and she now knows that he knows that she knows. About the diaries. And the whole being a vampire gig. He kind of shows off about it a bit to be honest: “He reached down and took a unit of blood, popping the seal and drinking like it was a pouch of Ribena.” He tells Ellen that she’s special because she carries a gene of something or other (which is what’s making her so ill all the time) , and she basically has to become a vampire or she’ll just die.

Andy visits Ellen and she tells him about her doctor being a vampire etc. Andy’s pretty cool about it and believes her. I guess when you’re a sixteen year old guy you’ll believe a lot of stuff if it looks like you might get a quick grope out of it later. Ellen also tells Jenny Cheung about Dr Stacey. Jenny Cheung is also surprisingly quick to believe what Ellen says.

Jenny Cheung and Andy meet up to sort this mess out. The plan is that Jenny and Ellen are going to swap places in the hospital bed to prevent the good Doctor from getting his fangs into Ellen. Andy astutely points out that this plan may not work as Jenny Cheung, is in fact, in case you hadn’t noticed already, Chinese. Jenny Cheung soothes his fears by pointing out that their height and build are similar? Umm ok. And Jenny Cheung is going to use a Dictaphone to record whatever happens so they have evidence against him. Jeez, why don’t they just kill the guy or something. I mean, that’s what I’d do.

Andy and Jenny Cheung head off to Chinatown (because Jenny Cheung’s defining personality trait is Being Chinese), and Jenny Cheung tells Andy all about Chinese vampires, Kang-shi. They go to a Chinese Herbal Medicine shop, which is owned by Jenny Cheung’s uncle. He agrees to make them a potion to get rid of the vampire. Oh , please. Please don’t get rid of the vampire by using a fucking potion. This is too much. I was really looking forward to a good staking, perhaps with a beheading thrown in, But some POTION? That’s seriously lame, dude. So this ‘potion’ is basically just a poison that will either kill him outright or just weaken him up. In which case, they WILL have to stake him, Uncle Cheung gives all these tips on how to carry out a good staking. This is fucking ridiculous, this guy is basically sanctioning that these kids murder someone. Umm, Uncle Cheung? What if this guy ISN’T a vampire huh?

Jenny decides that the best way to trick Dr Stacey into taking the potion is to drink the potion herself, so if Dr Stacey bites her he’ll get poisoned too. Which is possibly the most ridiculous plan I’ve ever heard in my life, I’m not even going to bother picking holes in it as they’re so glaringly obvious anyway.

Jenny Cheung and Andy head back to the hospital to make the swap…only to find that Ellen has already been transferred to Dr Stacey’s private clinic. So Andy and Jenny head to The Blooditorium instead. Andy pretends he’s visiting his sister to distract the desk nurse with idle chitter chatter, and Jenny Cheung pretends to be an agency worker called Su Lin Chen, wearing a high collared coat and a scarf all muffling her face and a hat so you cant really see what she looks like. Jenny manages to get in, and then Ellen comes out wearing Jenny’s clothes, still all muffled. In other words, they pull off The Old Switcheroo.

Dr Stacey creeps into Ellen’s room that evening and takes a big old chomp out of Jenny-as-Ellen, clearly not noticing that she’s turned Chinese overnight.

Ellen and Andy go to pick Jenny out the next morning, who’s snuck herself back out in a nurse's uniform, She shows them the gash that Dr Stacey made on her neck. For some reason, Ellen goes BACK INTO Dr Stacey’s Blooitorium rather than just escaping. She wants to officially discharge herself for some murky reason. Andy follows Dr Stacey as he leaves the hospital. He doesn’t come back. As soon as Ellen is discharged (? That was easy. Why didn’t she just do that in the first place), her and Jenny go in search of Andy.

Also, Ellen is suddenly starting to become a lot healthier, supposedly this is because as Dr Stacey grows weaker from the poison it makes his victim, Ellen grow in strength.

The girls enter the cemetery and they find Andy, he had gotten lost I guess. The sun suddenly goes down, and they reach a dead end - The Count’s family vault. That sure is handy that he happens to have a family vault here, even though none of his family members that I’m aware of have died in London. Ellen waits outside whilst the others go in. Ummm, WHY is this girl our heroine?? She’s too weak to even do anything fer crying out loud.

They find The Count/Dr Stacey in a coffin, sleeping soundly. Jenny Cheung uses some Chinese vampire hoo doo to hold him in place, which together with the poison that has weakened him, will greatly improve the chances of a successful staking.

Unfortunately he wakes up and starts stretching out his teeth in preparation for a tasty human snack. Fortunately, the family vault also decides that this is the perfect time to start falling down. Jenny and Andy run out of the building to where Ellen is waiting for them outside, Dr Stacey is unable to move from his coffin thanks to the hoo doo and is killed by a falling iron sheet that slices off his head. I gotta say, I’m kinda disappointed. Ellen really didn’t DO anything, she wasn’t even there to witness his final destruction and dance a merry little jig of happiness.

Ellen’s health is completely restored, she’ s happy because now she knows she’s not going to die any time soon (well, unless she gets hit by a bus or something) so she can plan a future, and she decides that “in the end she would be a doctor. It was in her blood.” Fnarr, Fnarr.

In conclusion: Blood Sinister is actually pretty decent, at least until Part Three when things start falling apart a little. But the overall standard of writing is far superior to the usual Richie Tankersely Cusick/RL Stine style dross, I give it two fangs up. (see what I did there.)

This is my favourite Amazon review, perhaps my favourite ever:

“When I was reading a particulary creepy bit I thought my brain was imagening creepy violin music, it turned out to be my brother in the next room!!”

Awesome.

Next time: The Bride by D. E. Athinks. Which I admit that I chose pretty much soley on the basis of how awesome the name D. E. Athinks is. I mean, if you’re going to shoehorn the word Death into your name, why not have something equally scary on the end as well? Like, D. E. AthKILL or something. Or maybe that’s just TOO scary.

The Babysitter Returns Again

Just a quick post to say - now that those pesky holidays are over with, it's finally time to get back to work and regular posts are back on. YAY!

Keep your eyes peeled for a new post this Sunday - which will either be Blood Sinister or something else. Depending if the 'something else' arrives on time, and also on whether I can actually face anymore drippy teenage tales of vampires and whatever blah blah blah (I'm looking at you, Twilight...stupid sexy Twilight.)

PEACE OUT

The Snowman – RL Stine

I chose The Snowman thinking it would be an extravaganza of Christmassy good cheer ...boy was I wrong. And I think this is one of the more popular Point Horrors but I’m almost certain I’ve never read it before, what can I say, I don’t follow the herd, I beat to the sound of my own drum and I am definitely not a sheeple (sheeple are the worst.)



Our illustrious heroine is Heather, an orphan who lives with her aunt and uncle. Heather absolutely HATES her uncle, in fact the book opens with Heather having a little fantasy about killing him. Of course, you think it’s real and you’re all, wow , there’s something actually happening in the first chapter, but then Stine does his usual thing and opens the next chapter with ‘oh, but it was just a dream.’ ANYWAY, this doesn’t exactly give me a great first impression of Heather. Although to be fair, her uncle is incredibly mean.

You know you’re just gagging to find out what Heather looks like, right? I aim to please:

“She knew she was pretty. Wither her golden hair, which she usually swept straight back into an off-centred ponytail, her creamy, pale skin and high cheekbones and her dark blue, almost violet eyes”

Hmm, sounds like Heather has a real boner for herself. Also, off centred ponytail??? That’s just a fancy way of saying SIDE PONY Right? Heather also just knows that she could be really popular if she wasn’t so shy and if her uncle let her do more stuff. And if she wasn’t such a miserable whining douche bag. OK, I made that last one up, but you know it makes sense yo.

Obviously, Heather has a boyfriend who adores her (Ben) and a less attractive best friend (Kim). As well as having a “horse, squeaky voice” (?!), Kim is “short and a little chunky” Every time Heather talks to Kim she has to make mention of her weird voice, eg: “her hoarse, scratchy voice sounded even more comical so early in the morning.” This hoarse voice business had better turn out to be highly relevant. I’m going to stake a guess right here that Kim is the killer and she was in some horrific accident/fire that damaged her vocal cords and was all Heather’s fault. She’s poss even a man in disguise? Haha, also Kim is always visiting Heather at work, where her boss is called...Mel. Well, I think we all know who RL Stine’s favourite sassy 80s pop twosome is now.



At work, Heather meets a boy who has pure white hair, hey, remember Eerie Inidana? I couldn’t find a picture of the grey haired kid but I’m sure some of you are with me on this one...right...anybody?

Anyway, this guy is imaginatively called Snowman, and “he had the most adorable cleft in his chin.” Chin cleft huh. Hey guys, remember chin clefts? You don’t really see chin clefts anymore do you. Anyway, despite the fact that Heather was making out with her boyfriend Ben like ten minutes ago and thinking about how much she loved him, she’s instantly all over this handsome white haired, be-clefted stranger and even agrees to go out with him on a date.

Of course, Heather doesn’t tell Ben about her hot date on Saturday night. She makes up some lame excuse, I quote “’We..uh…have to go visit these people.” That’s gold dust, I’m going to remember that one for myself.

I normally strongly veto irrelevant dream sequences from my recaps, but I have to include this one. Heather has a super creepy dream about going sledding with her uncle, and he’s all clinging on to her waist and they’re speeding through this “wet and ice hard snow”, speeding out of CONTROL, man, and I am flipping through my Lil Book of Freudiansisms in an absolute frenzy, this shit is HOT and oh, the dream climaxes with Heather killing her uncle. Phew. Did I mention Heather really hates her uncle?

Uncle James gives Heather shit about going on her date on Saturday but she doesn’t really care. Uncle James meets Snowman before the date and is ridiculously rude to him. Hehe, sweet old Uncle James, he’s so grouchy! He calls Snowman an albino and a mutt and basically laughs in his face. Snowman tells Heather that his dad is dead, but he was like Uncle James, only a lot worse.

On the date, Snowman freaks out in the car thinking that they’re being followed. But they’re not. That sure was exciting though. I think RL Stine is running out of ideas for suspenseful chapter breaks and he’s resorted to basically lying.

Oh, clumsy plot device alert: Heather has a good luck charm that her father left her. It’s a lighter. Hmmm, and this ‘novel’ is called The Snowman,. I wonder if this lighter will turn out to be an incredibly important clumsy plot device.

Snowman tells Heather how poor he is, so she agrees to pay for half the date. This guy is such a skeeze. The date is soooooooo amazing though and they like totally connect.

Monday morning at school Heather tries to find snowman at school but nobody has heard of him. And Ben has found out about Heather and Snowman because Uncle James told him, which okay I admit that is a pretty dickish thing to do. Heather’s really angry because she didn’t want Ben to find out, and she was only planning on going on one date with Snowman. Okay, I guess you could argue that that is equally dickish, being a dick probably runs in this family.

A sidenote, if you will forgive me. Heather kind of reminds me of Lauren Conrad (yes, I will happily admits to being disgustingly addicted to The Hills even though it’s no Laguna Beach)...like, all Heather does is huff around feeling sorry for herself and listing the ways people have wronged her and all her conversations are about all the ‘drama’ in her life, she really couldn't give two hoots about anyone else.

So, Heather calls Ben and tells him she wants to go out with him AND Snowman, like he should be grateful, luckily Ben calls her on her bullshit and hangs up, way to go Heather.

Heather goes to meet Snowman at Swan Park and on her way, some mystery car starts following her again...she can’t see the driver, but Ben’s car is missing from his driveway. Gah, get over yourself Heather (people should use the word ‘gah’ more often)

Its super snowy at Swan Park and they build a snowman. Snowman takes Heather to a ‘secret place’. Why is there ALWAYS a secret place????!!!!!1111 This time, it’s a secluded clearing in a forest, what no haunted shack? Heather feels someone watching them. Heather and Snowman kiss ‘hungrily’.

Heather has Snowman round for dinner and Uncle James makes a bunch of digs at how much Snowman is eating. Like, this dude doesn’t even bother to pretend to be polite. I sorta like him. This is Uncle James’s big crescendo...

“Don’t get any serious ideas about her...because Heather is going to come into a great deal of money someday...And believe me , Burt or Bill, or whatever your name is, sh’es going to end up with someone from her own class. Not some white-haired freak whose mother can’t even put dinner on the table.”

Awww, hes protective, how sweet.

This is enough to make Snowman leave and Heather runs out after him. Snowman’s pretty calm, and he’s all chill out, it’s just words. Snowman says he has other problems – his little brother’s sick and needs an operation but they can’t afford the two thousand dollars. UH OH, looks like Uncle James was right. It starts out innocently enough with a plate of french fries here and splitting the bill on a date there but where does it all end. Naturally, Heather offers to lend him the money. Oh, Heather. Snowman protests etc etc but eventually he accepts it even though he acts all embarrassed and upset.

Ben visits Heather because he misses her (why) . Heather thinks about how she hasn’t seen or heard from Snowman in weeks and she doesn’t even have his telephone number, AND she’s never seen him in school. Oh honey, if you only had a brain.

Although, after work that day though, Snowman is waiting for her. He’s all happy and jubilant and when Heather asks why he’s like, ‘you did me a favour, I do you a favour, I killed your uncle for you.’ And Heather’s all UmmmMmmMMMm WTF. And I’m all, ‘FINALLY!! SOME MURDER.’

Snowman implies that he’s done quite a lot of murders in his time, and explains that he killed Uncle James by strangling him with the red scarf that he is now wearing, saying it will look like a heart attack. Yeah, because the police always get strangulations mixed up with heart attacks. Boy, you sure can tell that this book was written pre-CSI.

At home, sure enough there’s an ambulance parked outside and her dead uncle is lying on a gurney. Sure enough, the ambulance people think Uncle James had a heart attack. Umm, does he not have like massive strangly marks all over his neck or something?

Snowman acts all concerned to her aunt whilst secretly winking and nudging at Heather and Heather’s being all LC about it and just freaking out in her head but not saying anything out loud. I bet she’s letting one perfectly angled tear run down her cheek as we speak. I’d totally be like fuck it and just go all Mallory Knox and go on a killing spree, slaughtering innocent people with Woody Harrellson.


Heather angrily whispers to Snowman that he won’t get away with killing her uncle. You know what you could do instead Heather? Just call the police, I hear they’re pretty good at this sort of stuff. Being a Grade A psycho, Snowman genuinely doesn’t see that he did anything wrong. And he tells Heather that she totally can’t call the cops because he has the check she wrote him for two thousand dollars so it will look like she paid him for a hit. Of course he doesn’t really have a sick brother, so he isn’t going to cash the check but keep it as evidence. Mmmm, that isn’t exactly concrete evidence, I reckon I’d still take my chances with the police. Also, why on earth has Snowman bothered to set up this elaborate plan to kill Uncle James? I guess that’s just what psychos do.

Remember that car that was following Heather and Snowman? It pulls up into her driveway, and out jumps...the FBI! Of course they do. They question Heather about Snowman. Like an IDIOT she pretends not to know him beyond a passing encounter in her diner, even though she knows that the FBI car has been following them together. This is because she’s still scared he’ll use that stupid check as evidence. The big end chapter cliff-hanger is that they are looking for Snowman for murder...he killed his father....which would probably be more tense if it hadn’t been so heavily signposted throughout.

Now that Uncle James is dead, Heather has control over her money so she quits her job. Only, Snowman shows up. Sigh, that Snowman. He wants money, two thousand smackeroos will do. Heather stupidly gives him a check. (This book sure is full of checks...hey guys, remember checks? I don’t). Snowman whines a bit about how his dad used to beat him with a bicycle chain, gee this guy has a real chip on his shoulder.

Heather gets back together with Ben, at least until the next blackmailing psychopathic con man shows up I guess.

As a lovely surprise, Aunt Belle invites Snowman round for dinner. Heather is less than thrilled. Snowman wants more money, he promises to DEFINTELY disappear after getting the money this time – five thousand big ones in cash. They arrange to meet the next day by the bank. (hey guys, remember banks? I don’t).

Heather gives him the money and she’s all ‘phew, now he’s out of my hair forever’ although if I were Heather I wouldn’t be speaking too soon. Getting home, Heather discovers that Aunt Belle has rented the spare room out in the garage to...Snowman. Now that’s a DOH moment if ever I saw one.

Heather tells Ben the whole sorry story. Ben decides that they need to steal the un cashed check that Heather wrote out to the Snowman, so Heather will be free to go to the police/FBI without fear of being arrested*rolls eyes.*

So they creep into Snowman’s room together. Snowman’s there lying in wait for them with an iron tire jack (hey guys, remember iron tire jacks...oh, never mind) in his hand and wallops Ben before grabbing Heather and forcing her into his car. He takes her to Swan Park, to their ‘secret spot.’

Heather wakes up all tied together and wrapped up inside something hard and cold- A SNOWMAN!!! Yay, the end, Merry Christmas everyone!

Oh wait, there’s still a few more pages left, sigh.

This piece of prose struck me as particularly tense and thrilling:

“I’m a living mummy. A living snow mummy.
But not for long. Soon the air will be gone. Soon I’ll be a dead snow mummy.”

For some reason I had to type that out like six times because I kept writing money instead of mummy.

Oh yeah, remember that lighter that I guessed would turn out to be an important plot device? Well, what is more useful than your dead dad’s heirloom lighter when you’re trapped inside a snowman?! NOTHING you idiot, that’s the whole point! Heather burns her way through....and the real Snowman is standing there waiting for her. So Heather sets him on fire. Because he’s poor, his coat is probs made of some nasty super flammable synthetic material.

The police arrive and rescue Heather and put Snowman out, all thanks to Ben, who admits that he DID follow Heather on her date with Snowman, oh Ben you silly little stalker. Also, the check that was in Snowman’s shirt has luckily been burned up from Heather setting him on fire (I’m going to remember that one for the next time somebody tries to blackmail me.) Heather says she was cold with hatred but now she’s thawing?!?!?!? And this time it really IS the end.

Initial reaction: crushing disappointment that my speculation about Heather’s best friend Kim turning out to be the killer was wildly unfounded as Kim failed to even be a vaguely interesting or important character beyond her weird hoarse voice. But Snowman as the villain in a book called The Snowman just seemed..too obvious somehow, more fool me. Oh, also, I hate Heather. And I still don't really get why Snowman bothered to kill Uncle James in this first place.

But who cares about me, what do my lovely friends over at Amazon think?

"There are some good descriptions such as 'his dazzling white hair'. This makes you think about a snowman."

I can't disagree with that. Althoug to be fair, the reviewer does go on to suggest that perhaps Stine should hire a good ghost writer to 'help him along.' Hah, couldn't put it better myself.

Next time...I'm away for New Year in the back of beyond with no internet or phone access so I'll be back with you again in two weeks...have a spooky Christmas and a spine tingling New Year...

The Yearbook - Peter Lerangis

I have massively mixed feelings about The Yearbook. I remember it as being absolutely insanely awesome, and it kind of is, but it also left me feeling sorta…empty. Maybe it’s because the front cover pretty much gives away everything of note that happens in the book:



I could just let you feast your eyes on the lovingly depicted tentacle monster and leave it there. But I won’t. That would be cruel.

The Yearbook holds the privileged distinction of being entirely narrated from a male point of view. I don’t know about you guys but I can’t think of any other Point Horror written from a guy’s point of view? It’s also contains little gems like this: “I saw Ariana beside me, flailing, borne on one thick, oozing tentacle.” Cough, cough.

Anyway, David Kallas lives in a town called Wetherby, and he’s our narrator, as well as being a genuine genius. Except he’s a really lame kind of genius who isn’t particularly good at anything. Perhaps solving tentacle monster based mysteries will be his forte? Fingers crossed!

Sex is mentioned directly on page 4. I guess that’s what you get when you let a seventeen year old guy take the lead position in a Point Horror book. David has a major hard on for a girl called Ariana Maas, who he’s working on the yearbook with. Sadly, Ariana has a boyfriend called Smut who’s also on the yearbook team, so David isn’t involved in any of the sex himself. What he is involved in is finding putrid corpses in a river next to a pipeline and not telling anybody about it.

Next day at school, everyone is buzzing with the news that some kid called Rick Arnold is missing and David spills about his gruesome corpsey find to Chief Hayes. Chief Hayes is, like, this big black dude who gets all teary eyed and tells the story of back in high school when him and his best friend Reggie Borden got bullied by racists, and then Reggie went missing. And then a bunch of other kids went missing and their corpses turned up, but not ol’ Reggie’s. Chief Hayes mentions some weird secret society that used to meet in the school’s basement and his suspicion that it was some sort of Klu Klax Klan thing (pretty heavy for a PH).

Sooooooo, who wants to hear some backstory? Sure you do! So, David and Ariana met when she saved him from a falling tree branch during a small earthquake (seriously). The last earthquake to hit Wetherby was 50 years ago – right around the time all those other kids went missing. Hmmmm.

Also – the yearbook team is advised by a teacher called Mr DeWaart, who is described thusly:

“Mr DeWaart was weird. No question. His nickname was Wartface, because of his last name and two large moles on his right cheek and left hand.”

RL Stine, are you READING this?? I hope you’re on the phone to your lawyers like, right NOW.



Anyway, Mr DeWaart holds a little party at his house (inappropriate much) and the students start competitively twisting cherry stems into knots with their tongues, and it is meant to be totally HOT when Ariana does it. I remember spending ages trying to teach myself how to do that when I was like eleven, now I guess I know where it came from. Thanks for the memories, Point Horror.

Anyhow, it’s David’s job to proofread the yearbook but he doesn’t really do it right, and all these nasty pictures of Rick Arnold’s corpse make their way into the book in place of the kids who didn’t show to have their pictures taken. Oh, and a bunch of the students also get crappy yet creepy poems written under their names basically warning them that they’re about to die. This is my favourite of the poems:

”Ed Lynan
Hates rhymin’
See ya, Ed.
Dead.

Very beat.

Rick Arnold also has one of these very poems under his name, and, lest we forget, he is very much D.E.A.D. There’s an uproar, etc etc, the scene is set for some murder and I'm rubbing my grubby little hands together in delight.

Oh well, Rick Arnold is pretty much forgotten about as we move on (sorry, Rick). Mr DeWaald, and Smut, together with a few other elite students have a little club called The Delphic Society and they get together to have philosophical chats about things. It’s all very hush hush. Ariana isn’t too keen on it because some girl called Monique Flores is in the club and she has a crush on Smut. With a name like Monique Flores she certainly sounds like trouble. Kinda brings to mind this little minx:



David decides to find the Delphic Club’s top secret location and catch Smut and Monique macking so Ariana will be all his. He sees Smut with his arm around Monique and he’s all ‘yesssss, now I know for sure Smut is a cheat.’ Umm, David? I’m pretty sure that putting your arm around someone doesn’t count as cheating . Anyway, David then finds the club’s secret meeting place by going through a revolving bookcase thingamajig in the basement (how very Addams Family). There have been rumours about underground societies operating out of the basement circulating since at least the 50s, and this looks like a likely location for them.


Things start getting weird. There’s a crack in the floor of the secret room, and smoke’s billowing out and David suddenly starts chuckling without knowing why, and feeling weirdly powerful and like he wants to stay in this room forever and stuff. Then he blacks out, as usual.

Whilst blacked out, he has this weird dream about some kid called Mark who lives with his grandma because his parents were sick and now they’re missing, presumed dead.

Ariana finds David passed out. (what a turn on for her). She’s all hysterical, because she’s just found a corpse of her very own, stuffed into a pipe in some nearby construction works. The pair bond over their corpse finding abilities, and David thinks the following:

“I was already feeling better, until I started to laugh, which was like inviting Arnold Schwarzenegger to sit on my head.”

How 90s.



So, Ariana and David kiss until David goes and ruins everything by telling her about Smut and Monique. Ariana runs away in an angry tizzy, upset that David is basically spying on her life. Bah.

This time, David reports the corpse right away, It turns out it’s John. I haven’t bothered to mention him, so you’ll have to take my word for it that David and John were pretty tight, and David is upset by his death for at least a page or two. Chief Hayes tells David that this could be the work of a serial killer.

David and Ariana decide to put aside their argument and work together to figure out what’s going on. They go down to the secret room and find some kid called Jason trapped by this giant tentacle monster that’s emerging from the smoky crack, which incidentally has widened to the size of a ‘gash.’ (hee hee)

Yeah, I know, it happens completely out of the blue. They just…they just suddenly see this monster. I kind of feel like I haven’t given you enough of a build up or something, but then again that’s pretty much how I felt reading the book so I guess you’ll have to live with it or die trying.

David jumps in to try to save Jason, and there’s a really weird sequence where David’s in the hole and three old fashioned disembodied voices are talking to him, telling him that it isn’t yet ‘his time.’ He needs to ‘find out who we are’ first. The voices also tell him that he is ‘inside the Omphalos’ When he emerges from the hole, David’s hair is turned white by the experience, I guess that Peter Lerangis wrote that in so that he wouldn’t have to show David having any kind of emotional response to what’s happening.

OK, and before Jason died, David saw him with some tall black dude with a lumyp face who was supposedly called George Derbin. Putting his credentials as a genius to good use, David figures out that George Derbin must actually be – gasp – Reggie Borden. This is because George Derbin is an anagram of Reggie Borden, and ummm, they were both young, black and very tall. Good old anagram puzzles and racial profiling, working hand in hand to solve murders since ’94.


Since emerging from the hole, David has this weird lump on his head. Chief Hayes has a similar lump on his ankle from a strange encounter he once had with a singing group in the secret room, and he describes it as a calcium bump. Matching calcium bumps, how sweet, now I know what to ask for for Christmas. And George Derbin/Reggie Borden also has a lumpy face, which is another link between him and the tentacle business in the hole.

At home, David just happens to flick through some honeymoon pics of his mom and (dead) dad, and just happens to find a picture of them in Greece at the site of some ruin labelled as The Omphalos. His mom tells him it means belly button – the centre.

David dreams of that Mark kid again – this time Mark is 17 and he’s identifying his grandmas body in a morgue. His parents are still missing, so he’s going to have to be sent to be looked after by a foster family. We also get the big reveal in this dream that it’s 2016, whoaaaaa, it’s a FLASHFORWARD dream, I half expect the twist to be that the corpse he's indentifying actually belongs to John Locke ("Don't tell me what I can't do!".)

But it doesn't. And Mark’s going to be sent to Wetherby, to live with a guy called Walter Ojeda, a widower – UH OH, I don’t know about you but that name sure sounds like an anagram to me! An anagram of…murder. Oh wait, that totally doesn’t work, forget I said anything. Oh, and check this out, in a flashy example of the hi-tech future awaiting us, the police officer ‘faxes’ Mark a ‘holo’ of Walter. To recap, that’s a hologram picture sent by fax, nice one Lerangis, where can I purchase my shiny new holo-fax from?

David decides to figure out who two other crack voices are (with Reggie Borden being the third). So off he trots to the library to have a leaf through this book that basically documents everything that’s happened in Wetherby since 1683 or something, what a terribly useful book. He figures out they belong to Jonas Lyte, who went missing in 1862 and Anabelle Spicer, who was burned at the stake as a witch in 1686. Being a genius, David naturally also figures out that the dates follow a pattern – a pattern that is constantly halving itself. Gasp! And the tentacles monster is killing students based on their student numbers. Wow, I’ve never met a tentacle monster who loves maths as much as this one does. According to David’s calculations, the next victim will be – Ariana!

Are you still with me? Phew, the nonsensical nature of this book sure does make it difficult to recap. But I’ll struggle on, just for you, because you’re looking so pretty today. Have you lost weight? Your hair looks lovely by the way. And you smell divine.

David runs off in search of Ariana, but she’s gone to head off the Delphic Club… *sigh*, walking right into the trap. The Delphic Club are in the secret room chanting and wearing crazy Polyphonic Spree style robes, they also appear to be under some kind of spell. Mr. DeWaart is leading from the front, and David realises those aren’t warts at all..but..calcium lumps! WTF. And Mr. DeWaart admits that he works for the tentacle monster. My head hurts so much.


Ariana is in the crevice, trapped between some tentacles. David rushes over to save her, and blacks out once again, I can't exactly claim to be surprised.

In David’s dream world, Mark has moved to Walter’s house, and taken all his parents’ old boxes with him, he’s reading their papers for the first time. Both his parents had been very sick, and covered in tumours (or LUMPS) that weren’t cancerous but were out of control. If you don’t see where this is going yet then I really do worry for you.

David wakes up from his Mark dream, he’s on some weird yellowy floor beneath a column/tree trunk thing with three people sitting on one branch each – an older white man, a young white woman, and a teenage black man, all wearing special robes. It turns out he has worked out all their identities correctly as well. They call themselves priests and they’re pretty jokey and flippant, man the tone of this book is WEIRD.

David figures out that the tentacle monster wasn’t always in America, it originates from ancient Greece, and was the oracle at Delphi. Well, I must interject here to say I’m pretty well versed on my classics and before now I’ve never come across anything to suggest that the oracle at Delphi might be a giant tentacle monster. So bravo, Peter Lerangis, for your brave dedication to history, and to the truth.

The priests tell David and Ariana that they can only make one of them into a priest, the other has to be sacrificed, and they need to choose which one. But the little lovebirds refuse to let go of each other. It gets more smokey and things start exploding, and Jonas says that when the pain gets too great, and the growths become too much to endure, they’ll be back, because only the tentacle monster will be able to save them. But for now they’re free, I guess because love saved the day or some other nonsense.

Ariana and David are both covered in lumps all over their faces. The ledge comes into view, and Chief Hayes is there with the janitor, Mr Sarro, who’s drinking a can of coke. Accidentally spilling a drop of coke onto the monster wall, a chunk of the wall sizzles away. Don’t worry, this whole coke thing isn’t quite as clumsy as you think, Lerangis was at great pains to mention that Mr. Sarro is ALWAYS drinking a can of coke earlier in the book, so that’s OK then.

Since the monster feeds on calcium or is made of calcium or Jesus Christ who cares, and coke dissolves calcium then ummmm….hang on a minute, is it just me or am I LEARNING stuff here? If there’s one thing I hate it’s being tricked into learning stuff.

The gang stock up on coke (AND pepsi, just to be fair to all the major corporations I guess.) They spray it all over the tentacle beast and stuff like this happens:

“At the top of the tripod, the three priest were gyrating. Their movements were jerky and involuntary, as if cockroaches had crawled into their robes. Their eyes bulged, and their mouths seemed to be peeling backward, stretching across their faces.”

I know what you’re thinking – “wow, that sure sounds like a weird thing to happen, I wonder what our beloved characters reaction to it was?” Well, you’re in luck:

“Chief Hayes and Mr Sarro looked as if they were competing for widest mouth of the year.”

Then Chief Hayes covers it in gasoline and sets it on fire. David and Ariana run up onto a hill and watch Wetherby BURN, and they’re all, OMG, I hope some people survived.

That’s it for David, in the final chapter of the book we’re with Mark again. And he has just finished reading the very same book as us! Yes, Ariana and David are his parents. And Walter Odeja is actually Mr. DeWaart! Oh, Wartface! I’m sooo maddddd at you right now!

Mark quickly goes and finds the tentacle monster thing, and…his parents are there! They’re alive, he isn’t an orphan after all! Also there are Chief Hayes and Mr Sarro. And umm, they all hold hands to fight the monster, because it can only be destroyed, by like, love...or solidarity, or pepsi or something. The end.

Conclusion: What the hell just happened? I don’t think I can really say anything more than that. I guess that this book makes me feel like I’ve just suffered a major trauma to my head with a blunt instrument, but in a really good way.

Next time: The Snowman, by none other than old Wartface himself, RL 'I take all major credit cards’ Stine.

Trick Or Treat - Richie Tankersley Cusick

I’m being festive this week and going with Trick or Treat by RTC. Whaddya mean it’s not Halloween anymore? Chez Babysitter, it’s Halloween every day of the year.



Meet our heroine Martha. Martha likes sobbing and whining. Martha gets scared easily. Martha’s kind of a dickhead.

Martha’s dad has just married Connor’s mom, and Connor is just one year older than Martha. Connor is consistently lovely to Martha, and Martha consistently acts like a spoiled baby and treats him like shit because she thinks he’s a bit too thoughtful and weird. There’s also some weird sexual undercurrents bubbling under with these two, although that’s probably just me being mucky. I feel very protective of Connor.

Anyway, the whole happy family have just moved to a new town and a new house together, ‘The Old Bedford Place.’ Uh oh, you know when a house has a name like that that some bad shit has probably gone down there. Anyway, Martha hates the house because it’s scary and drafty and cold – like GHOSTLY cold, and she gets some weird vibes from it.

Within about five minutes of moving in, Martha’s dad and Sally swan off to Hawaii on honeymoon, leaving Martha and Connor home alone together. Nice parenting skills there.

On the first night, the ringing phone wakes Martha. The caller has a raspy voice (of course he does) and he’s all “look outside….Trick or Treat.” Outside her window is a hanging corpse with a big fat carving knife through its head. Umm, overkill much?
Oh, except it’s not a corpse. Shirtless Connor comes a –running to Martha’s screams and points out it’s just a scarecrow. Must be “kids” playing “pranks.” Kids eh? Those crazy murdering psychopath kids with their highly disturbing pranks, all a bit of harmless fun.

Martha and Connor drive into town together to buy picture hooks. In the hardware store, they meet a girl called Wynn and a guy called Blake, who are cousins. When Blake first sees Martha he looks pretty startled…almost as if he’d seen a ghost (hint hint). And when he hears that she’s living at ‘The Old Bedford Place,’ he’s double startled. Martha instantly has a crush on Blake, and once he has got over his initial reaction, the two flirt up a storm. Blake is like the school star, he’s amazing at everything and everybody loves him.

That night Martha goes for a walk in the houses’ grounds (which also includes a family cemetery bbs) and hears some crying and heavy breathing or something and gets scared, who cares.

At school the next day, Martha meets Greg – who is another cousin of Blake and Wynn. He’s also Martha’s creative writing teacher, and he looks soooooo similar to Blake that you know Martha’s a little hot for him. Oh sweet Jesus, does RTC actually have more than one plot line? If he also turns out to be an undercover police officer I’m going to kill myself.

Martha discovers that there was a murder at The Old Bedford Place, and together Connor and Martha discover the Bedford family mausoleum, which unsurprisingly, Martha isn’t too enamoured with. Later that night, Connor wakes Martha up to tell her that he can smell smoke – ohmigod mohmigod there’s a fire there’s a fire there’s a – tea towel on fire. And now Connor’s put it out. Oh. Well, that was exciting.

At school, Martha and Blake have lunch together. Blake tells Martha all about The Old Bedford Place. Turns out there was a murder there a year ago – almost EXACTLY a year ago, in fact, on Halloween. And the victim was one Elizabeth Bedford – Wynn’s best friend. Wynn even found the corpse (or what was left of it – frenzied stabbing attack, anyone?) in its bedroom – which is now Martha’s bedroom. The murderer was named Dennis, and he was Elizabeth’s ex boyfriend. In the months between their break up and Elizabeth’s death, he did all the usual stalker stuff, like make creepy phone calls, start small house fires etc. One more thing – Dennis himself has never been found. Gasp! They found his car and the knife but not a trace of Dennis.

That night, Connor and Martha discuss all this new information. Connor is a sweetie and even offers to switch bedrooms with Martha so she doesn’t have to sleep in the chamber of horrors. The phone rings again, and stupid old Martha answers it again. It’s the raspy voice again, this time it’s upped it’s game, saying “you’re dead Elizabeth. Trick or Treat.’ Umm, I'd choose treat I guess?

Martha hangs up and….the phone rings again. Relax, this time it’s Blake, and he invites her out for pizza with the ‘gang’: him, Wynn and Greg. Umm, I guess it’s cool for cousins to be close and all but isn’t it a weensy bit inappropriate for a teacher to be constantly hanging out with his students? Also, this is an example of the kind of thing that Greg says to Martha: “Martha, my newest and prettiest student, how’s life treating you at dear old Bedford?” And then he winks at her. Yeah yeah, put it back in your pants granddad. This guy kinda makes me want to wash in bleach.

They have a fine old time at the pizza place- and the guys reveal that they only didn’t invite Connor because Wynn has a maHOOsive crush on him and she refused to go along if he went. Martha reveals her absolute ignorance about the lovely Connor when she has to find out from Blake, who’s in his classes, that Connor is a genius, a regular walking encyclopaedia.



Back at home, before Connor lets her in Martha sees the shadow of someone moving about in her bedroom, yikes. Natch, when they go to check it out there’s nobody there.

Next day – Wynn confides in Martha that she can’t remember much from the (Halloween) night that Martha died – although she is convinced that Dennis didn’t do it, that there’s no way he was capable of murder. Also, Blake dated Elizabeth after she broke up with Dennis, which isn’t something Blake himself has ever mentioned to Martha. To make matters worse, supposedly Martha bears a strong resemblance to poor old dead Lizzie, hmmmm, and she just happens to also live in this girl’s bedroom, what a very strange coincidence. Why, if I wasn’t more trusting in RTC’s powers as an author, I’d say that sounds positively contrived.

Anyhoo, Martha has a crappy day at school and she ends up cutting class with Blake. He needs to go to a nearby town to gather decorations for the big Halloween dance – y’know the same Halloween dance that Elizabeth was brutally murdered directly after last year. Oh dear, anniversaries are never a good omen ion point horror books, ESPECIALLY if they happen to fall on Halloween. Things don’t look great for Martha.

So Blake takes Martha to a giant hay pile and it’s really romantic or something. They have this deep chat, Blake saying that he’s desperate to get away from the town and a basketball scholarship is his one big hope. Hmmm, you know who his one big rival for that scholarship was? Dennis. The Dennis who’s now missing after supposedly killing Blake’s girlfriend (my spell-check tells me that that ‘who’ should be a ‘whom’ but I REFUSE. Sorry, spell-check, it’s just against everything I believe in, I’m a strong advocate for poor grammar and syntax)

Blake’s about to kiss her but Martha goes and ruins it by mentioning his dead looky-likey girlfriend. Way to go, Martha. He pushes her away then denies that Martha really reminds him of Elizabeth beyond an initial superficial similarity. Everything is A-OK though, they make out again, and then gather the hay and pumpkins they need to take back to Bedford to use as decorations at the Halloween dance.

Back at the house, lovely Connor isn’t in. Martha sees something ‘floaty’ on the stairs and a silhouette inside her closet and gets herself all worked up, so worked up that she falls fast asleep. Once again, she is woken by a ringing phone. Once again, it’s the raspy voiced creep, who once again calls Martha ‘Elizabeth’ and once again signs off with ‘Trick or Treat.’ Okay, this raspy voiced guy needs to call me, I’m sure I could help him come up with some fresher material. I mean, I know serial killers and stalkers have certain rules of consistency they need to stick to, but that’s not to say they can’t spice things up a bit every now and again.

So, Connor finally arrives home, he had car trouble. He tries to calm Martha down but she’s a total bitch to him as usual. I really don’t get what her problem with Connor is. He even offered to swap rooms with her and take the horrible murder room for himself for God’s sake! Oy, won’t I have egg on my face if he turns out to to be the killer after all.

Martha finishes being a bitch and goes back to her room…and her closet door slowly creaks open…and Connor is standing there! Haha, go Connor! He figured out there’s a secret passageway running into Martha’s closet ( I guess she’s back in the murder room now. There’s a lot of dull bedroom yo-yoing but let’s just assume she’s always in the murder room) Martha kicks Connor in the shin and tells him she hates him. She also accuses him of being behind all the weird stuff that’s happened. In reply, Connor tells Martha that she knows nothing about him, and he totally shames her with all the stuff he knows about her. He totally called you out, Martha!

They kind of bond, Martha tells him all her fears. Connor tells her he feels the strange vibes in the house as well. He didn’t say anything before out of kindness, he didn’t want to make life any harder for Martha. I’m actually a little bit in love with Connor.

The next day, at school Wynn invites herself round to The Old Bedford Place for a study date- she feels like she needs to see the house where she found her best friend's corpse again. Really?! Is that absolutely necessary? Wynn hopes that going to the house will trigger her memories so she can know for sure that Dennis didn’t do it. All she remembers is the body and the blood.

Later, in the evening, Martha has to nip back into school to pick up a book before Connor picks her up. It’s deserted…but then…she hears a footstep. All the lights go out and the footsteps get louder and closer, “Martha’s eyes, wild with terror, were totally useless to her now.” I don’t know why I included that line, it just made me laugh but whatdoiknow.

Martha hides under some desks in a classroom, the footsteps guy follows her in, “her hand grappled with the knob” (hehehe) as she manages to run past him and escape, falling into Connor’s arms outside. The police don’t find anyone in the building, but Martha is pretty sure that somebody is trying to kill her.

Next night, Wynn comes to the murder house for a fun trip down memory lane. She tells Martha and Connor that the house has loads and loads of hidden tunnels. According to her, Dennis and Blake are also both aware of thse tunnels. Here’s what she remembers from the fateful Halloween one year ago: It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times (not really). The gist of it is – Blake and Elizabeth had an argument and Elizabeth went off with Dennis for a ‘chat.’ When Elizabeth hadn’t returned after an hour, Wynn, Greg and Blake went looking for her, and found her all smooshed up with a knife. Well, that was certainly worth it.

Night of the Halloween party (I’m sorta surprised they didn’t cancel it out of respect to the murdered but whatever) . Connor can’t go because he has the flu, but Martha is totally going even though she’s convinced there’s a killer on the loose who has a knife with her name on it. She dresses up like a gypsy. Blake picks her up and he’s death (how portentous), Greg is an executioner (double portentous) and Wynn is a witch (ummm).

Martha is loving the Halloween dance, until Wynn comes running up all panicky to tell Martha that she has just seen Dennis! Arggh! And then Martha gets a creepy (payphone) call again: “there’s no one home Elizabeth, it’s Halloween and they’re all dead” . Oh no, please don’t let Connor be hurt, what if Dennis reallly is alive and he's murdered him, arrrgghhh my tingly left arm and my clutchy heart. Oh, and the caller also throws in a ‘trick or treat.’

Martha, Wynn, Blake and Greg go racing back to Martha’s place to check on Connor. He’s fine. Not for long though. The lights go out and somehow everyone gets separated and Martha and Connor end up in Martha’s bedroom alone together being chased by someone with a swooshy knife that they keep swooshing around. Martha and Connor positively LEAP into the closet and run down the tunnel until they come to a storage closet. Their attacker starts a leetle fire outside the door and there’s nowhere to run (umm, not sure why they can’t just go back the way they came?). Luckily, Martha finds an extra secret double hidden tunnel behind some shelves and the pair follow it…ending up in….the mausoleum…dun dun dun. I totally guessed they would end up in the mausoleum as I was reading this, I award myself one hundred Awesome Points.

In the mausoleum, there’s a big ol’ altar shrine set up, complete with burning candles and decomposing corpse of Dennis. A tall black figure dressed as Death comes in and starts slashing at Connor, cutting him in the shoulder. Et tu, Blake? Only…it’s not Blake. We know this because Blake himself comes running in and tackles Death, who is actually…Wynn! Nice fake-out, RTC, I’ve certainly never seen you employ that device before.

Turns out Wynn really killed Elizabeth, and did all those creepy things in the months before her death. Reason? She was totally in love with Dennis. Wynn also accidentally killed Dennis, ooopsie daisy, she only meant to knock him out but I guess she doesn’t know her own strength. Oh well, these things happen, she shouldn’t beat herself up about it.

Wynn makes one more lunge for Martha with the knife but the police rock up and save the day. Connor’s going to be okay, and Martha even refers to him as her brother, aww, how sweet, all it took for Martha to like him was for Connor to sustain a near fatal injury whilst trying to save Martha’s life. Martha and Blake kiss in the mausoleum, of course they do. The end.

I’m left with a lot of questions at the end of this book. Like, are Martha and Connor’s parents ever going to come back? I have a sneaky suspicion that they have in fact run away to start a new life alone together. Also, I’m not sure if Wynn really had forgotten murdering Elizabeth or if that was just a fake out. This book was OK though, I just wish it had had some ghosts in it. It’s funny, you can really see the difference between the early ones (such as this), and the later ones where standards slipped and the writing became shoddier and shoddier. But it's weird, as the actual writing gets shoddier the books become more interesting as the writers are forced to dream up ever more implausible scenarios.

This book has got quite the following on Amazon, with particular praise being lavished on the ‘romance.’ Well, I guess this one really does have it all: undertones of incest, hay bale-based sexual tension and some potential hot student/teacher action (although sadly that promise was never realised - RTC, you’ve let me down, you’ve let your readers down, but most of all you’ve let yourself down.) A lot of people agreed with me and fell in love with Connor (hands off, he’s MINE), and at least one reader LUVED the book :

“i LUVED this book!!!! i was upset cuz she didnt like conor at all. i thoght it was really SWEET of conor(the nightmare part)i was dissappointed though cuz she still didnt like him after that. i luved conor.. he always tried to protect Martha..even wen he was close to dying. i read this book a bizzilion times n i still luv it. i'm glad that she went out w/blake...he was so sweet. i was soo surprised st the ending . this book got my heart pumping..its like i was Martha and i was experiencing everything..like the school part.. man i LUVED the book.”

This next review disturbs me slightly. A) because the reader is disproportionately angry at anybody who potentially dislikes the book, B) because I’m not sure that I like being called a crazy half wit and C) because there's something creepy about using then royal 'we' in a point horror book review.

“This book was a turn the page thriller! It was an on the edge of your seat til the finish kind of book. I don't know what some other people think, but if you dislike this book you must be crazy. It was full of suspense and mystery, and gave you that eerie felling that you are the person in the book. Any half wit can see that this book could have a high point in her career. This book has been written by the absolute master of suspense, horror and mystery in our books. We have read together 20 of her books. Just recently, Silent Stalker and Overdue. In our books she ranks number one, and her book deserves 5 stars and the honorable gold star”

Next time: I haven't settled on which book to do next, it's all up in the air and I have a couple to choose from. So I'll see you next time with a mystery recap, unless you die from the suspense first. (please don't die, I already have enough blood on my hands. )