Continuing the trend from the last book that felt more intense than your average Goosebumps book, we have this gem.

Do you remember how I said Scholastic accused Stine of having ghostwriters? This book might be the strongest case for it.

1) It’s WAY more violent than other GB books. Deer and rabbits are torn apart with graphic detail about the corpses.

2) It ends with the protagonist getting attacked and bitten by a werewolf.

There was a misconception that nothing bad ever really happened to the protagonists, but there have been plenty of instances where the sting ending was the kid losing. One turned into a chipmunk, supposedly for the rest of their life. One was attacked by a venomous (called poisonous which is amusing because that’s what we used to say) snake as a ghost watched and waited for the kid to die. And this one ended with a werewolf diving in and biting a kid’s chest.

Maybe to death? Probably more likely to infect him with the curse.

Regardless, this book felt way more hardcore than other GB books. That’s definitely not a bad thing. At this point I feel so saturated with soft fake-outs and sting endings that I’m ready for more violence and actual repercussions.

Anyway, I’m not saying Stine actually used ghostwriters (beyond his own statements of using freelance authors’ detailed outlines for books in this specific series). Maybe he too was bored with the low stakes of most of the books.

But if I were Scholastic and I really want to point to a different tone as an indicator that there was another cook in the kitchen, this would probably be the book. Honestly, besides the last Monster Blood, I’d probably point toward the last FEW books in this series!

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When I started re-reading this series, a friend of mine was renting a house and found this book on one of the shelves. He sent me a picture and said something like he couldn’t believe I was going to read this book.

But I am so excited to tell you folks how good this book actually is!

It isn’t my favorite (that honor goes to the Blob), but it is SOLIDLY in my top 5. It’s got a genuinely creepy skeleton of a story to it where an entire class of kids disappear one year only to have a new kid to the school stumble onto an old elevator that brings him and a new friend to… basically an alternate dimension.

The kids who had disappeared were transported to this black-and-white mirror world of their own en masse and, realizing they are never going to leave, decided to reenact Lord of the Flies. They’re ruthless, violent, and insane. Beyond that, there’s a distinct lack of humanity because almost everyone has given up and become nihilistic. There’s a vibe of “we’re screwed, so we’re going to hurt you as well so you’re just as bad-off as us.”

Personally, the idea of being trapped in a world that is basically empty except for its insane and violent inhabitants with no hope of leaving is pretty creepy. It would be impending doom and a ticking clock as there is no escape, no hope, and the only guarantee is that the others will find you one day and, until then, it’s just survival in a shitty world.

I think it might be one of the more unsettling books in the series.

After I read it, I told my friend he should give it a go. There’s a lot of characters getting whipped into hysteria by everyone around them and this felt poignant in modern America, but he declined saying it’s still a children’s book.

But he should have read it. It’s one of the best!
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The first Deep Trouble was a bit of a miss for me because it wasn’t Jaws. It WAS a very interesting book that tackled (albeit in a simplified junior way) the ethical dilemma of capturing endangered species for study.

So, while I didn’t get a maniacal hammerhead shark stalking kids, I did get a thinker of a book and I ended up really liking it.

When it came time to read this one, I went in with zero expectations and it was also pretty good. It didn’t have the same depth (see what I did there?) as the first one, but a genuinely interesting thing happened in it:

A family gets stranded on an island.

Oh man, THIS is my jam. I love books about people stranded on islands. The need for survival, the inventing of solutions to problems unique to that island, time, and person (or people) so the characters(s) can get what they need to stay alive, and the struggle to not only live but to maintain the WILL to live… That’s some awesome stuff. Having societal obligations stripped away leaving only humanity always makes for an intriguing story.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last long in this book before they were off the island, the problem was solved, and the book was done.

It was still a good book. As a matter of fact, I’d say out of all the stories that have sequels, this is probably my favorite.
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Last camp book in the original Goosebumps series!

This is definitely my favorite camp book in the Goosebumps series. It has everything: gaslighting, ghosts, attempted murder, snakes, and betrayal.

It was also scarier than a LOT of other Goosebumps books and it made me start thinking about JK Rowling.

The genius of (the morally questionable) Rowling was that her books graduated in difficulty, subject matter, and characterization as they went on. Kids who were eleven when the first Harry Potter book came out got to grow up WITH Harry and deal with more and more mature things right next to him as they had to deal with more mature things in their own lives.

It was brilliant.

And I’m not saying Stine is Rowling or anything (Stine is OBVIOUSLY better than Rowling even if he never read the story I sent him as a kid. At least he’s not a TERF. That I know of. Please don’t correct me), but the books have been getting scarier and it would be WILD if the last one served as a bridge to the scarier and far more violent Fear Street books.

Imagine: A kid goes through a scarier than average Goosebumps story and the family moves in the end like Welcome to Dead
House only pull up to a new house in a new town and the kid gets out to survey the scene. It’s quiet and he realizes that there aren’t any birds singing. And it’s chilly even though it’s summer. And what does that street sign say?

“Fear Street? What kind of town names a street like that?”

And then nothing. That’s the end.

I think that would have been the coolest thing Stine could have done but, alas, it didn’t work out like that. But we’ll talk about all that later.

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