Part of the idea of this whole project was always to not only read new books, but to also revisit some old favorites from childhood. The Goosebumps series was a favorite of mine and helped me pass many an hour at youth swim meets. For those of you who didn't grow up in the 90's, Goosebumps was a series of horror books for kids. Being that they were designed for kids under the age of twelve, they almost never involved anything actually horrifying but were more along the lines of a Twilight Zone for kids. Each story had some sort of ironic twist at the end, and almost every chapter ended in a 'jump scare.' Today's book was no exception.
Carly Beth is a twelve year old scaredy cat and everyone loves making her jump and scream. So naturally the first half of the book ends with her being pranked at the end of every chapter. It becomes very tedious to have every chapter end with Carly Beth screaming and the second sentence in the next chapter is "oh, never mind, it was a joke, I wasn't about to die." Carly Beth gets so fed up that she decides to get back at everyone by buying the scariest mask she could find. She spends $30 whole dollars on a super realistic mask in the back of the store that the creepy owner doesn't want to sell her. Holloween shenanigans ensue and the moment that Carly Beth gets her revenge is actually pretty effective and well written. Unfortunately for Carly Beth, the mask is, well, haunted and melds onto her skin and becomes a part of her. This is all well and good and makes for some exciting moments, but the resolution is very, very stupid. The store owner turns out to be a mad scientist and not a wizard or anything supernatural, but he gives Carly Beth a very supernatural solution to her problem with some arbitrary rules. I have a pretty high tolerance for fantastical elements in the fiction I read (as evidenced by most of the books on this list) but I hate it when an author makes me jumps through numerous logical hoops when a simple "I'm Ethan Rayne from Buffy and I enchanted these masks for Sport" would have sufficed. Anyway, the book ends happily ever after, or it ends with the painful and horrific death of her little brother. I guess you'll have to read it to find out for sure....
BOO!
5/10
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