**This blog contains adult language.**
Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to know who the bad guy/girl/effing Justin is.
Tag Line: It started as a game...and ended in death.
From the Back of the Book: The truth hurts. What else is there to do, with all seven of them stuck in Dara Harker's luxury ski condo? There are three guys and four girls - some of them friends, some nearly strangers - all of them trapped. A blinding blizzard has stilled the lifts, blocked the roads and killed the phones. A game, they think, will help them break the ice. Who will tell the truth? Who will take a dare? And how far will each of them go? But then the game turns deadly. One of them, it seems, would rather kill than tell the truth. And kill again.
I'm going to warn y'all ahead of time that there might be some weird formatting issues with this post. Blogger decided to change things around and I'm struggling to figure out the new system. Hopefully it will be close to what you're used to seeing.
This book was published in 1985 as part of the unending Fear Street franchise. I'm pretty sure I've never read this one before but I can tell you one thing..........
Odds of this graphic being used at least once:
1000000000000%
So, I just started this book and it's written in first person. I hate that. This sucks.
We begin with our protagonist and supporting cast in the back of a limo. I had to read two pages before I figured out her name is April. She's traveling with Jenny, Ken and Josh. None of them know Josh and he isn't making any effort to change that. He just stares out the window and ignores the others. The limo belongs to someone named Dara and they're on their way to her ski house. Only there's no snow. And only a 40% chance of snow in the forecast.
April tells us that Jenny and Ken are a power couple. The fight hard and make up harder. She goes on to describe Jenny for us and I'm just going to put this here......
“I guess I'm jealous of Jenny's dark, dramatic good looks. She's just about the most beautiful girl at Shadyside High, in my opinion. She has perfect hair, short and dark and sleek. And perfect oval-shaped, blue eyes. And beautiful skin that always looked tanned. Jenny had a good bod too.”
I think maybe April wishes she could change places with Ken.
But then we get this description of Ken........
“He's probably one of the best looking guys at school, with his thick, wavy dark hair and dark eyes. He's definitely the best built – tall and muscular but not too bulky.”
Maybe April wishes they could be a thruple. Girl, you do you. Or them. Or all of the above.
Jenny and Ken start making out so April is forced to try to have a conversation with Josh. It's a little stilted but she manages to find out he's in 11th grade like the rest of them and his dad works with Dara's dad. The two families often take vacations together so he knows Dara pretty well even though the rest of them don't know him. April reveals that they don't really know Dara very well at all. She sits next to Dara in class and was just spontaneously invited to spend the weekend with her. Since April is friends with Jenny and Ken, they were invited too.
So they're traveling to a remote location to spend a weekend with people they don't really know.
They finally get to the house which is on top of a hill and completely remote. There are no visible neighbors anywhere around. The driveway is long and the limo parks at the bottom for some reason so Dara drives down in her massive Jeep to pick them up. She seems pretty excited to see them all. Well, most of them. She kind of shades Josh for inviting himself along and April can tell that it really hurts his feelings. They all go up to the house. Dara is behind them giving instructions to the limo driver so they go in without her like weirdos. The place is dark because she apparently just arrived herself and they don't know where the light is. Suddenly they hear creaking floorboards and assume they're all about to murdered.
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
It was just some guy named Tony and his girlfriend Carly Rae who I'm just going to call Carly because I'm lazy. Tony's parents and Dara's parents own the house together and trade it off so each gets it every other week. Tony's fucked up and come on Dara's weekend. Dara is pissed and accuses him of doing it on purpose. Tony says he had a hard week and just wanted to get away. They don't seem to have luggage and there was no car outside. When Dara asks how they got there, Tony says they flew into the nearest town and took a taxi. Which is weird. He also says his parents don't know they're there. For no reason whatsoever other than it's the end of the chapter, Tony gets all menacing and advances threateningly on Dara saying he knows how to settle this.
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
Just when everyone thinks he's about to whip out a gun, he laughs and says they can share it. It's a big house. There's enough rooms for all the girls and Tony (who got there first) to have their own bedroom. Josh and Ken will have to share a room with bunkbeds. Josh immediately says he needs the top bunk because he's claustrophobic and I'm sure that won't come up again anywhere.
{{{Note from future me: It doesn't. I was giving Stine way too much credit there.}}}
Everyone gets unpacked and then they meet back up in the living room to chat around the fire. It's all pretty boring. Ken suggests they play Truth or Dare to get to know each other a little better since most of them are strangers to each other. Josh doesn't want to play because he seems to have half a brain at least.
Dara asks the first question to Ken. She asks him what he's done that he's truly ashamed of. Ken says he was in a comic book store once and a little kid dropped a ten dollar bill. Ken just kept it instead of giving it back to the little boy. Dara thinks the answer is boring but Ken sticks to it.
Dara asks April what's the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to her when she was making out with a boy. April says she forgot she was chewing gum once when she started kissing some guy she refuses to identify and the gum ended up in his mouth. Everyone is suitably grossed out about that. I guess it's okay for her tongue to go in his mouth but not her gum.
There are rules, people! We live in a society!
April asks Dara who the worst kisser she's ever kissed was. Dara gets a weird glint in her eye and looks at Josh. April can tell she's about to say his name and Josh reaches that awareness pretty fucking fast too. He yells at Dara to shut up and then attacks her with a fireplace poker.
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
Not really. He just throws it on the ground and stomps off toward his room. Dara runs after him and drags him back. She says she wasn't going to name him and apologizes for implying she was. He tells her he really doesn't like to be made fun of. I mean, who does? This seems pretty universal.
Tony gets mad at all the commotion because he's trying to inhale Carly's face. Dara and Tony go at it for a few minutes, trading insults and threats and then Tony and Carly go off to the kitchen to get something to drink. Dara wants to play the game again but refuses to answer April's question when she's reminded that she never did. She says it's her house and she'll make all the rules.
Dara asks April what's a secret that she knows that she wishes she didn't know. Without a pause, April says that she wishes she didn't know about the girl on Summer Island. Everyone wants to know what she means but she won't tell. She knows Ken knows what she means because it's his secret.
Dara tries to ask Tony a question, which is pretty fucking neat since he's not even in the room (STINE, DO BETTER), but he says he'll take a dare instead. Dara dares him to go outside and get the frisbee off the roof. In the snow. Carly and April both urge him to take a question instead because the roof is slippery but Tony is determined to complete the dare. He gets a ladder and climbs onto the roof, fighting the wind and the snow. He's trash talking the crowd down below watching him when his feet slip and he plummets to his death.
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
He catches himself on the gutter and hangs out there. Then he just jumps to the ground because he's not even that fucking far from the ground, Stine. He's fine but he doesn't want to play the stupid game anymore. He and Dara yell at each other a bit more and then April suggests a snowy, moonlight walk in the woods because that sounds safe. For some reason, they all agree to go.
Odds that every one of these people is a complete moron: 100%
As she walks, April flashes back to the Summer Island incident. She was spending the summer working as a mother's helper. Ken was there vacationing with his family but I don't think he knew April was there. She saw him making out on the beach with a girl that was not Jenny. Over the summer, she saw Ken and the side chick together multiple times. He never knew she knew and she never told him or Jenny what she saw.
So.....it occurs to me that any number of things could have happened with a girl on Summer Island. Ken thinks she was talking about his cheating but what if someone else thought she was talking about something else entirely?
Odds that something dramatic happened with a girl on Summer Island: 75%
After their walk, everyone gets ready for bed. April is coming out of the bathroom when she hears someone in the living room and goes to check it out. It's Dara getting dressed for the cold. Dara tells April that she's going out to the woodshed to get more wood before the weather gets worse. On her way back to bed, Tony calls out to April from the end of the hall and asks her what's going on. She yells back that Dara is going out to the woodshed so I guess everyone in the house knows now.
{{{Note from future me: you should remember this later. You won't believe the absolutely fucking massive plot hole here.}}}
There's a full-blown blizzard going on the next morning. Dara and Josh don't appear for breakfast and, when April and Jenny go looking for them, they discover that Dara's bags haven't been unpacked and her bed is still made. They ask Kenny if Josh was in the room with him last night but Kenny doesn't know. He fell asleep really quick and he's a deep sleeper. April checks the fireplace and realizes that Dara never brought in the wood. When they go outside to look for her, they find out the jeep is gone.
Tony says that Dara and Josh probably went somewhere to talk and got stuck by the bad weather. They used to date and clearly Josh was still pretty hung up on her so most of them accept the explanation even though it doesn't explain the fact Dara never brought in the wood the night before. April wants to call the police and Tony and Carly both freak out pretty hard at that suggestion.
Odds that Tony and Carly are on the run: 55%
April sees someone tumble off the roof and she screams.
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
It was just a clump of snow.
They try to kill time as they wait for Dara and Josh to come back. Tony and Carly pretty much spend it doing PG-13 activities and the other three play gin rummy. They eat lunch and worry about the power going out in the blizzard. April finds candles and suggests they should try to get to the woodshed so they can use the fireplace. Suddenly there's a loud knocking on the door but no one's there. It happens again but there's still no one out there. I don't know why they don't look for footprints in the snow. I guess maybe the blizzard is so bad that it's covering them up immediately. After a lot of peering into the darkness they discover that it's the door of the ski locker banging about in the wind.
Ken wants to go close the locker so the banging doesn't drive them all crazy. Jenny doesn't want to go outside but April volunteers to go with him to get some fresh air. As they approach the locker, Dana's dead body tumbles out. That was very conveniently timed. There's a hatchet buried in her back.
They all decide they need to call the police and Tony picks the phone up. He tells them that the line is dead and they all believe him even though he's the one who doesn't want the cops called at all. Honestly, I would have checked it myself. He could be lying. There's general confusion for several pages. Some of them want to try to ski into town while others want to bunker down in the house and wait for the blizzard to pass. April is worried that Josh is out there dead too but Tony says Josh is probably the killer.
Ken says they'll all be okay if they stay put and don't panic. Eventually the storm will end and the phone will be fixed. April wants to search Josh's room for clues. They find his bag in the room and everything is still in it so they briefly dismiss him as a suspect, going back to thinking he might be murdered too. Someone suggests checking Dara's room and they all go in there. April finds a note on the bed from “Josh”.
“Dear Dara, I can't go on like this anymore. No matter how cruel you are to me, I always take it. You humiliated me tonight. How could you? I always thought you were someone worth caring about. But I guess I made a big mistake. But I have to talk to you one more time. I won't take no for an answer. Meet me at midnight. Alone!!! Josh.”
So they go back to suspecting Josh. I'm getting whiplash.
Y'all, I think Josh is probably dead. I mean......
I still think this has to do with what April said during the truth or dare game which means the motive has nothing to do with Josh's supposed humiliation. I think someone killed Dara thinking it was April. Maybe Dara was wearing her coat or something to get the wood? I don't know but I know there's a connection there. I also think that means it's someone April knows because it has to be someone that believes April knows something about them. She just met half the people here and couldn't reasonably be expected to be harboring a secret about them. Which narrows us down to two.
Odds that Ken is the bad guy: 50%
Odds that Jenny is the bad guy: 50%
At this point, Jenny has a complete breakdown and starts screaming that they need to get out of there before Josh comes back and kills them all. She runs to the phone and, when she discovers it isn't working, she slams it against the wall. And.....there we go, sports fans. She just made sure the phone couldn't be used when it's operational again. That has to bump her up to 75% at least. At least.
They drag Dara into the garage so she's out of the snow. The day passes slowly and finally they all go to bed. April can't sleep and at some point in the middle of the night, she hears someone walking around in the living room. She immediately assumes it's Josh coming back to kill them all. She grabs a ski pole and creeps out into the hall. There's a flashlight beam traveling around the living room. Suddenly it goes out and she loses all sense of where 'Josh' might be. Then he grabs her from behind and drags her away.
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
It's just Tony. He heard the same sound and assumed that she was Josh. She asks him, out of the complete fucking blue, if he ever dated Dara and he says he did. Not for long because Dara wasn't really a relationship kind of girl but she didn't hurt him like she obviously hurt Josh. April decides to go to the kitchen to get some water and Tony follows. They turn on the light and discover Josh's frozen, dead body propped up against the glass door.
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
It is Josh but he's not dead. He's just trying to get inside. April's screams bring everyone else into the kitchen. Tony cautiously lets Josh into the kitchen. They scream at him, asking him why he killed Dara and he's confused. He says he's been walking all day and he's half frozen. Carly makes him some coffee and he warms up a little and asks them what's going on. Tony produces the letter which Josh says he didn't write. April asks him to tell his story and he begins about how upset he was about the truth or dare game. Through the entire thing, Jenny is constantly screaming that he's lying and he killed Dara and I really think she's protesting a tad too much.
Odds Jenny is the bad guy: 90%
We should just call her Justin at this point.
Josh says he wanted to teach Dara some kind of lesson so he got up really early and took her Jeep. I'm not sure he even knew where he was going or what he was going to do. The main road to town was closed because of the snow so he had to take a back road and then he got stuck in a snowdrift. He waited for a car to come along so he could flag someone down for help but no one did. The Jeep ran out of gas so he no longer had a heater and he eventually decided to just get out and walk because he was going to freeze to death either way.
We just skip to Sunday morning after that. April is feeling miserable and when she goes back to her room after breakfast, she finds Josh going through her things. He says the letter was written in a red ballpoint pen and he's trying to find it because finding it means finding the killer. April just starts shrieking about him being the killer which makes no damn sense at all at this point. Especially when she was just saying a few paragraphs ago that she was sure he wasn't the murderer. Stine can't keep up with his own characters.
In the course of two pages, April shrieks something six times. I'm not even kidding. No one bothers to come and see what she's shrieking about even though someone was just murdered a few days ago. Clearly they give zero fucks about April. Can't say I blame them much.
April decides she wants to go sit on the front porch to get some fresh air. When she goes to find her parka, it's missing. Suddenly she remembers where she saw it last. Dara was wearing it when she was killed.
I KNEW SOMEONE MISTOOK DARA FOR APRIL!!!!
Except...this shouldn't be right. {{{And here's the massive plot hole I was talking about earlier.}}} I mean, everyone pretty much heard April yell that Dara was going outside. So even if she WAS wearing April's coat, wouldn't the killer ::ahem::Jenny::ahem:: know it was Dara and not April? Stine. DO BETTER.
April finally catches on to the fact that she was the intended victim. She decides to try to walk to the ski lodge and grabs a random coat off the pile. It's red and it belongs to Ken. I feel one of these coming our way......
Or maybe a red ballpoint pen because that's exactly what she finds in his pocket. Wow. Did Jenny really try to pin it on Ken with a pen? That's cold.
April figures that Ken wanted to kill her because of what she said during truth or dare but killed Dara by mistake because she was wearing April's coat. {{{EVEN THOUGH THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE}}} She's determined to continue down the hill to the lodge when she hears someone running behind her. She's tackled from behind into the snow by Ken and freaks the fuck out. He tells her that she needs to come back because she'll never make it without freezing to death. She wants to confront him about the pen but they're out there alone and she's worried he'll just kill her so she keeps her mouth shut. In the end, she decides to go back with him because she knows she'll never be able to make it to the lodge.
On the way back to the house, Ken tells her they need to talk about that secret. She admits that she saw him with another girl last summer and he asks if she told Jenny. She says she didn't but she wants to. He wants to explain but she doesn't let him. She just walks away and goes back into the house.
As soon as she gets inside, she pulls Jenny into the kitchen. She tells Jenny that they need to leave really quick while Tony and Ken are getting the firewood. The snow has stopped falling and she thinks they can ski out. She tells Jenny that she knows everything and they have to leave. Which was probably the worst thing she could have said to Jenny at this point. Jenny agrees to leave with her and suggests they go out back to get the skis.
They dress in several layers of clothes and then take off, skiing towards the road in the hopes of flagging a car down for help. As they reach the bottom of the first hill, Jenny asks April why she's crying. April hadn't even realized she was. April says she's fine now that they're away from the house and safe. They see the ski lift start up and notice there's an old man on it. When he gets to them, April shouts that they need the police and he points to the top of another hill telling her the ski patrol is up there.
Jenny and April get on the ski lift and start to ride to the top. Jenny waits until they're super high and then raises the safety bar. She tells April she's sorry and then pushes her out of the lift.
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
April manages to dodge her somehow on the tiny ski lift seat. She asks Jenny what she's doing. Actually she shrieks at Jenny. Then Jenny shrieks back. For the next two pages they shriek everything at each other. I'm surprised they didn't cause an avalanche. Jenny says that she caught April's clue during the truth or dare game and she knows April knows she killed that girl.
So Jenny's story is linked to Ken's. She knew about the girl from Summer Island (Barbara) and she was furious that Ken wouldn't stop seeing her. He kept promising Jenny that it was over but was still sneaking around with her. Finally Jenny went to confront Barbara. She says she doesn't really know what happened. She and Barbara fought and then Barbara was dead. She never told anyone and she thought she was safe until the truth or dare game when April said she knew about the girl. Jenny killed Dara thinking it was April because Dara was wearing April's coat. {{{EVEN THOUGH THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE}}} She asks April how she knew about the girl and April tries to tell her that she didn't. Jenny isn't really into listening at this point, even though she did ask the question and she just pushes April out of the seat.
For real this time.
April falls a long way into the snow.
LOLZ
She doesn't. The ski lift was at the top and she only fell a few feet. Jenny jumps off after her and starts trying to stab her with a ski pole. They fight and shriek until Jenny catches a ski lift seat to the back of the head. Then Ken arrives on the lift to save the day. He says he found the pen in his coat pocket and then went to take a closer look at the letter. He recognized Jenny's handwriting (even though he'd failed to do so until that convenient moment) and then went looking for her. He saw her skiing off with April and decided to follow. But somehow was completely undetected until the very moment they needed him. Nice trick, that.
They decide to take Jenny back to the house to take care of her until the police can arrive because she's crazy. Sigh.
The book ends with Ken telling April to take a dare next time and April saying she'll stick to Trivial Pursuit.
Wow. That was.....awful. I hated everyone in that book, the plot holes were disturbingly massive and the shrieking seriously gave me a headache. Stine. Seriously. DO BETTER!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment