**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. Please do not continue to read if you don't want to know who the “bad guy” is.
From the Back of the Book: Quinn Hadley is sure she must be the only sleepwalker at Salem. It's so embarrassing, especially since she never remembers where she was or what she was doing. But it's never been a problem. Until now. Because someone is roaming the campus, attacking people in the middle of the night. No one knows who the crazed stalker is. But all the clues point to Quinn.
This book was published in 1994 and this is my first time reading it. It's the ninth book in the Nightmare Hall series and I'm pretty sure I've at least recapped the first one on this blog at some point. Basically, they all take place at Salem University where there is a dorm called Nightmare Hall (actual name Nightingale Hall) because weird things happen there.
So let's talk about the cover. I have to say I love covers that use this style – a window of some sort that reveals a tiny part of the picture and you have to open it up to see the rest. I've always loved these. This cover in particular is....well, I'm just going to insert a picture and you'll see.
Why does her torso look so long? It's like she's Slenderman.
We begin with our protagonist Quinn sleepwalking in her dorm (not Nightmare Hall this time). Her roommate Tobie tracks her down and leads her back to bed. Tobie is annoyed at the interruption to her sleep.
When Quinn realizes that she's been sleepwalking again, she's embarrassed. It was something she did as a kid but she hasn't done it in years. As a freshman, she's under a lot of stress, plus she just got dumped by her boyfriend Simon, so that's probably what triggered the episode. She's a little worried about what she might have done while she was sleepwalking. Once or twice when she was younger, she got a little violent and ended up attacking someone in her sleep.
So....the back cover lied then? It obviously has been a problem once or twice.
The Spring Fling is coming up which sounds kind of like Homecoming. There are a lot of events planned for the weekend, culminating in a dance. Since Simon and Quinn aren't dating anymore, she doesn't have a date for the dance. She ends up going to the other events though and we get a brief mention of the couple from book one. Jess and Ian have organized everything and Quinn runs into them a couple of times. I remember really liking Ian so it's nice to see him around.
Later that evening, Tobie gets ready for the dance but she seems a little reluctant to go. Quinn tells us that Tobie is quiet and always seems tired and rarely leaves the room except to go to class. It sounds like Tobie might be depressed to me. I hope she's getting the support she needs. Tobie has a date for the dance but doesn't seem excited about it which makes Quinn a little resentful.
We skip over to the dance but we're not being hosted by anyone in particular. It's kind of weird. Everything is going well and people are having fun but then something foul-smelling starts pouring out of the vents. It not only smells awful, it stings their eyes and blinds them. A stampede ensues toward the doors and people get trampled. Jess ends up with a broken wrist before Ian pulls her to safety. It's complete mayhem.
We skip to the next day. Tobie tells Quinn what happened. Later, Quinn discovers that her favorite jacket smells like a stink bomb. She wonders if she sabotaged the dance in her sleep. Panicked, she throws the jacket in the incinerator to destroy the evidence.
The police find a stink bomb in the vent with a timing device attached. Anyone could have set it to go off. The person didn't need to be at the dance at the time. This just furthers Quinn's suspicions that she's the bad guy. She starts putting on clean white socks before bed so she'll be able to tell if she goes sleepwalking during the night.
We end up getting some backstory on Tobie. She had her heart severely broken in high school and she hasn't been the same since. Quinn assumes Tobie was dumped but later learns that her boyfriend died during their senior year of high school.
Suddenly we skip to an unnamed couple sitting on a bench outside The Tower (some building on campus). Someone dumps paint on them from a balcony overhead and then laughs manically. Both of them end up in the infirmary due to getting paint in their eyes and mouths.
The next morning, Quinn and Tobie are woken up by a girl named Ivy who lives on their floor. She tells them all about the paint incident. Later, Quinn finds a shirt and a skirt in her closet stained with paint. She freaks out and hides them in a corner of her closet. When she checks her socks, they're still clean which confuses her until she finds her sneakers also stained with paint.
So far we've only been “introduced” to five people and I haven't even mentioned one of them in the recap yet because so far her entire personality is that she likes to flirt and dates around and I don't participate in slut shaming (her name is Suzie and she lives on the same floor as the other girls). Quinn is convinced of her own guilt but I'm not so sure. It seems too obvious.
Odds Quinn the sleepwalker is the bad guy: 33%
Odds Tobie the heartbroken roommate is the bad guy: 33%
Odds Simon the ex boyfriend is the bad guy: 4%
Odds Ivy the gossip is the bad guy: 15%
Odds Suzie the campus lothario is the bad guy: 15%
I really don't think it's Simon. In order to dump the evidence in Quinn's room, the bad guy must be able to walk around on the girls' floor without attracting notice. That would be hard for a guy to do. No one would think twice about any of the girls going into that room because they all live on the floor and they're friends.
Quinn disagrees with my assessment of the odds and only suspects herself at this point. She feels so guilty that she's walking around campus like a zombie. Simon crosses her path and asks if she's okay. She snaps that he doesn't have to pretend to care. He looks hurt and says he does care. She asks why he broke up with her then and he produces a letter on hot pink stationery that he's conveniently carrying around in his wallet for some reason. The letter is signed by Quinn and says that she doesn't want to be tied down at such a young age and she doesn't want to see or talk to Simon anymore. Quinn is stunned. She denies writing the letter and he automatically believes her. They hug and make out.
That was wrapped up way too easily.
Simon says the letter was pushed under the door of his dorm room and he didn't see who left it. Quinn thinks she recognizes the distinctive stationery but can't remember where she saw it.
That night, Tobie goes to Nightmare Hall to work on a project with a girl who lives there. They end up working super late and Tobie just sleeps there instead of going back across campus to her own dorm. Which means Quinn is conveniently all alone.
We skip to another unnamed couple making out in a car parked somewhere on campus. It's raining which makes it hard to see out of the windows. Suddenly someone starts attacking the car with a hammer. It somehow does enough damage to the doors that the couple inside can't open them and they're trapped. I'm not sure why they'd want to go out there with a hammer-wielding lunatic anyway. All the windows are shattered, spraying glass into the car on the couple. They only get one glimpse of the attacker but all they can describe later is a yellow raincoat and hat.
Quinn gets woken up at 2:00am by shouting in the hallway. People have heard about the attack on campus radio and they're all rushing to the scene to rubberneck. Quinn checks her socks and they're absolutely filthy.
The next day, Quinn finds broken glass in the pocket of her yellow raincoat. She goes to the scene of the crime to compare the glass to the glass from the car and it matches. While she's there, she sees Suzie sneaking around the car. When she asks Suzie about it later, Suzie tells her that she was there to get the victim's purse from the car.
Tensions are high so Quinn, Ivy and Suzie decide to go to the mall to blow off some steam. Suzie ends up meeting some guys which leaves Ivy and Quinn alone to talk. Ivy takes a minute to slut shame Suzie and then warns Quinn against going out with Simon in public. She says that someone is targeting couples so it's dangerous to be seen with a boyfriend. Quinn thinks the warning is useless since she's probably the bad guy and therefore isn't in any danger.
Quinn decides to go see the campus counselor. As she approaches the office, she hears Tobie leaving. I think Hoh meant this to make Tobie look more suspicious but it made her less suspicious to me. If she's getting help for her depression and trauma, she's probably not acting out by attacking happy couples. She's trying to handle things the right way.
If I were to give odds, now, Ivy would be highest on my list. Hoh is doing all she can to make Tobie and Quinn look guilty and she's done a fair amount of slut shaming with Suzie. Ivy is the only one who is being largely ignored here so she's the most suspicious to me now. Hoh is clearly trying to divert all our attention on the others.
Quinn goes back to the dorm and sees that Tobie has tacked up a note on the bulletin board using the same stationery that was used to write the letter to Simon. Hoh's doing too much at this point.
Ivy invites everyone to come to a frat party. I guess she's dating someone in the frat. Kind of but not seriously. Suzie says she'll go but Tobie and Quinn have dates. Ivy tries to scare them into not going on their dates because of the attacks but Tobie isn't worried and Quinn still suspects herself and figures she's safe.
Simon and Quinn have a good date but notice that not many couples are out and about. After dinner and a movie, they go over to the frat party but it's pretty dead. Ivy says that no one showed up. She figured people would feel safe enough to come to a big party but obviously everyone is staying in. For some reason, Ivy takes the low turnout personally.
We skip to a couple sitting outside by a fountain. They are attacked with a hammer and the guy is seriously injured. Hoh describes the scene as if they both just sat there and let someone hit them repeatedly. I mean....if you're sitting somewhere and someone starts attacking your date with a hammer wouldn't you either run the fuck away or try to defend them? Why would you just sit there and wait your turn. This makes absolutely no sense.
Quinn gets back to her dorm and confronts Tobie about the letter written on the hot pink stationery. Tobie denies writing the letter. Then she just pours out her tragic backstory for some reason. Her boyfriend died after hitting his head on the concrete base of an ATM during a robbery. The robber demanded money, boyfriend wouldn't give it to him, robber produced a gun, boyo tried to get the gun, robber pushed him, boyo fell and bopped his head and died. Quinn saw the entire thing and had to testify against the robber.
Ivy shows up rather dramatically bleeding from the head. She says that she and that random frat guy were attacked with a hammer while sitting by the fountain.
Really? Ivy was the one who sat there and just waited for her turn to be attacked with a weapon? I don't buy this. Obviously Ivy is the bad guy here. She attacked frat bro and then hit herself to make it look like she was attacked too.
Quinn is relieved to hear that an attack finally happened while she was awake. Now she knows she isn't responsible despite the damning evidence that's been showing up in her room. She suspects Suzie might be the bad guy because Suzie dates around but this is a super weak reason to suspect someone. Do better, Quinn.
Also, Hoh, dating a lot of guys doesn't make you a bad person. You need to do better too.
The next morning, Quinn is looking for her missing hairdryer and looks under Tobie's bed for some reason. She finds a bloody hammer. It suddenly occurs to her that Tobie could be the one behind all the shenanigans. She gathers up the bloody clothes, the raincoat and the hammer and takes them to the police station. While she's talking to the detective in charge of the case, she sees a conveniently placed newspaper clipping about Tobie testifying in court against the robber and asks him about it. He says that Tobie's parents sent it to him when the attacks on campus first started happening because they thought an associate of the robber might be behind everything. The robber's name is Gunther by the way. The police always suspected that the robber had an accomplice because Tobie got death threats before the trial to try to scare her away from testifying. There were three young people that consistently attended the trial (two guys and a girl) and the police thought one of them might be the one sending the death threats to Tobie. Quinn asks the girl's name and he says it was something unusual that started with an 'S' but he can't remember it.
Quinn leaves the police station and meets up with Simon. They spend the afternoon canoeing on the lake and then head back to campus. Simon drops her off at her dorm and tells her that he'll be back in an hour to take her to dinner. He never shows up. Quinn decides to go to his dorm to track him down. When the elevator opens, she finds Simon's body lying in a puddle of blood. He's alive but unconscious.
When Quinn gets back to the dorms after leaving Simon in the infirmary, Tobie and Suzie are gone. She assumes Tobie is spending the night at Nightmare Hall again with her study partner and that Suzie is off with some guy. Quinn goes to Ivy's room to tell her about Simon's attack. She also tells her all about Tobie's boyfriend and the trial and the fact someone tried to dissuade Tobie from testifying. Ivy listens but doesn't see how it all connects to the current attacks.
Quinn picks up a ring from Suzie's nightstand to fidget with. As she's turning it around in her fingers, she notices that's there's an engraving on the inside. It reads: “Love, Gunther, forever.” Quinn immediately decides that Suzie is the attacker and she's trying to frame Tobie in order to send her to jail. If she's trying to frame Tobie, why was the stink bomb and blood and glass on Quinn's clothes and not Tobie's?
Quinn whispers to Ivy that Suzie is the bad guy and explains her reasoning. Ivy is skeptical. She goes into the bathroom and a few seconds later, Suzie returns to the room. She sees Quinn holding the ring and asks her why she's messing around with Ivy's jewelry. Quinn is stunned. She quietly tells Suzie to be careful around Ivy and then leaves to go to the police station. She doesn't make it far when a car comes up behind her and slams into her. The car goes careening off the road. Quinn gets out and runs into the woods.
The driver of the other car gets out to follow and it's Ivy. She chases Quinn through the woods to an old barn that's on the edge of Nightmare Hall's property. Like an idiot, Quinn climbs up into the hayloft. Ivy comes in and does her bad guy monologue. We don't really learn anything new. She was trying to frame Tobie to get revenge for Gunther going to jail. We already knew all that so we didn't really need two pages of her blathering.
Also, she says she planted the glass and paint with Quinn's stuff so Quinn would notice it and take it to the police. She had no idea that Quinn would end up suspecting herself.
As she's monologuing, she's S L O W L Y climbing the ladder up to the hayloft while also holding a lantern that she picked up somewhere. I don't know where she got it. I'm not sure Hoh knows where she got it. Quinn grabs the top of the ladder and pushes it backwards. As she falls to the ground below, Ivy drops the lantern and sets the barn on fire.
That lantern was just a fucking plot device in disguise.
Sigh.
Quinn kicks open the hayloft window and uses an old rope attached to an overhead pulley to lower herself out of the window. The rope isn't long enough to get her to the ground but luckily girls from Nightmare Hall have seen the fire. They hold a sheet out for Quinn to jump into. She jumps to safety and they all watch the barn burn.
We go immediately into the Epilogue. The characters sit around and recap the book for us. It turns out Ivy's real name is Salina (her middle name is Ivy). The book doesn't come right out and say she died but we can make an assumption because of the severity of the fire. Tobie talks about getting therapy and healing. Quinn feels confident her sleepwalking episodes are over. I don't know why. They had nothing to do with the attacks. The book just ends there.
You know, this one wasn't too bad other than the unnecessary slut shaming. I read it in two days so it wasn't something I was dreading picking up. I didn't hate the protagonist for once. It was a little on the dumb side but never ventured into forehead-slapping territory. I even suspected the wrong person for awhile. This was a very medium kind of book and we don't get many of those here.
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