**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: Four roommates share a suite in the Quad. Danni is beautiful and perfect, from her long blonde hair to her expensive clothes. Margot is mysterious – brutally honest or slyly secretive, depending on her mood. Lacey is a wild woman, who loves to party, party, party. And Maureen is quiet and painfully shy. But the girls are not all what they seem. And soon one of them may be...dead.
This book was published in 1993 and this is my first time reading it. It's the second book in the Nightmare Hall series. If that sounds familiar, it's because I've already recapped book 1 and book 9 on this blog. Basically this series takes place at Salem University where there is a dorm called Nightmare Hall because weird things happen there. I'm pretty sure only book one actually takes place in Nightmare Hall but it's an iconic building on campus.
I was excited when I first saw the cover, thinking it was another one of those windowpane books where we open it up and get a bigger picture. This one is a fake, though. So disappointing. All we get is a tiny picture that we can barely see. It's still better than some of the book covers we get today.
We start with a bad guy prologue which I hate. They're packing for college. They wipe the blood off their “best friend” and pack it under their socks and underwear. I was alarmed but then I realized it was a knife. They call the knife the “instrument of their freedom” which is......a lot.
Chapter one starts us out with Lacey losing her towel and showing the goodies to her new roommate and suitemate. She doesn't seem to care about it and just fishes out a pair of lacy undies from her suitcase. Maureen-the-roommate is scandalized at the tiny scrap of fabric. She's described as tall and mousy. Danni-the-suitmate just laughs. She's described as smiley with a wild mane of blonde hair.
So the way the dorm is arranged, two girls share a room that's connected to another room with a half bath. The showers are in another room down the hall. Lacey and Maureen share one room and Danni is in the connecting room with a girl named Margot who hasn't shown up yet. Lacey isn't too thrilled that Maureen is assigned to her room. She thinks they're way too different to get along.
Girl, you JUST met her. Calm down. Sure, she was scandalized by your panties but that doesn't mean y'all won't have some things in common.
I don't think I've ever written the sentence “scandalized by your panties” before.
Maureen is skittish and jumpy and acts like she's afraid people are going to hit her. I'm a little worried she might have come from a bad situation. {{{Note from future me: there's no indication of this. I have no idea why she is the way she is.}}}
Lacey takes off to meet up with some guys who helped her move her stuff into the dorm room so we slide right into Danni's head in the middle of a paragraph.
Danni tells Maureen that she came to the dorms alone. Maureen says her parents brought her but they said their goodbyes outside of the dorm. I guess we're supposed to think that the bad guy killed their parents or something so Hoh is making sure we know that no one saw any of these girls' parents. It's clumsy but I expect that from Hoh. Danni offers to help Maureen unpack but Maureen clearly doesn't want Danni to touch any of her stuff. I guess we're supposed to assume she has the Best Friend Knife in her suitcase.
Kendra the RA comes by to introduce herself and to tell them that there's a house meeting that evening in the Dungeon. The Dungeon is actually just an enormous basement that connects to the other four dorms in the quad. There are laundry rooms, study rooms, a mini cafeteria that serves the same food as the main cafeteria, a lounge and a gym down there. Maureen is freaked out about the name but she seems freaked out about everything so I'm just going to ignore it.
Danni goes into her own room to unpack and notes that her roommate hasn't arrived. She seems to think that's super weird and hopes the girl won't be a “psycho”. After unloading some of her brand new clothes, she sneaks out of the dorm and heads to the cafeteria. She doesn't want Maureen to come along because she's afraid the nervous girl might latch onto her. Danni seems like a real peach.
In the cafeteria, Danni meets two sophomore guys: Jordan (cute but not very tall) and Travis (big and muscular). They both live off campus in “alternative housing” because they got kicked out of the dorm freshman year for partying too much. They call their place The Kennels and invite Danni to attend a party they're throwing that weekend. They encourage her to “bring women” and she agrees to try.
We skip to house meeting time. Somehow Lacey is present even though she wasn't there when Kendra told them about it. Margot still hasn't arrived. They go downstairs and Danni immediately feels claustrophobic. She calls it “a premonition”.
A premonition of what, you ask? I have no fucking idea. She didn't tell us.
Two days pass and Margot still hasn't shown up. It's not a big deal because classes haven't started yet but Danni thinks it means something sinister. She's.....odd. We find out there's a phone in the bathroom between the rooms and Maureen gets several calls that she tries to take as privately as possible. She says it's her parents each time but Danni is suspicious.
Does she think Maureen is some kind of pimp taking calls for her staff of sex workers? Stop being weird, Danni.
Danni gets one call – Jordan. He reminds her about the party the next day and tells her to invite her suitemates and any other girls she knows. Lacey is excited about the idea of a party but Maureen is terrified. She clearly doesn't like crowds and finds being social difficult. Lacey gets impatient with her but I don't really understand why. There's no reason Maureen has to go. Lacey can go without her.
Margot finally shows up in the middle of the night, scaring Danni to death.
Margot admires all of Danni's brand new clothing hanging in the closet and thinks about how glad she is to finally be in college. She's had to work really hard to get there and she's anxious to begin her fresh start. Margot wonders if Danni can handle the truth about who she is and if she can be trusted.
So Hoh has handed us two suspects on a golden platter: Margot and Maureen. She's being pretty obvious about it which means the real bad guy is probably Danni or Lacey. I suspect Danni. Who arrives at college with nothing but brand new clothes?
We're back in Danni's head. She wakes up alone in the room and decides to snoop through Margot's stuff. There isn't much to look through. Margot hasn't brought much with her. Danni does find a knife in Margot's dresser drawer, though.
Margot comes in as Danni is holding the knife she took from Margot's underwear drawer and understandably gets upset. Margot grabs the knife from Danni and yells at her for going through her stuff. I would do the exact same thing but Danni acts like Margot is about to slit her throat or something. Seriously, has Danni never interacted with a normal human being before? She had to know Margot would get mad if she found out.
Lacey comes in and meets Margot for the first time as she is screaming at Danni. She says something like 'cool letter opener' and suddenly what Margot is holding is a letter opener and not a knife. Margot says it's a family heirloom and she doesn't want anyone else touching it because it means a lot to her. Lacey is cool with that but Danni is still acting like Margot is psychotic.
Lacey tells Margot about the party and invites her along much to Danni's dismay. Margot seems excited about the idea of a party but says she has nothing to wear. Most of her clothing is going to be shipped later. Eager to get back on Margot's good side, Danni offers to loan her some clothes and Lacey says she will as well.
I guess they're all the same size.
What are the odds of that?
We skip to party night. Somehow they convince poor Maureen to go and they all set out together. Along the way they pass Nightmare Hall and Danni gets filled in on Giselle's death and what happened in book one. She finds this super upsetting.
Danni finds everything super upsetting.
Maureen is also upset but it's because she's never been to a party – let alone a wild college party – and she has no idea what to do or how to behave. Margot encourages her to fake it 'til she makes it which isn't super helpful but Maureen seems to find it comforting. Maybe because Margot says she also doesn't really know what she's doing. Danni is surprised that the two of them seem so close already. She's both jealous and relieved because it means Maureen won't latch onto her as much.
We don't get to attend the party with them. Hoh skips right to the end of the night. Lacey is super drunk and Danni is freaked out because she can't find Margot or Maureen. Lacey wants to go get food before they go back to the dorm. Some guy named Pete offers to drive her. She wants Danni and Jordan to go with her but Danni says it's too late. Lacey throws a fit until Danni gives in.
The next day, Lacey is hella hungover. Maureen feels bad but Margot has zero sympathy, saying Lacey chose the hangover when she chose the alcohol. She's not wrong, to be fair. Hoh wants us to think she's some kind of sociopath but, to me, she just sounds like someone who has dealt with an addict/alcoholic before. Danni is impressed that Margot can stand up to Lacey because she finds Lacey intimidating.
Margot and Danni end up going for breakfast in the cafeteria. I guess Maureen is going to stay with Lacey. They make small talk as they eat. Margot says she's from Nebraska and Danni says her family moved around a lot. We spent half a dozen pages on this breakfast and that's literally all we learned.
Later, we briefly hop into Margot's head. It's not long enough for me to bother with the graphic. She goes over the things she said to Danni and is worried that she might have made a mistake and revealed too much. She thinks she needs to be more careful so her big secret isn't discovered. This is supposed to be sinister but it's just not. Hoh is trying too hard here.
Then we briefly hop into Lacey's head and, again, it's just for a paragraph or two. She thinks it might be fun to torment Maureen a little. Apparently Lacey gets bored easily and when she's bored she likes to play with people. She calls it her “bad self” getting ideas.
Don't fucking try me, Hoh. Don't even dip the tip of your baby toe into the split personality pool because I will bite it off like fucking Jaws.
I don't think that made much sense. Take pity on me. I'm trying a new anti-depressant and my brain is in a deep fog.
Hoh wants to make Lacey look like a sociopath now. So she's painted a huge target on Margot, Maureen and Lacey. That 100% means the bad guy is Danni. Man, Hoh is bad at this.
Days pass. Classes start. Danni tells us that she's adjusting to college life and making tons of friends but we never actually see her talking to anyone but her roommates and Jordan. Things between her and Margot have gotten better.....at least until Danni comes home from class one day and finds Margot sleeping in her bed. Danni freaks out which wakes Margot up. She sheepishly says she sat on Danni's bed to look at her chem book and ended up falling asleep. Danni asks why Margot was looking at her chem book when she's not even in that class and Margot says she was just curious about it.
No one is curious about chemistry, Margot. No one.
We hop into Lacey's head for a bit. She bullies Maureen into getting her hair cut which is hard to read because Maureen truly doesn't want to and neither Lacey nor the hair stylist listen to her. She ends up liking it in the end but that's not the fucking point. Afterwards, Lacey, Danni and Margot drag Maureen to the mall to shop for new clothes because Lacey has decided that Maureen just isn't good enough and she needs to change everything about herself. The annoying thing is that Hoh makes sure to tell us that it works and Maureen becomes more confident due to the non-consensual haircut and the forced wardrobe change.
Sigh.
Fuck you, Hoh.
While they're out, everyone buys something except Margot who says she just really enjoys window shopping. Danni pays for everything in cash which Lacey finds weird. Why? This was published in 1993. People still carried cash back then. It would be odd to see someone exclusively using cash now, but back in 1993 I don't think too many people would have thought anything of it. Still, Hoh makes sure to make it sound suspicious so I guess Danni gets a tiny sliver of shade thrown her way.
Back to Danni and it's a week later. Danni is missing her gold sweater and she's convinced Margot probably took it. Margot's been borrowing a lot of Danni's clothes since hers still haven't arrived and she normally asks before she takes anything but she definitely didn't ask about the sweater. Sure enough, after classes, Margot walks in wearing the sweater. Danni immediately accuses her of taking it without asking. Margot gets pissed and gets all up in Danni's face, saying Danni gave the sweater to her and she doesn't like being called a thief. Danni denies it and, for some reason, Margot grabs the 'letter opener' out of her dresser and brandishes it about. Danni is rightfully terrified because this is unhinged behavior.
Lacey hears the commotion and comes into the room. Danni explains that Margot took her sweater without permission. Margot again denies the accusation and says that Danni is just trying to humiliate her in front of Lacey now. Danni immediately backtracks, saying maybe it was a misunderstanding. Margot throws the 'letter opener' at the dresser and then takes off the sweater and throws it at Danni. She leaves the room and Danni tells Lacey that Margot is clearly crazy. Lacey agrees that it was a bizarre reaction.
It was. Hoh is really trying here but I'm not taking the bait.
Danni becomes increasingly paranoid over the next few days with no logical reason whatsoever. She sure she's being watched and followed everywhere she goes. I guess we're supposed to think it's Margot but we're never given any actual evidence of any of this happening. We're just supposed to take Danni's word and I'm not sure I do.
Hoh throws in a random scene of Lacey trying to set Maureen up with Pete from the beginning of the book. She's still on a quest to turn Maureen into something she's not and, for some reason, Maureen is letting her despite not liking it. I don't really care about this scene at all and I wouldn't mention it except for the fact that Ian from the first book makes a cameo. He's literally only there for two sentences but it makes me remember a better time. And a better book. Not that it was great, but at least stuff happened in that one. This has been chapters and chapters of NOTHING.
During the whole set-up scene, Lacey tries to big up Maureen by telling Pete that she's a really good writer. Maureen asks how she knows and Lacey admits that she read something that Maureen had laying out on her desk. Maureen loses her everloving mind and I don't blame her. I would too. She asks Lacey what it was and Lacey just kind of brushes off the question. I guess we're supposed to believe it was something sinister but it was probably just squirrel porn or something.
What?
Oh, that's just me?
Sorry.
Later the girls are all taking in one of the rooms and Lacey asks why Maureen is taking upper level psychology classes as a freshman. Maureen dodges for a few minutes and then admits that her parents are both psychiatrists.
Huh?
Is she saying that they passed down their knowledge to her in her fucking DNA or that they forced her to study Freud in the summer while the other kids were at the pool? Whatever. Danni thinks it's creepy to be a psychiatrist which tells me that Danni has beef with members of that profession.
Do you know how you get beef with psychiatrists?
They block the line at your favorite pizza place by having conversations with people instead of ordering and all you want is to order your damn breadsticks!
No, wait.
That's how you get beef with mayors.
And exactly one person is going to get that joke. It's worth it though.
Anyway, people who have beef with psychiatrists are usually people who have either been treated by one and didn't like their treatment or people who have family members who have been treated by one. I'm going to let you theorize which one of these Danni is but I think I know.
Danni is awakened in the middle of the night by the phone ringing in the bathroom. She answers it and the whispery voice on the other end calls her by name and says she's a bad friend and she needs to be punished.
Protagonist gets a creepy phone call? Check.
Hands grab Danni and she screams, waking everyone up. It's just Margot. Danni was unconsciously backing away from the phone and Margot put her hands up to prevent a collision. Kendra the RA is summoned by the screaming. Danni tells everyone about the phone call. Margot had just arrived back at the dorm after studying in the library all night. Neither Lacey or Maureen heard the phone ring. Lacey sleeps through everything but Maureen is surprised it didn't wake her up. She suggests that Danni might have been dreaming or sleepwalking but Danni insists that it happened.
Kendra suggests reporting the call to campus security but Danni refuses. She tries to play it off like it was a prank but it's clear she's really shaken up by it. Margot feels bad for her and tries to comfort her but Danni finds it suspicious. I think it's pity more than anything but Danni's too paranoid to see it as such.
Days pass. Danni is now having nightmares and horrible headaches. Same, girl. Same. One day when she's alone in the suite, she gets another call. This time the voice says that they know everything about Danni and they'll be together soon.
I'm sure you picked up that no one else heard the phone the first time and the second call occurred when Danni was alone. I think she's imagining them. I guess we'll see.
The other girls get home to find Danni upset. She tells them about the call and they urge her to report it. She refuses again, saying she doesn't want the entire campus to know that someone is out to get her.
Characters decide not to go to the cops for some stupid reason? Check.
The phone rings again and Danni freaks out, but this time it's Jordan. He's downstairs in the lobby to pick her up for their date. Danni is confused because she doesn't remember making a date with him but he says she agreed to go to a movie with him. She tells him she'll be right down.
Apparently she's not the only one with a date. Maureen has a date with Pete who, it turns out, works for the college newspaper. Lacey has a date with Travis who I almost forgot existed. Margot is dateless and planning to put in another late night at the library.
Danni and Jordan go see Psycho and then he takes her to the topiary garden on campus. She's looking at a 6-foot hedge shaped like a rabbit when she realizes Jordan has completely vanished. She hears someone whisper her name and then one of the topiaries starts to move.
So I don't know if Danni is officially seeing things here. It's dark and she's scared and maybe some wind ruffled some leaves and she thought it moved. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one.
But just one this one.
Danni starts to run, frantically trying to get out of the garden. Hands grab her and it's Jordan. He apologizes for hiding to scare her but now she thinks he's the voice on the phone. He denies making any prank calls.
Danni goes back to her room. It's dark and she doesn't want to turn on the light in case Margot is there asleep.
Wait.
Hoh, I've lived in a dorm. She would know if Margot was there. When she opened the door, the light from the hall – which is ALWAYS on by the way – would have lit up the room enough to see if someone was in Margot's bed. Plus, there's usually light coming in from the window because there are lights around campus that are always on. Especially around the dorms. It's a safety thing.
Anyway.
Danni is crossing the room in the dark and she ends up tripping over something and crashing into her desk, knocking over a pile of books. There's no reaction to the noise so Danni realizes Margot isn't in the room. She turns on the light. The gold sweater is laying on her bed, slashed and covered with something red (nail polish). In red writing on the mirror (lipstick) are the words “You must die”.
So fucking lame.
Y'all, this book is SO FUCKING BORING. So far there's been two creepy phone calls and this. That's it. That's supposed to scare us. The book is almost over, Hoh. Why did you write this? It's a nothingburger.
Maureen and Lacey are summoned by Danni's freak out. Lacey is the one to figure out that nail polish and lipstick were used. She suspects Margot because of the whole sweater incident before. Lacey and Maureen both want to report it because if someone was in Danni's room, they could have easily gone through the bathroom to their room. Danni refuses. Again.
Danni goes to shove the sweater in her dresser to hide it and finds Margot's 'letter opener' inside. She gets hysterical at this point.
Days pass. Danni further descends into paranoid madness. At one point, she thinks she's being chased through the dorms but then she realizes no one was there.
Maureen goes into the bathroom one afternoon and finds the words “You'll be punished” in lipstick on the mirror. The odd thing is that Danni is in her room and Lacey has been in theirs so there is no way anyone could have gotten past to write the message without being seen.
Lacey and Maureen want to report it. AGAIN.
I bet you can't guess what happens next.
Danni refuses to report it. AGAIN.
I can't believe they're even having this conversation. They don't need Danni's permission to report something that happened in their fucking bathroom. These two need to grow a pair.
The girls point out that the message could have been meant for one of them but Danni insists it was meant for her. None of them question hard enough how someone got in to leave the message because they're idiots.
Danni gets into bed and reviews our “suspects” for us. She thinks it could be mysterious Margot with all of her secrets. Or mousy Maureen could be a closet psychopath because she knows a lot about abnormal psychology. Yes, it actually said that. I feel attacked. Or it could be party-hardy Lacey who Danni calls an “attention junkie”.
It COULD be.
But we're not that stupid, Hoh.
And you're not that clever.
The next day, Lacey decides to talk to Jordan about Danni. We don't hear that conversation. At the same time, Maureen decides to tell Pete “the truth” about herself. We don't hear that conversation either. Margot thinks to herself that she'd like to kill her roommates sometimes. I think we're supposed to get suspicious but there isn't a person alive who didn't want to kill one of their dormmates at some point.
Yes, Heather, I mean you.
Danni is just walking around assuming she's marked for death but doing absolutely fuck all about it.
I.
Am.
Exhausted.
Danni goes to the shower room. She's nearly finished when the lights go out on the entire floor. There's a lot of confusion and screaming but eventually they come back on. Kendra locates Danni who is still in the shower room and hands her a flashlight in case the power goes out again.
Does Kendra just keep a stockpile of flashlights for power outages or did she give Danni hers? It's a question I fear will never be answered.
Margot is in their room when Danni gets back. She says she's going down to the Dungeon to study and/or watch TV in the lounge and she invites Danni to come. Danni doesn't want to go, so Margot shrugs and leaves a note for Lacey and Maureen, inviting them to come down when they get back.
Danni changes her mind and ends up going down to the Dungeon after all. The lounge is empty when she gets there but the TV is on. She assumes Margot when to get a snack out of the vending machines. Suddenly the lights go out again.
Danni hears footsteps coming her way and then a scream from somewhere out in the hallway. She turns on her flashlight but it gets knocked out of her hands. Danni manages to find the flashlight and sneaks out of the room. She makes it into one of the study rooms and runs into a human. She flicks the flashlight on and sees Lacey and a knife. Danni drops the flashlight and it goes out again. She runs for her life in the darkness.
Ahead of her, a door opens and an alarm goes off. She realizes it's an emergency exit of some kind and she runs for it. Margot is there and so is the knife.
Danni has the knife. In case you were still in the dark about what's happening here. She swings the knife at Margot who manages to duck just in time. Danni starts doing her required bad-guy-monologue. She says she was always special. She was so special that her parents kept her in a special wing in the home and hired a companion to watch over her. Eventually, she found out about college and she desperately wanted to go but they wouldn't allow it. So she killed her companion and escaped.
She says that Margot needs to be punished but Maureen's voice distracts her long enough for Margot to run away. Cops show up at that point to save the day and it takes several of them to restrain Danni and haul her away. Danni continues to scream the entire time that she's going to kill Margot.
Later, the remaining roommates get together to debrief. I'm going to give you the highlights.
*Lacey's conversation with Jordan was about how Danni had been behaving. Lacey had clocked that something weird was going on so she'd started following Danni (guess she wasn't imagining that) who was following Margot. She snooped through Danni's stuff one day and found the knife in her dresser. When the knife was gone tonight, she knew Danni was probably going to kill Margot so she had Maureen call the cops.
*Maureen's “truth” that she revealed to Pete was that she's an introvert who loves sports. Boring. Super boring.
*Margot's always in the library and has no clothing because she's been in the foster care system for most of her life and she's at the university on a scholarship. She was nervous about the others finding out and judging her for it. Danni really DID give her the sweater and then later forgot she'd done it.
Danni's parents are contacted and they reveal that she started showing psychopathic tendencies as a very young child so they locked her up with a companion in their house. They were out of town when she killed her companion and escaped and they had no idea where she was.
The book ends there. As usual, the crazy person did it. Hoh really relies on that trope.
I did not enjoy this book. It was boring and pointless and the bad guy was super fucking obvious. How do these things even get published?
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