**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.
Tag Line: None
From the Back of the Book: High on a hillside overlooking Salem University, hidden in shadows and shrouded in silence, sits Nightingale Hall. Nightmare Hall, the students call it. Because that’s where the terror began. Alex is the first to notice the strange little booth at the back of the campus pizza place. ‘Wishes granted, fortunes told’ says the sign on the glass. Inside sits The Wizard – an eerie wooden figure with sinister blue eyes. Alex’s friends make wishes. And one by one, the come true – in terrifying, twisted ways. Is The Wizard behind the horror? Or is someone else to blame, someone with a deadly wish all his – or her – own….
The Silent Scream (Nightmare Hall Book One): Jess and Ian arrive at Nightingale Hall only to find it haunted by the spirit of Giselle. They spend the book trying to figure out if Giselle was murdered or if she killed herself and eventually the bad guy is taken out by a wet, flying photograph.
The Roommate (Nightmare Hall Book Two): We meet four girls (Danni, Margot, Lacey and Maureen) who share a suite in a dorm that is not Nightingale Hall. Nothing really happens other than Danni claiming to receive threatening phone calls and messages. We spend the entire book listening to her tell us that someone is after her and it ends up she's the bad guy.
Deadly Attraction (Nightmare Hall Book Three): The entire campus thinks Darlene is injuring/murdering people because she’s so upset that Robert dumped her. Hailey falls in love with – and then suspects – Finn who is secretly Darlene’s brother. The bad guy turns out to be Pete from book two who briefly dated Maureen. Turns out he is madly in love with Darlene and applies a broad meaning to ‘touch her and die’.
This book is published in 1993 and this is my first time reading it. It has my favorite kind of cover!!! Here is a pic of the inside.
For some reason, the first time I saw it, I thought she was on a milk carton. I love all the detail in The Wizard’s hands.
📢TRIGGER WARNING: There is a major plot point revolving around someone who wishes to be thinner and then gets their wish in a horrible kind of way. There are a lot of discussions about weight, eating and disordered eating as part of that. Some of you should definitely skip this one and you know who you are. I’m not even going to tell you to make the decision for yourselves this time. Don’t read this one. I promise you won’t miss anything. It wasn’t very good.
We begin with a prologue. Our protagonist Alex is looking for a phone booth when she finds a fortune teller machine tucked into an alcove of Vinnie’s pizza place. She thinks it’s terrifying.
That’s it. That’s the whole prologue. What the hell was the point of that?
{{{Note from future me: this pizza place gets mentioned more times than some of the characters so I’m bolding it.}}}
Chapter one picks right up where the prologue left off with Alex standing beside the fortune teller machine. It’s called The Wizard so I’m just going to call it Wiz for short. Ain’t nobody got time to type all these things out completely. Her twin roommates Julie and Jenny walk up and they think Wiz is super cool. Julie – who is considered to be the more beautiful twin – jokes that she wants to wish for a new face because she’s tired of the boring old face that she has. Two guys named Gabe and Marty join them and Gabe hands Julie a quarter. Julie puts the quarter in the machine and Wiz whirs to life. It spits out a white card that says: “Beware the looking glass, lest you see your true reflection.”
Gabe jokes that he’s tired of walking everywhere and wishes for a car. Wiz gives him a fortune that says “Slow and steady wins the race.” Alex is annoyed because this all seems very stupid to her and she’s still low key creeped out by Wiz. She starts complaining about how lame the fortunes are and how hungry she is. They give in and go to sit down at one of the tables.
We get several more characters. Kiki is a soccer player and obsessed with losing a few pounds. Kyle is on the football team along with Marty, Gabe and a guy named Bennett who is on crutches because his knees are shot. We also meet Vinnie who owns the restaurant. He likes to fish.
The issue with so many characters in 200-ish page book is that you don't have the space to develop them well. Everyone ends up feeling really generic and indistinguishable from each other. For instance, Kyle and Marty might as well have been the same person (football bro). Same for Kiki and Julie (vain girl). We get no sense of who anyone really is and that makes it hard to care.
It starts to rain and hail. The wind kicks up and lightning actually strikes the building, hitting Wiz. The lights go out and everyone is kind of freaked out for a bit. Kiki recovers first and says she wants to use Wiz to wish for success with her diet. No one has a quarter though. How is it even still working? The lightning should have fried the thing. I don't think Hoh understands how lightning vs electronics plays out. Anyway, they decide they should head back to campus. Julie. Jenny, Alex, Marty and Gabe all ride together. Alex is stunned to see all the storm damage around. There are lots of windows out and limbs down.
Julie is driving and she takes her eyes off the road for a few seconds and ends up plowing into a downed tree. Glass shatters and her face slams violently into the steering wheel. The entire front of the car crumples inward, crushing Gabe’s legs (but somehow not Julie's???). Alex hits her head against the window and is disoriented for quite awhile afterwards. She can’t remember who anyone is. She barely remembers her own name. She listens as Jenny sobs and tries to wake up Julie. There’s no response.
{{{Note from future me: what Hoh has described here with Alex being that disoriented for that long sure sounds like a traumatic brain injury but I don't want you to give that too much credit. For awhile I thought that maybe Alex had an untreated TBI and that explained some of the things she experienced in this book. That turned out not to be the case and I don't want you to get your hopes up that this might actually be a book that makes some kind of sense.}}}
The others are in the car behind them. Bennett tries to free them but it’s a two-door car and the front end is crumpled so much the doors won’t open. They end up having to be rescued by firemen. Everyone is taken to the hospital to get checked out. Alex eventually snaps out of her fugue state but she still keeps forgetting people’s names.
I keep forgetting them too. There’s too many of them.
The doctor doesn't seem at all concerned about Alex's confusion or amnesia. In fact, he says it's normal in an accident.
Sure. If your brain is bleeding. They didn't even check her for a concussion.
They all wait to hear how Gabe and Julie are doing. Gabe is fine but will be on crutches for awhile. His injuries aren’t really described so I don’t know if bones were broken or what. I assume so since Hoh said his legs were crushed.
{{{Note from future me: He recovers very quickly so I guess there weren’t any broken bones after all. I’m not sure how his legs were “crushed” without breaking any bones but whatever. Hoh doesn't care if it makes sense so why should I?}}}
Julie is in much worse shape. Almost every bone in her face is broken, including her jaw. {{{Note from future me: remember this because Hoh sure didn't.}}} Her skin is cut to ribbons and the doctors say she’ll never look the same again. Jenny and Julie’s parents are in Europe (BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY ARE) so Jenny opts to stay with her sister even though she’s still unconscious. Kyle drives everyone else home.
Marty offers to stay with Alex but she says she’ll be okay alone. She asks him if he’ll drive her into town the next day so she can get something to take to Gabe and Julie. He says he will.
We skip to the next day. Both Alex and Marty are bruised up and achy but they’re getting around okay. They go to buy flowers and balloons in a little shop beside Vinnie’s. Kiki, Kyle and Bennett come out of Vinnie’s with a pizza for Gabe. Kiki says she made her wish finally when she was in there and she received a card that said “Self-discipline is the greatest of all virtues.”
They all go to the hospital. Julie can’t have visitors, so they go to a phone and call her room to get an update from Jenny. She says that Julie still hasn’t regained consciousness but the doctors aren't worried about that.
Um.
What kind of hospital is this?
Doctors would be VERY worried if someone was unconscious for that long. That typically indicates a brain injury. The longer you're out, the less likely it becomes that you will wake up.
Seriously, Hoh. What are you even doing here?
Jenny needs a bit of a break so she agrees to meet everyone up in Gabe's room.
Gabe seems to have asked a bunch of people to bring food because his room is full of it. Kiki samples a bit of everything, prompting Alex to think that her wish definitely hadn’t been granted. Gabe seems in good spirits. His legs are bandaged but not in casts. He asks about Julie and Kiki bluntly says that her face is ruined. It’s the truth but it’s not very kind. They hang out and talk about the upcoming football game for awhile. Obviously Gabe won’t be playing but Bennett is hoping to. He’s going to physical therapy and doing all kinds of rehab in order to get his knees back in shape.
They're all freshmen. How much would they be playing realistically. I guess if they were super good, sure, but typically freshmen sit on the bench a lot.
A nurse appears and tells Jenny that Julie is awake. She rushes down there. After a minute, Alex decides to go down too despite the fact she was already told Julie can’t have visitors. She assumes she can get in because she’s Julie’s roommate. She’s on her way to ICU when she hears a scream. She arrives in Julie’s room to see Julie and Jenny fighting over a mirror. Julie wasn’t supposed to have one but she got one somehow. I’m not sure why they were so against her seeing herself. Alex tells us that she’s covered in bandages except for her eyes and mouth so it’s not like she’s seeing something horrific.
The nurse comes in and starts yelling at Jenny for giving Julie a mirror. Of course, Jenny denies doing it. Julie is so hysterical that the nurse ends up sedating her and basically tells the girls to go home. They head back to the dorm where they run into Finn from the last book. His only line of dialogue is to ask about Julie. We never see him again.
Alex frets about all the time she’s going to be spending alone since she assumes Jenny will be at the hospital most of the time. She really is incredibly self-centered.
We skip to the next day. There’s some kind of building across from the dorms with an eighteen-story tower on the side of it. The campus radio station is on the 18th floor along with an observation deck. Alex works as a DJ after classes. When she gets to the station, Kyle is in the single booth reading the sports news while Bennett, Marty and Jenny hang out waiting for him. Jenny says Julie has been moved out of ICU and can now have visitors so they’re all going to see her when Kyle finishes up. They ask Alex to meet them at Vinnie’s after her shift.
How much pizza do these people eat? I don’t even think my manager eats at their favorite pizza place this often. Although they might if given the opportunity.
Alex goes in after Kyle to do her DJ thing. At one point in the evening, a request comes in to play a song for Julie. Alex has received several such calls that evening so she doesn’t think anything of it. She asks which song and the caller replies “Who’s Sorry Now”. They say that they hope Julie learned her lesson and then they laugh and hang up. Alex is upset.
Alex's shift ends but the person who is supposed to go on after her never shows up. It’s Cath from book one and I find it odd that Alex insinuates that Cath is late all the time. Cath was described as very uptight and rigid in her book and not really the type to be late for work on the regular. Hoh really needed to make a character bible or something to help her keep track of who these people are. We had the same issue in the last book where the fact that Pete dated Maureen never came up.
Even though she’s not supposed to leave until the next person comes, Alex decides to take off because she’s so irritated with Cath. The door to the booth is locked and she can’t open it. She assumes Kyle must have locked her in there when he left but I’m not sure why. Kyle wasn’t the only person at the station. She picks up the phone to call for help but it’s dead despite being operational just a moment before. The lights go out, terrifying her.
I don’t know how to prepare you for how stupid this next part is.
The wind kicks up outside and the doors to the observation deck fly open creating a vacuum that sucks Alex up and out of the booth. Why is there no ceiling on the booth? You’d think it would let way too much noise in that way.
So the wind sucks her up over the walls of the booth I guess and out onto the observation deck. She starts to get sucked toward the edge but she manages to grab onto a pole. She hangs on for dear life as the wind tries to murder her. Finally the wind dies and everything gets quiet.
The station manager, Beth, shows up and finds Alex laying out on the observation deck. Alex tries to explain what happened but it’s clear Beth thinks she’s had some kind of nervous breakdown. First, the lights were on when Beth got there and the booth was unlocked and open. Beth goes in to check the phone and it’s fine too.
Do you think Alex imagined the whole thing? Like maybe she has a concussion and she's just disoriented and hallucinating?
{{{Note from future me: oh, you sweet, deluded, hopeful girl.}}}
Beth sends Alex home. She goes back to the dorm and basically tries to call everyone she knows but no one picks up.
They’re all at Vinnie’s, remember? You were supposed to meet them there.
We skip to the next day. Julie is in better spirits and Gabe is almost ready to be discharged. After visiting them, the rest of our cast goes to……...you guessed it…….Vinnie’s. Kyle isn’t happy about it. He’s tired of pizza and keeps complaining about how noisy it is and how he just wants some peace and quiet for a change. Marty goes up to Wiz to wish for good luck on his upcoming sociology speech. The card he gets says “Silence is golden”. Well, that doesn’t bode well for his speech. Alex makes fun of him for even putting a quarter in the machine, saying her Grandma can come up with better sayings than Wiz.
We skip to the next morning. Cath calls Alex to apologize for not showing up for her shift. She says that someone called her and told her not to come in because Alex wanted extra hours. Alex asks who it was and Cath says the caller identified himself as Kyle but it didn’t sound like Kyle.
I guess that’s all Hoh wanted to do on that day because we skip right to Saturday. Alex, Kiki and Jenny go to the football game to watch Marty, Kyle, Gabe and Bennett warm the bench. Bennett might have played a little. I can’t remember. I was too busy waving at Milo, Jess and Ian who showed up at the game too. I love it when Ian shows up. They don’t get any dialogue or anything but their presence gives me the strength to keep going in this awful book.
During halftime, there's an announcement to tell Alex she has a phone call. She thinks it’s about Julie – although why they would call her and not Jenny is beyond me – but it turns out to be the same person who called in the song request a few days ago. This time it tells her not to “dispute the wisdom of the ages”.
Okay.
This book is so dumb.
After the game, Jenny starts flirting with Bennett. Alex is surprised because Jenny has never really been all that interested in boys or dating. It seems she’s really coming out of her shell now that her sister’s not around. They talk about where to eat and the majority want to go to Vinnie’s AGAIN. Alex doesn’t want to because Wiz freaks her out and Kyle complains again that it’s too noisy. They end up going to a different restaurant but they don’t seem happy about it. Kiki eats everything in sight but she’s visibly thinner which confuses everyone.
After they eat, everyone but Alex and Kyle want to go to Vinnie’s to get more fortunes from Wiz. Bennett tries to peer pressure Alex into getting her fortune because she’s one of the only ones who hasn’t. She starts raging about how stupid and pointless it is and Kyle warns her to be careful or Wiz might hear her. She suspects him of making the halftime phone call even though he was definitely with the team at the time. She accuses him right there in front of everyone and Kiki laughs and says it was her. Alex is pissed but Kiki says she was tired of Alex acting like a Debbie Downer.
I think Hoh forgot that Kiki was sitting with Alex the entire time and couldn't have made the phone call. I swear this is a new level of messy from her.
Marty pulls Alex aside to see if he can figure out why she’s been so upset lately. She says she’s just tired and, for some reason, that irritates him. She ends up going back to the dorms where she discovers one of the people on her floor is throwing a party. She decides to check it out because she doesn’t want to be alone in her room again.
The party is your typical college dorm thing. Alex drifts over to the window and realizes she can see the building that houses the campus radio station. There’s another observation deck on the sixth floor and she can see two people out on it. She can’t tell if they’re male or female but one of them is definitely taller than the other. At first she thinks they’re dancing but then she realizes they’re fighting. The taller one is blocking the door so the shorter one can’t leave. To Alex’s horror, she watches as the taller one picks up the shorter one and throws them over the edge.
Alex runs outside and joins the crowd that has formed on the street which includes Marty, Bennett, Gabe, Kiki and Jenny who were on their way home. Unfortunately it was Kyle who was thrown off the building. He’s still alive but unresponsive. Alex runs inside the building and heads up to the sixth floor to see if she can find anything that might tell her who the taller person was.
Alex searches the entire sixth floor and the observation deck. The only thing she finds is a tiny football charm in the planter outside. It looks familiar to her. Security shows up and then the police. Alex shows them the charm and tells them where she found it. Then she tells them what she saw. They ask her to describe the bad guy and all she can tell them is that something seemed weird about his arm. She points out the window where she was standing and realizes she can see people clearly which means the bad guy might have seen her.
The cop tells her to keep quiet about what she saw and to not to go anywhere alone. Alex joins the others and finds out that Kyle is being taken to the hospital. Everyone else heads that way but Alex goes back to her room. The cop calls to tell her that the charms were given to all the freshmen football players. So that basically implicates every single boy in this book. Unless the charm was Kyle’s.
We skip to the next day. Jenny tells Alex that Kyle is in a coma. Everyone on campus believes that Kyle tried to kill himself because he wasn’t getting much playing time in the football games. Alex knows this isn’t true but she’s been instructed not to say anything about him being thrown from the building. She thinks to himself that he’s finally getting the peace and quiet he was looking for.
Accurate but it felt kind of dickish to say.
Jenny is getting ready to go to the library with Bennett to ‘study’. She’s wearing “a gold silk blouse and black velvet jeans”. I know I always wear black velvet jeans to study. Don’t you? Alex asks her why she isn’t going to the hospital to visit Julie and Jenny says her sister doesn’t really want visitors because her bandages are off and her stitches are visible.
Ignoring that, Alex, Kiki, Marty and Gabe go to visit her anyway. Julie seems happy to see them. She’s talking a lot for a person who broke their jaw along with every other bone in their face. I’m not sure Hoh knows how injuries work. First Gabe’s crushed legs that are pretty much fine and now this. Kiki is constantly eating but still losing an alarming amount of weight.
P.S. Julie is also eating normal food which she wouldn't be able to do if her jaw and every other bone in her face was broken. This is getting ridiculous, Hoh.
At one point, Alex and Marty leave to see if they can get any information on Kyle. Marty isn’t really speaking to her and she isn’t sure why. The nurse tells them that Marty’s condition is unchanged and he can’t have visitors. She leaves the desk to go to the storeroom and Alex spots a manila envelope with Kyle’s name on it. She assumes it’s his personal effects and she grabs it to check it out. Inside is his football charm on a chain. He was apparently wearing it when he came in.
They go back to Julie’s room where Gabe and Kiki are pretending to play catch with an imaginary football. All of a sudden, Kiki faints. Alex gets hysterical and starts wailing about all the tragedies that have befallen them. In the process, she admits that she saw someone throw Kyle off the building. She’s really not good at following directions.
A nurse comes in and checks on Kiki who is fine. She lectures the girls - and only the girls - about their stupid diet fads which is just sexist. After she leaves, Alex asks Marty whether he still has his football charm which is just a damn stupid thing to do. She really has zero survival skills. Marty says it used to be on his keychain because he’s not really a jewelry guy but it fell off ages ago.
They all head to Vinnie’s because where else would they go? Alex stares at Wiz and thinks about the wishes her friends made. Julie wished to not have the same, boring face. Gabe wished to not have to walk so much. Kyle wished for peace and quiet (I’m not sure when because we never heard about it). Alex realizes they all got their wishes in horrible ways. She decides the best thing she can do is get a fortune from Wiz. She gets “Silence is Golden” which is the same one Marty got. She thinks this proves that Wiz is a regular machine and there’s nothing odd going on.
Or it could be warning you to keep your mouth shut like the cop suggested.
We skip ahead an unspecified number of days. Everyone ends up at a party. Alex asks Bennett about his football charm and he says he took it home with him one weekend and left it there. She asks Gabe and he says he lost his. At some point they’re going to compare notes and wonder why the hell she’s asking.
Alex decides the party is annoying and she tells Jenny that she’s going to take the campus shuttle to the hospital to visit Julie. She goes downstairs to wait for it. When it finally comes, it’s completely empty. She gets on and starts recapping the book for us. Stop trying to do my job, Alex! At some point she realizes the bus is going super fast and driving erratically. In fact, it seems to be doing figure eights in the road. She yells at the driver to knock it off but there is no response. For the first time, she notices that the driver is not in uniform. He’s wearing a dirty tan raincoat and a big gray rainhat.
The driver continues to drive erratically until a police car comes up behind them with sirens on. Then we get this: “….her eyes went to the front of the bus. There was movement there. She watched, disbelieving, as the dirty tan raincoat threw itself off the seat and rolled itself up in a ball, the floppy old rainhat covering any features. Alex stared, wide-eyed. The ball of raincoat tumbled, end over end, down the steps. As it tumbled, Alex heard the evil sound from her nightmare: the low, wicked hahahahahaha….The doors opened. The bundle of raincoat dove through the opening. The doors closed.”
Hoh? Seriously?
Somehow the bus is still moving. Alex gets behind the wheel and pulls it to a stop. She asks the police if they caught the rolling raincoat and they tell her that they saw a guy jump from the bus but they lost him in the woods.
So was it a guy? Did Alex just imagine the rolling raincoat part? Does this confirm she's hallucinating and an unreliable narrator?
{{{Note from future me: if only........}}}
Alex gets a ride back to the dorm with the police. Eventually Jenny comes back too, complaining that all the boys ditched her at the party.
Was one of them perhaps a rolling raincoat at the time?
We skip to the next day and they’re all back at fucking Vinnie’s. Alex goes right up to Wiz and asks him what’s going on. It whirs to life despite the fact she didn’t put a quarter in. It spits out a fortune but Marty interrupts her before she can read it. He teases her about being hooked on the machine and asks what her fortune said. She looks at it and is horrified to see it says “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round”.
Bit late for that one.
Kiki shows up and she looks awful. She's almost skeletal and there are dark circles under her eyes like she hasn't slept in days. She says she was kicked off the soccer team for being underweight. Alex is uneasy so she fakes a headache and asks Marty to take her home. When they get out to his car, she asks him to take her to the hospital instead. He’s confused because he thought she wasn’t feeling well. She yells at him and he agrees to take her wherever she wants to go.
Erratic behavior can be a symptom of a traumatic brain injury.
{{{Note from future me: ha! Like Hoh knows that.}}}
Alex goes to visit Julie who is upset that Jenny hasn’t visited her in days. They discuss how much Jenny has changed since the accident. Apparently Gabe’s been visiting a lot, though. I don’t know if they were together before the accident but they’re definitely a thing now. Gabe even gave her his football charm to wear which is a big deal. Alex is confused because Gabe told her he lost his charm. She wonders if he found it or if he took Kyle’s from the envelope at the nurses’ station.
How would he even have known it was in there?
As she’s leaving, she checks to see if the envelope is still there. It is. She opens it again to find the charm and chain gone.
We skip ahead a day or two. Marty is getting ready to give his big sociology speech and, for some reason, Kiki, Alex and Bennett are all there. I don’t think any of them are in this class. None of them are giving a speech. Why are they there? Marty gets up to give his speech but his voice is completely gone. I guess silence is, indeed, golden. Kiki passes out again and is taken to the hospital where she is kept due to her extreme malnutrition. They advise she be transferred to a clinic that specializes in disordered eating.
Alex runs into Bennett’s ex-girlfriend and asks if she ever saw Bennett’s football charm. The ex says he gave it to her while they were dating but she gave it back when they broke up. Alex thinks this is suspicious because Bennett says it was at home.
This book is d r a g g i n g. I feel like I’m being punished.
Alex goes back to Vinnie’s to confront Wiz. Yeah, you read that right. She starts yelling at it for fucking with her friends. It spits out a white card that reads “You have gone too far”.
So I guess we’re going the paranormal route then. That's disappointing but I'm not sure why I'm surprised.
{{{Note from future me: me either. You should have learned your lesson by now, past me.}}}
Alex suddenly remembers what was weird about the bad guy’s arm when he threw Kyle over the side. It was longer than the other one.
Like a crutch? So Gabe or Bennett.
But....how did he - whichever 'he' it was - throw Kyle over the side with one arm? Kyle is a grown ass football player and you want me to believe that either Gabe or Bennett just picked him up with one arm and threw him over a waist-high divider? Yeah, I'm not really buying that, Hoh.
Alex demands that Wiz fix her friends. It spits out “You dare to threaten me?” and then “No one defies me. You are finished.”
Are people watching her argue with this machine? There must be people there. I wonder what they’re thinking.
Gabe appears. Alex looks at his crutches and finally makes the connection I made a minute ago. She stupidly accuses him of trying to kill Kyle. She really needs to learn to stop running her mouth. Something hits her over the head and everything goes black.
So he just knocked her out in a restaurant in broad daylight? I know it said the machine was in an alcove but it's open to the rest of the restaurant. Give the fact Alex was just screaming at a fortune telling machine, you'd think people would be looking that way. But no one sees her get knocked out and dragged off?
Alex wakes up in a storage closet. When she comes out, Vinnie’s is dark and empty. I guess they closed without ever looking in the storage closet and finding her. She starts to hear Wiz’s voice in her head and it sounds like the person who made the phone calls. He says it’s her fault for doubting him and he wanted to teach her friends a lesson about wanting frivolous things. Alex threatens to destroy him if he doesn’t put things back to normal.
As she’s approaching Wiz, she sees a crutch peeking out from behind it and tells Gabe to come on out. It’s actually Bennett who is back on crutches for his knees. He says he knocked Gabe out too.
Bennett launches into his bad guy monologue. He’s been working with Wiz to help the machine carry out the wishes. Wiz offered to help him with his knees if he would do Wiz’s bidding. Every time he helped, his knees would get better for a short period of time. But now Wiz says he won’t help Bennett again unless he kills Alex. Alex finds Vinnie’s fishing pole just hanging out in the alcove and uses it to knock Bennett’s crutches out from under him. He falls and hits his head, knocking himself out. Alex uses the crutch to destroy Wiz.
This feels super anti-climactic. She just breaks Wiz with a crutch? That's it? No supernatural wind to drag her away? Come on, Wiz, I thought you were tougher than that.
We skip ahead. Kiki has gone to a treatment center and she’s doing better. Marty, Gabe and Kyle have all healed up and they’re playing football again. I guess Julie and Jenny are okay too. Hoh forgets about them.
The book ends with an epilogue. Wiz has been rebuilt and is resold to a man with a burger restaurant nearby. It’s looking forward to granting more wishes and causing more pain.
So this one sucked. It was my least favorite of the series so far. Would it have been better if Hoh had gone down the brain injury route and made Alex the bad guy who is hallucinating this evil machine shit? I don't know. Maybe. But I don't trust Hoh to tell a coherent story anymore so it might have ended up even worse. I'm starting to regret using so many of my Paperbackswap credits to collect this series. If only past me had made better decisions with her book credits.
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