October 8, 2015

The Lost Girl - R.L. Stine


Title: The Lost Girl
Author: R.L. Stine
Pages: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Source: Netgalley
About: New student Lizzy Palmer is the talk of Shadyside High. Michael and his girlfriend Pepper befriend her, but the closer they get to her, the stranger she seems… and the more attractive she is to Michael. He invites her to join him on a snowmobile race that ends in a tragic accident. Soon, Michael's friends start being murdered, and Pepper becomes convinced that Lizzy is behind the killings. But to her total shock, she and Michael are drawn into a tragic story of an unthinkable betrayal committed over 60 years ago. 

I haven't read an R.L. Stine book in a million years, so when I saw this up on Netgalley I thought it would be the perfect inaugural book for my scary October reads.  

If you've read a Fear Street book before, you know what you're getting into.  Crazy paranormal plots happening to normal teenage kids that have no idea what they're in for, but generally come out unscathed.   This one is no different.  It starts off with the story of Beth, a teenager in the 50s (with secret supernatural powers, of course) whose dad is gruesomely murdered in front of her before we're abruptly shoved into present times.  The present story, as the description states, is centered around Michael and his friends and a mysterious new girl that shows up in town - I wonder who that could be.  Michael hits someone when he's riding on a snowmobile with his friends and they flee, only to come back to discover the body has gone missing.  When he starts getting threatening messages, he can't figure out if he's being haunted or hunted.  Then his friends start being picked off and Michael doesn't know how to stop it.   I will say, there is a lot of casual death in this book - like, one of the friends die and the day after Michael is like, 'I can't believe my dad didn't tell me he got new snowmobiles at the store.'  It's a little disconcerting.  The resolution ties itself back into the 50s storyline, as one would expect.  

Now, this book wasn't even a little bit scary and it so reads like a book from the 90s, but every once in a while you want that nostalgia read.  If you loved Fear Street or Goosebumps as a kid, you will definitely get a kick out of The Lost Girl.