A Midsummer Night's Scream
by R.L. Stine
250 pages
Feiwel and Friends, July 2013
young adult fiction
Read in 2 days
Another Review
My Rating:
"One hand on the wheel, one hand around Darlene's shoulders, Tony pounded the gas pedal, and the van roared over the bumps and pits of the narrow dirt road."
Review: I truly don't know where to begin with this book. Maybe I should start with it's lack of commas. Normally I would overlook such a grammatical detail but in this book I'm afraid I simply could not. It's lack of commas, leading to an obvious lack of sentence structure, was only one of the reasons why I simply couldn't continue to torture my brain with the last 50 pages. I understand this book was meant to be written in the first person account but I doubt teenagers from California talk, let alone think, as disjointed as he was writing. Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe teenage Californians really are mind-numbingly banal in their dialog with each other and in their heads? If you happen to live in California and you're reading this review please set the record straight for me, is the stereotype portrayed in this book true? Are your thoughts simple and lacking of any substance or vocabulary beyond that of a second grader?
I'm really surprised at how juvenile the sentences and words were as well. I've read some young adult books that quite frankly I find to be very adult in topic and vocabulary. I think teenagers can handle a bit more in the storyline department. Maybe Mr. Stine should just stick to Goosebumps and leave the young adult genre to other more capable hands?
I'm sure if I had finished this book I would have found more to dislike about it but for now all I have is the corny dialog and the unbelievable storyline to go on. I find it hard to believe that parents with children acting in a movie where already TWO people have died in very nasty and totally intentional ways would allow them to continue in the movie let alone green-light it to continue filming?! That I find very far fetched, I don't care if they have debts that must be paid, allowing for the possibility of more deaths, including those of your own children for the sake of money is bad parenting period!
My guess is there's supposed to be some similarity between this book and William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream? I'd hate for the ONLY similarity to come from the title of the great bards book and the main character deciding to make her sweet seventeen party theme the same title? If that is the case then I'd say an opportunity was wasted for a great classroom lesson or book club chat. I've never read A Midsummer Night's Dream so I guess the one good thing that came out of my reading this book is I'll be reading Shakespeare's version soon.
I do not and would not recommend this book to anyone.
I'm really surprised at how juvenile the sentences and words were as well. I've read some young adult books that quite frankly I find to be very adult in topic and vocabulary. I think teenagers can handle a bit more in the storyline department. Maybe Mr. Stine should just stick to Goosebumps and leave the young adult genre to other more capable hands?
I'm sure if I had finished this book I would have found more to dislike about it but for now all I have is the corny dialog and the unbelievable storyline to go on. I find it hard to believe that parents with children acting in a movie where already TWO people have died in very nasty and totally intentional ways would allow them to continue in the movie let alone green-light it to continue filming?! That I find very far fetched, I don't care if they have debts that must be paid, allowing for the possibility of more deaths, including those of your own children for the sake of money is bad parenting period!
My guess is there's supposed to be some similarity between this book and William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream? I'd hate for the ONLY similarity to come from the title of the great bards book and the main character deciding to make her sweet seventeen party theme the same title? If that is the case then I'd say an opportunity was wasted for a great classroom lesson or book club chat. I've never read A Midsummer Night's Dream so I guess the one good thing that came out of my reading this book is I'll be reading Shakespeare's version soon.
I do not and would not recommend this book to anyone.
Summary: Oh, what fools these actors be!
It was a horror movie that turned into real horror--three young actors lost their lives while the camera rolled. Production stopped, and people claimed that the movie was cursed.
Sixty years later, new actors are venturing onto the haunted set. In a desperate attempt to revive their failing studio, Claire's dad has green-lit a remake of Mayhem Manor—and Claire and her friends are dying to be involved.
At first, Claire laughs at Jake’s talk of ghosts and curses. He’s been too busy crushing on her best friend Delia to notice that she’s practically been throwing herself at him. What does he know? And anyway, this is her big chance to be a star!
When shooting starts, though, the set is plagued by a series of horrible accidents—could history be repeating itself?
To learn more about R.L. Stine visit his site here.
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