So you're in the mid 50's, it's summer, enjoying life, and then people are disappearing...What's the worst that could happen?

 

Beach House: By R.L Stine

A review by Willie Fowler

Summary of the first chapters. With the removal of many spoilers.

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Picture this: It's the Summer of 1956, school just got out, and new hits like "Sh-Boom" just dropped on the radio. You go out to the beach in an old convertible with the crash-resistance of a Pringle, and hang out with your friends. We have Maria, Amy, Ronnie, Stuart, and...Buddy. I don't mean to judge, but I always thought that "Buddy" was sort of an odd name for someone.

Maria is our lead, with black, silky hair, never gone steady with someone.

Amy, who is curiously described to be mouse-like, going steady with Ronnie,

Ronnie, an annoying jokester character whose pranks lean more towards needless cruelty,

Stuart, the cool kid. Or, really tries hard to be. He's the guy with the heavily, and I mean heavily applied gel in his ducktail hairstyle. 

and then Buddy. Good looking, but described as 'intense,' 'very serious,' and 'square.' Competes with Stuart to be Maria's boyfriend. Lives in the Beach House, but it always seems empty.

Now that we have your 1950's era friend group, Buddy gets 'pantsed' and then left in the ocean. The boys all guffaw and taunt him for being 'square' as the girls both feel sympathetic for him. The boys convince Maria and Amy to leave him nude in the water...and they do (pretty jerky, hm?) Surely nothing, absolutely nothing will come of it, eh?

[and then spoilery stuff happened.

...

moving on,]

Now, this may seem weird, but, we're hopping on over to the Summer of 1994.

We've got Ashley, with silver hair, green eyes, conventionally attractive

Ross, in an unhealthy relationship with Ashley (seriously, like break up.)

Lucy, who has red curly hair and blue eyes, also conventionally attractive

and Kip. A "tough looking townie" with 0 sense of humor and bullies Lucy who still sticks around him

Not much happens here (that isn't spoilery), other than Ashley noting that the Beach House is still there with nobody in it, and she claims they need to just demolish the old place. OH, BUT SUDDENLY!

[Sike, it's just more spoilers.

...

moving on again]

~~~.+**+.~~~

Review:

Beach House is one of my first horror reads in a LOOOOONG while, and I gotta say, I'm enjoying getting back into horror novels. I was also planning on buying Koji Suzuki's "Ringu" novel, which inspired a Japanese 1998 movie, then the sequels, then the American remake, the American sequels, and...I'm going off tangent.

Beach House, written by the O.G of American horror novels: R.L Stine, or Robert Lawrence Stine is probably a favorite Stine novel of mine as of late. 

Beach House is full of mind-boggling twists and some pretty surprising climax and falling action material.

I can safely say that I was very much NOT expecting a couple of these twists, such as

[REDACTED]

and

[SPOILERS]

Oh and especially

[NOPE]

In case you haven't gotten the memo, this novel has some twists about as unexpected as Purple Hibiscus' twist, maybe even more so, and as such, I don't want to give any spoilers whatsoever considering how well everything comes together by the end of the story, leaving you like "OH that makes sense!"

This is Willie Fowler, see you in 4 weeks!

...

Next blog post preview... (don't watch if you don't like mildly disturbing imagery and sounds, especially at night)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mbo5vHy8dw