Fear Street: The Overnight

An unchaperoned trip to Fear Island leads to a terrible accident, a vow of secrecy...and just a little light misogyny. Spoilers ahead.

The third book in the Fear Street series introduces a new spooky location into the world of Shadyside: Fear Island. Della and her five friends in the Outdoors Club (really - that's the best we could come up with to justify a planned camping trip?) are disappointed when the club's advisor, Mr. Abner, announces that he has a family emergency and can't take them on their planned overnight to Fear Island. They decided to go anyway, and not let their parents know that they will be unchaperoned. What could go wrong?

Well, first of all, Della can't seem to get her ex-boyfriend alone to talk to him about their recent breakup. He's too busy flirting with Suki Thomas, a punky girl who, we are told several times, has "quite a reputation." This is the second book in a row where Suki has been mentioned as being "easy," "fast," and shown to be a threat to other girls who want to keep their boyfriends. The slut shaming is a bit much, R. L.

But besides the frustrations of teen romance, Della gets lost in the woods and get attacked by a random guy who then falls down a ravine to his death. The others find her standing over the body and they all decide to cover up the body and vow never to tell anyone - because they don't want to get in trouble with their parents for co-ed camping. The justification is a little flimsy, but this is teen fiction, so I'll let it go.

Soon, Della and Gary start getting threatening notes, their wallets have been stolen from out of the bags, and someone seems to be following them. Pete, who seems to be sweet on Della and more than happy to move into Gary's vacated spot, finds a clipping about two men who robbed a gardener who everyone thought was a secret millionaire, and the police sketch matches the dead guy.

The kids sweat over it for two weeks, when all of a sudden Ricky, the joker of the group, realizes that they left a paint gun behind with the body, a clue that would leave the police right to them. Conveniently, Mr. Abner returns and says that he has rescheduled the overnight for that weekend. A whole lot of conversation has been had up to that point about not letting their parents know that Abner had cancelled and they had gone alone...but when the overnight is suddenly happening again, two weeks later, there isn't a mention about how they explain this second trip to their parents? Fishy...

Back on Fear Island, the robber's partner hits Abner on the head, causing half of the group to go back to town for help, and the other three remain to watch over their teacher and retrieve the paint gun. As Della searches for it she is confronted by the robber's partner...and the dead guy himself. Turns out that no one checked to see if he was still breathing, and he tells them he has been told by doctors that his pulse point is extraoridnarily weak. It's a convenient explanation that doesn't totally make sense, but after a short chase it's all resolved when they make it back to camp, robbers in pursuit, and the police are there. They are rescued, they didn't kill anyone, and Della has a new boyfriend so she can stop sulking over lame Gary and let slutty Suki have him.

Now, maybe I have my expectations set a little high because of my nostalgia for this series, but I felt like this installment falters. There are opportunities that coould have lead to some genuine surprises that were passed over. What if Abner had been the robber's accomplice? Instead of being home on a family emergency, what if he had been on the island and seen the kids "take out" his associate? Then he takes them back to the Island to get his revenge? But instead he gets knocked out so that the kids can deal with these no name baddies who are there for two seconds and then easily dealt with by the Shadyside police.

Also, the first guy who everyone presumed dead keeps talking nonsense; several characters describe his as sounding like a lunatic. But is anything done with this? No, he's just weird for a couple of scenes, and then disappears into the vagueness of the resolution. Why does he sound crazy? Did his time on Fear Island affect his sanity? So far the series hasn't gotten too deep into the more supernatural elements of Fear Street; everything has been easily, logically explained. This would have been a great opportunity to build a story that had odd supernatural elements to their creepy antagonists.

I'm still enjoying my trip down Memory Lane, but this particular story just didn't hit for me. Maybe my expectations are too high for teen lit from the 80s, but I just wanted more and this didn't live up to the first two books in the series.