The Running Bibliophile

Scariest. Book. Ever. (Goosebumps House of Shivers, #1) by R.L. Stine is a new book series for children in middle grades.  It opens with twins Betty and Billy being dropped off at their Uncle Wendell's house while their parents fly to London for two weeks.  What their parent's don't know is that someone is after Wendell and one of his books.  To keep the book safe, the twins must help their uncle. First and foremost, I'd like to thank NetGalley and Scholastic for the Advanced Readers Copy (ARC).  As a tween and teen, I loved R.L. Stine's Fear Street book series, so I was excited to be approved to receive Scariest. Book. Ever. (Goosebumps House of Shivers, #1) for free in exchange for my honest review.  I solely requested this book because of that, so I had no idea what to expect going into the story. I'm not the target audience for this book, but I'm sure I would've loved it if I was eight to ten years old.  There were a few red herrings, which was ex...

Book Review: Halloween Party (Fear Street, #8) by R.L. Stine Halloween Party (Fear Street, #8) by R.L. Stine is the eighth book in the Fear Street Book series. Justine Cameron is throwing a Halloween party for nine specially picked students. The kicker is that none of the nine people really know Justine, and they wonder why they were invited. When the lights go off and come back on, there's a body with a knife in it. Is there a murderer amongst them? I'm in the process of rereading my way through my childhood, and I decided to read the Fear Street book series again . . . this time in order. I must not have read Halloween Party because I didn't have the book. I purchased the book through ThriftBooks.com, and I have to say that I didn't remember anything about the storyline, with the exception of the nickname for Niki sounding very familiar.  The Fear Street books are a more mature horror book series than R.L. Stine's Goosebumps book series. I loved reading these ...

The Face on the Milk Carton (Janice Johnson, #1) by Caroline B. Cooney opens with Janie Johnson and her friends laughing and joking at lunch about the missing children on the milk carton. As Janie takes a closer look at the carton, she realizes the face staring back at her is that of her three year old self. How could this be happening? Even though this was an extremely popular book in my middle school years, I had completely forgotten about The Face on the Milk Carton until a friend marked it as 'read' on Goodreads.com. I immediately ordered a used copy of this book as well as some of the others in the series. I was surprised that there were five books in the series as I thought there were only two books.  On top of that, I was stunned to find out that Caroline B. Cooney was the author as I knew her only as writing horror novels for young adults. I must not have read the book as a kid because I think I would've remembered who wrote it. However, I do know that I did watch...

In Dead Girls Can't Scream by Janice Harrell, Laurie jogs by the same corner every day, but on one particular day, she sees something she's not supposed to see . . . a body being stuffed into the trunk of a car. The psycho killer knows he has to kill Laurie now that she's seen him. Will she live or die? As a teenager, I was a huge fan of The Secret Diaries trilogy and The Murder Game by Janice Harrell. Whenever I'd go to Waldenbooks bookstore at the mall, I was always eager to see if they had any other books written by her. Unfortunately, they rarely had any other books by this author other than the Vampire Twins series.  Fast forward to this year when I found out that Netflix was releasing three Fear Street movies based on R.L. Stine's book series of the same name. It made me want to reread through that book series and some of the others I had grown up on. I went on ThriftBooks.com to see if there were any books by Janice Harrell that I was unaware of, and I cam...

The sixth installment of the Fear Street book series by R.L. Stine is The Sleepwalker . When Mayra Barnes starts her summer job with old Mrs. Cotter, Mayra begins sleepwalking and waking up by a lake. Then, she starts suspecting that Mrs. Cotter is a witch, and on top of that, there is a strange man following Mayra. If she doesn't figure out why she's sleepwalking, it may end up killing Mayra. In my quest of rereading my way through my childhood and the upcoming Fear Street movies coming to Netflix, I soon realized there were quite a few of books that I never purchased in the Fear Street book series written by R.L. Stine. The Sleepwalker (Fear Street, #6) was the next book in the series that I wanted to read, but it was one of the ones I never owned or read, so I searched for a used copy of it online.  After a week of searching, I finally found a "reasonably" priced copy of The Sleepwalker (Fear Street, #6) . When I received the book in the mail and opened up the ...

The Wrong Number (Fear Street, #5) by R.L. Stine is about best friends Deena Martinson and Jade Smith being typical teenagers and playing pranks on their classmates. When Deena's half brother Chuck catches them in the act, he gets involved, and things go horribly wrong when they call the wrong number and overhear a crime taking place. In rereading this book for the first time since I was a teenager, I only vaguely remembered the plot of The Wrong Number , so it was like reading it for the first time again. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the story and had moments where I felt uneasy, I was disappointed in the fact that there weren't really that many twists and turns. Additionally, it didn't age quite as well as some of the other books just because not many people have landlines anymore. Those who do still have them, have caller id now, so it's quite difficult to prank call someone now. In this day and age, people typically don't answer the phone if they don't kn...

Mark and Cara Burroughs' parents were late coming home, so they decided to throw a party after school. When their parents still hadn't come home or called that night, the siblings aren't too worried as this is typical behavior of their parents. As the days go by with no contact with their parents, Mark and Cara begin to panic and contact the police. Missing (Fear Street, #4) by R.L. Stine will have you on the edge of your seat to the end. I was excited to reread Missing (Fear Street, #4) in my quest to reread my way through my childhood, especially after The Overnight (Fear Street, #3) by R.L. Stine was such a great book. However, the fourth installment of the Fear Street book series was not one of my favorites.  The biggest issue I had with it was that the first few chapters kept repeating some of the same information over and over. An example of this was reiterating that Mark was the shy, introverted sibling, and Cara was the outgoing sibling that wasn't afraid o...

Nothing bad will happen, right? That's what the members of Shadyside High School's Outdoors Club thought when they decided to go on their overnight camping trip anyways when their club advisor cancelled it. It's all fun and games until Della gets lost in the woods and stumbles across a stranger on Fear Island. When the stranger starts threatening her, Della does the unthinkable, and everyone in the Outdoors Club swears secrecy of what happened. But someone else saw what happened and is sending the members mysterious notes. The Overnight (Fear Street, #3) by R.L. Stine did not disappoint me in my attempt to reread my way through my childhood. I vaguely remembered the storyline as I was reading this book but not enough to remember exactly what happened, so it was like reading it for the first time. When I was a tween and teen, I read the Fear Street books out of order and loved this horror series. As an adult, I'm reading them in order, and I'm seeing connections wi...

The Surprise Party (Fear Street, #2)  by R.L. Stine.   After Evan died in the Fear Street woods, everyone changed, and Ellen moved away. When Meg Dalton heard Ellen was coming for a visit, she thought it would be a great idea to throw Ellen a surprise party. With party plans under way, Meg begins receiving threats to cancel the party. Who would go to such drastic extremes? As a part of rereading my way through my childhood, the Fear Street  books by R.L. Stine were a must read for me, and The Surprise Party (Fear Street, #2)  brought back some great memories for me. Mentions of trapper keepers, Molly Ringwald, Daryl Hannah, and Esprit clothing gave me all the feels. I wonder if kids today even know what a trapper keeper is and have ever heard of the Esprit clothing line? I only vaguely remembered the storyline of The Surprise Party  and thought I had the "bad guy" figured out from the get go only to find out I was wrong. How can I be so wrong about ...

The New Girl (Fear Street, #1) by R.L. Stine starts out with Cory Brooks clowning around in the cafeteria and noticing the new girl Anna Corwin. She's ethereal with her blue eyes and blond hair, and her pale skin that seems almost ghostly. Cory can't get her out of his mind and starts losing sleep and ignoring his friends. As quickly as she appeared at Shadyside High School, she disappears just as fast. Feeding his obsession with Anna, Cory goes by Anna's house on Fear Street despite the horror stories of people who live there.   For whatever reason, I decided to pick up my copy of R.L. Stine's The New Girl , which is the first book he wrote in the Fear Street series and was originally published in 1989. Even though this was the first book in the series, it was one of the ones I read later on in high school. I don't remember exactly how I first came across his books, but I fell in love with them around the time I was thirteen. As I was rereading The New Gi...

Over twenty years ago, I bought the book Beach House by R.L. Stine when I was a high school student. I remember feeling that this book by him was so much more mature than his other works and was super impressed by the fact that it alternated between the year 1956 and the present day. With that being said, I was even more impressed that he included time travel into the novel and was totally surprised that one of the characters had "come back from the dead" to kill him. At that point in time, the only other book that had to do with any kind of "time travel" that I read was Mary Downing Hahn's middle grade book Wait Til Helen Comes , which isn't really a comparable book. A few months ago, I came across a copy of Beach House at Goodwill and decided to buy it because I had such fond memories of it. This past weekend, I finally picked it up and read it within a few hours (maybe 2-3 hours total reading time). As I read it, I had vague memories of the time ...