Spring Reads: Don't Stay Up Late: A Fear Street Novel

Don't Stay Up Late
A Fear Street Novel
by R.L. Stine
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Pub. Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 9781250051622
Pages: 304
Buy Link: Amazon

Review:

It's almost hard to imagine that the Fear Street series by R.L. Stine first started in 1989! I was an eight-year-old back then and I didn't start reading the series until several years later. I believe the first book that I read in the series was Fear Street Cheerleaders: The First Evil.

The Fear Street series was extremely successful with teens throughout the 90s', but the fad disappeared quickly that is until R.L. Stine brought the series back last year with Party Games. The second novel in the new series is arriving in bookstores on April 7th and is titled Don't Stay Up Late! As you can see by the cover, the book has an 80s' horror vibe to it.

Don't Stay Up Late centers on Lisa Brooks, a teen that almost loses everything in one single car crash. After mending her wounds, she returns to Shadyside High and reunites with her boyfriend Nate and her friends Saralynn and Isaac. While the guys plan on helping Saralynn make a horror movie for her film project for school, Lisa searches for an after-school job to help her mother pay the bills.

Thanks to her shrink, Dr. Shein, Lisa gets a job babysitting Brenda Hart's eight-year-old son, Harry. There's only one rule to follow, Harry is not allowed to stay up late. Of course, Lisa thinks absolutely nothing about this rule, that is until she sees a strange green creature in the Hart's house. Of course everyone, including her shrink thinks she's crazy, but when a few murders occur, Lisa is convinced that there's a creature on the loose on Fear Street.

While many YA teen authors tend to use a supernatural romance theme, R.L. Stine just uses the old-fashioned horror/slasher theme that was popular in the 80s' and it works for the most part in this novel, which meshes together The House of Devil with Gremlins. The main heroine Lisa is an interesting character that most readers will probably connect with. After reading several chapters, I was afraid the predictable factor was in play here as I could of sworn I new exactly what was going on, but I was completely wrong as the latter half went a completely different direction. Overall, Don't Stay Up Late: A Fear Street Novel is a scare-filled read from start to finish and is one Mr. Stine's best work to date.