Sunday, March 22, 2009

Top 15 Fear Street Books

For a few years as a preteen I lived and breathed Fear Street. Not only did I spend every waking moment reading these books, but I dreamed about them. I would walk two miles to the bookstore every month to buy them as they came out. And I even created a fanfiction series called Any Way the Wind Blows based on Fear Street.

So what better way to celebrate my love of these books then to make a top ten list! Only I haven't read most of these in 10+ years so I'm working off vague recollections at best. And I couldn't narrow it down to just ten, either.

#15 The Best Friend
Because Honey got away with murder. (Until you read the crappy needless sequel to discover Bill didn't really die). And not only did she get away with it, she made Becca (Why do I keep trying to type Bella?) think she'd done it. Nobody in Fear Street gets away with murder except the Fears. And their descendants always pay for it in the end. Yay for Honey!

#14 Fear Park #1: The First Scream
Fear Park was probably the most gory, violent Fear Street epic ever. (And Robin was hot.) Who doesn't love the scene of a bunch of teenagers hacking each other to pieces with axes? Or was it hatchets?

#13 Lights Out
All I remember of this one is the scene of somebody dying in an art cabin somehow on a pottery wheel? I just remember the pottery wheel was on and it was spurting something on the protagonist and when she turned the light on she saw it was blood. Awesome.

#12 The Fear Street Saga #3: The Burning
Yeah, the whole trilogy's on here. Family secrets, a feud, betrayal, murder, evil legacies, this trilogy was jam-packed with everything I love about fiction. The only thing missing was poison. Was there poison? The Burning was great because Simon goes from being the good guy at the end of the previous novel to embracing his inheritance of evil and trying to kill people to be with Angelica, a girl he fell in love with at first sight. But she was even more evil and together their evilness brought down their family. Julia being buried alive while Simon searched for her, hearing her cries through the ground, only finding her when it was too late and murdering his other daughter in a blind rage (literally) was truly haunting. God I love the Fears.

#11 Broken Hearts
More than anything what bothered me about this book was Rachel. She was brain damaged in. a horse riding accident. It's one thing for someone to be mentally handicapped from birth, but for someone who was "normal?" To know that every time you looked at this person you would remember the person she used to be. That terrified me that that could happen. I felt absolutely horrible for the mother of these girls.

#10 The Mind Reader
Ellie has visions of her best friend's sister being killed and it turns out it was their dad who did it. The whole time Ellie's describing what she's seeing her friend knows what she means and she doesn't want to admit she understands what really happened. It was pretty creepy.

#9 The Halloween Party
I don’t know if this one was particularly good but it was one I reread A LOT. I loved Justine whole plot of pretending to be a high school student in order to get revenge on the children of the people who accidentally killed her parents and how she set up the party.

#8 The Dead Lifeguard
If for no other reason I was completely positive that Mouse and Terry were in love with each other. And it made me wary of lifeguards.

#7 The Fear Street Saga #2: The Betrayal
The book that started the whole evil feud. I always wondered what Edward thought once he found out Susannah had been innocent and his father had sentenced her to die because Edward was in love with a poor girl. I always thought Mary was a complete moron. Jeremy essentially told her his mother died before he was born. Who doesn’t question that? I need to act this book out with Bratz dolls.

#6 Switched
When I was eleven I thought this was the best Fear Street book ever written. The ending truly took me by surprise in a way few Fear Street books did. And this was the inspiration for Jimmy Dearest. I think I copied some lines out of it word for word actually.

#5 Sunburn
There’s a summer camp involved, a girl almost gets eaten by a shark, their hostess turns up having been dead a week when they just saw her earlier in the day, and a girl who fakes her death by falling off a tree into a gorge (It‘s not a cliff, but close enough), this book is full of awesome! It was also where Andy Drexil from Dear Sister got her last name (though spelled differently), and where the character of Alison came from.

#4 Fear Street Sagas #3: Forbidden Secrets
Creepiest Fear Street book ever. Hands down. It’s about two sisters both in love with the same Fear (a male one). It’s told from an old lady’s point of view as she’s sitting at her sister’s grave, but you don’t know which girl she is until much later in the book. One of my absolute favorites. Tyler was a scary guy.

#3 The Fear Street Saga #2: The Secret
The image of Jonathan and Abigail playing in an abandoned village filled with nothing but rotting corpses stayed with me for a very long time. I think this is the creepiest of the three. For a few years I wanted a black cat I could name Simon Fear. Actually, I still want a cat to name Simon Fear.

#2 The Face
This one really was kind of scary. The whole being decapitated from a wire while skiing kind of haunted me. I still never want to go skiing. Martha drawing the face of a dead boy over and over again without being able to stop herself. All of her friends plotting against her. I did not want to be Martha in this one. I think this was the best written one.

#1 The Fear Street Cheerleaders: The Third Evil
What else? The very first Fear Street book I ever read that inspired an obsession in me only rivaled by Gundam Wing. I dreamed about this book, I acted it out with my friends. I memorized all the cheers and performed them. I told my teacher my name was Corky when I was in seventh grade. And it sparked my fixation on people falling off of cliff’s, which appeared in nearly all of my early stories at some point. I read and reread the Cheerleaders series till my original books fell apart. Corky still remains one of my favorite fictional characters of all time.

9 comments:

Fear Street said...

I love "Switched"! If only that one had been a longer novel...

Love the list :)

Sadako said...

Awww, no love for the Babysitter. I didn't read all that many Fear Streets, but it was the first one I did read, so I have vivid memories of the cover. And some memories of the actual plot. Also felt very proud of myself for reading a "grown up horror" book (hey, I was ten!).

Deathycat said...

I'm almost ashamed to admit I've actually never read any of the Babysitter books.

HelenB said...

What else? The very first Fear Street book I ever read that inspired an obsession in me only rivaled by Gundam Wing.

If only there was some way to combine the two! Relena, our heroine, has started getting weird phonecalls from her friend Heero - phonecalls which he says he never made. It all takes a chilling turn when Relena's older brother turns up dead. (In the end, it will turn out that the Gundams did it). It could be called "Gundam Wing: Endless Dialtone".

Sadako said...

Oh, you should read it. Actually, turns out it's not even Fear Street--it's Point Horror. D'oh!

Deathycat said...

I'm having horrible plot bunnies of the G-boys living in a safehouse on Fear Street. May have to play with that...

I own the Babysitter. One of these days I'll get around to finally reading it.

Michael KISS said...

I also love the books of RL Stine, warm in Brazil and they stopped releasing the series Fear Street. only released 16 titles. I did was having to learn English and Spanish to continue reading the books of Stine as he launched more than 300.
some of the best are precisely those who read in English, as 99 FEAR STREET 1 AND 2, hitchhiker, BEACH PARTY GAME and FIRE.
I read all the series of Stine that I can, I love goosebumps, NIGHTMARE ROOM and mostly ghostly.
Also read the superstitious, the babysitter, twisted, and several others. I have read over 60 titles, and now I'm the cheater in Spanish, which I think is pretty cool.

mli18920 said...

i try to read all the fear street books i could get but i don't have alot

Unknown said...

I threw the book after reading 'Switched'. it ends like... puff! and leaves you with a dozen of questions. i like writing about supernaturals... if you feel like reading my little story(or the whole blog, here's the link...
http://myblog-lakshayraja.blogspot.in/2012_02_01_archive.html