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 FriendBecause 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 ScreamFear 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 OutAll 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 BurningYeah, 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 HeartsMore 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 ReaderEllie 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 PartyI 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 LifeguardIf 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 BetrayalThe 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 SwitchedWhen 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 J
immy Dearest. I think I copied some lines out of it word for word actually.
#5 SunburnThere’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 SecretsCreepiest 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 SecretThe 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 FaceThis 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 EvilWhat 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.
