Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 5

Aaron’s favorite celebrity is Joe Bob Briggs, so he was watching Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater on TMC.

60. Driven to Kill – G.G. Garth

Aaron and Katrina and their friends Coriander and Dan are renting a limo for the Halloween dance. The company they go to has an owner completely obsessed with saying “customer service” and talking about how his creepy spreadsheet of details about their lives will help him give them the best customer service they’ve ever experienced in their entire lives. Having worked in customer service quite a bit, there is a line to people pleasing that one should not cross. The customer is not always right and this guy has no dignity or self-respect demonstrated here. He also may be a serial killer, but he talks too much about his method I think.

Anyway, Katrina has nightmares and someone breaks into her house and adds some stuff that seems weird to her mom’s shopping list and mimics her handwriting on her comp essay and then, Mr. Customer Service shows up to take her and Aaron to the dance in a fuchsia hearse – like in her nightmare (And I have to be honest, mine, I would not like to be carried anywhere posthumously or not in a fuchsia hearse, although it would have been nice for Snuffy, she would have liked that). He says that reenacting a young teen’s nightmare for the Halloween dance is totally good customer service. Or not…

 

Wisting is lying down in this teeny tiny haunted house and Snuffy’s protecting him by milling around the outside. That’s a good big sisterpig as opposed to dude’s maniacal idea of customer service.

 

 

Snuffy would have liked the fuchsia hearse and she would have liked the chance to take a creeper out, she does have a blade she’s already using to make sure she and Wisting are safe.
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And here’s Wisting’s cute little face with the painting itself.

“Oh, throw that disgusting cylinder away!”

78. Nancy Drew Files #41: Something to Hide – Carolyn Keene

There are jack-o-lanterns all over this cover and yet the Halloween party is really just a random tangential affair! Why, Nancy, why? I am absolutely positive this story of blemish cream and bad science could have been set on not-Halloween easily. Ned could come back for a weekend and do this weird marketing experiment at the mall that nabs Bess a bad boyfriend and puts people in a coma. It didn’t have to be Halloween weekend. Obviously, I am pretty fond of Halloween, so I don’t appreciate when it’s not a part of the mystery and I believe whomever was charged with painting the cover for this case file was on my side. It really would have been a lot cooler if it was filled with spookiness. However, it also seems possible that the cover painter had no idea what even a generic scarecrow looks like, as that is what Nancy is dressed up at during said 30 second Halloween party, not caped Annie Hall. Oh well.

 

The true face of Halloween calm and beauty – Hen Wen.

 

Now this is a painting of a Halloween costume. Hen Wen’s latest Halloween costume.
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I think Miss Hen Wen approves.

 

Corpse Groundhog Day

164. Scared Stiff – Jahnna N. Malcolm

Kelly and Chace live in a funeral home and Kelly is really starting to freak out about it. She’s embarrassed that her parents have an important and necessary job as morticians and she can’t take a joke about it, make a joke about it, or cope well and she’s just had a big fight with her best friend over it. And then their parents are going to some banquet and will be out for hours and her brother invites some Matt character from the “wrong side of the tracks” so to speak to hang out.

There weren’t supposed to be any bodies in the house and after pizza, all of a sudden, there is one without any apparent noises of their parents returning home. And that body is not staying down. It does a couple things that can be explained – moaning aka releasing air/gas and sitting straight up, which is weird but muscles just don’t want to give up sometimes – but then it looks at them and says he’s here for revenge. So, some grudges just don’t want to give up sometimes either. And so begins a tale of three kids working together to stop one murderous corpse as much as they can.

Scared Stiff is middle grade, but it’s a pretty fun story. I will say I did not like the ending, built for maximum scares but not very satisfying.

 

Dagmar and Camille aren’t scared of adventure or corpses, but they have been well startled by Snorri’s agility.

 

Camille and Dagmar are ready for a murderous corpse-based adventure, they just need Wisting to open the door and come along for the ride.
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“I could have been a world class skier, a world class business man, and you took it away from me.”

19. Mystery of the Scowling Boy – Phyllis A. Whitney

Jan and Mike have gone to visit their grandparents for Christmas break and it seems their grandparents live in an area of Pennsylvania that retired sculptors really love. Their grandpa is/was a sculptor (he has issues with his hands now) and so is their neighbor down in the valley who is bedridden and happens to have a very famous granddaughter.

Jan is trying to figure out if her talent is being an actress, she really wants it, and everyone else in the family is super talented, so when she figures out a famous actress is just next door, she wants to get advice. Unfortunately, said actress’ son is the “scowling boy” of the title (Steven) and seems to have a talent for being off-putting and negative about his mother. He’s mad at her for all the reasons. And she seems a little dismayed about the phone. Jan quickly deduces that she’s getting some kind of weird phone calls, but this family is all about not talking about things in front of Jan and Mike. Sensible, but it also just tells them something more interesting is going on.

Anyway, they spend a lot of time skiing the Devil’s Drop and hiking around and trying to be friends with Steven. Then their grandmother has to go to the hospital and they end up staying in the very house of Steven so he can whine more about his mom being “fake” and they can hear noises coming from the room of scary looking sculptures and see the actress after she’s gotten another frightening phone call. Of course, being in the house and interacting more with the weirdness surrounding the family just makes it real clear that something needs sorting out and it will take Jan’s talents to do it.

 

Duncan was also talented enough to sort out a scowler. Or Pickles.

 

Mysterious and upsetting phone calls about a sordid past in the chill of winter? Duncan never gets those.
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Wooden toys and paranoia for Christmas

174. Fatal Secrets – Richie Tankersley Cusick

Ryan McCauley is on holiday break from school searching the wilderness for greenery and pinecones for her job at a toy store with her sister, Marissa, who definitely does not want to be there and then when they split up to get things done faster, Marissa ends up falling through the ice and drowning and Ryan ends up with eternal guilt for fighting with her sister before she fell through and not being able to save her afterwards.

Ryan is stuck in her grief with her mother, who is even more stuck in grief to the point of essentially ignoring Ryan and spending most of her time in Marissa’s room. She will let Ryan spend time in there when one of Marissa’s friends – the suspicious Charles – arrives because her mom thinks Charles should stay in Ryan’s room. Very nonsensical, but that’s being last priority kid.

When it turns out that Marissa might have been murdered and Ryan starts seeing someone in the window of the toy store watching her and is feeling followed, things get weird. Ryan has good friends, but even they think Charles is not that weird and she might be hallucinating or mishearing all of her interactions all over the place. Of course, she’s crazy to normals, but she’s not crazy at all. Anyway, overall this was a really engaging set of characters and a really good story for a nice slice of holiday YA.

 

Thorfy was the first priority pig for a very long time. As deserved.

 

Thorfy’s not searching for pinecones and greenery in the Finnish forest, he is being followed though.
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“I was hoping the next time I’d see you would be at your funeral.”

20. The Twisted Room – Janet Patton Smith

Lisa’s parents are doing the oneupmanship version of divorce – they both have new partners, they both want to give her extravagant gifts (a collection of albums – with duplicates!) for the Christmas they’re both ruining for her, and they want her out of the way so they can go on wonderful vacations during the drudgey time between Christmas and New Year’s. Lisa, understandably, is not very happy about this. And she’s being shipped off to Ohio where her reclusive Aunt Nikki lives.

When she gets to Ohio she’s staying in an isolated house with her barely there Aunt Nikki who won’t let her eat more than half a can of soup, barely heats the giant house, and disappears regularly because of some giant past town scandal that happened in the 40s with her next door neighbor, the also reclusive Mr. Worthington’s family. See, Aunt Nikki is really Jennica Loring, and her best friend was Mr. Worthington’s daughter Marie, who killed herself and the rest of the family semi-accidentally after she planned on blaming Jenny/Jennica/Nikki for stealing money to leave and marry her military boyfriend before he shipped out to World War II.

Marie, however, is an evil ghost and she wants to invite Lisa to a party in the 1940s and has plans to substitute Lisa in her place in the party she died at so she will be free. Also, she’s avoiding appearing before her father. Marie has also traveled as a ghost before so she could ruin Jenny/Jennica/Nikki’s life and reduced her to living alone in her house and eating like a half can of tuna and not realizing she might be starving herself and her niece in 1983. It is a time of excess, Jenny, it is the 80s. Eat the whole can of tuna, mix in some celery while you’re at it, go wild.

Lisa at first likes Marie better because she’s a fun ghost until you realize she wants to kill you in her place and somehow thinks that will work out well for her. Evil ghosts, man, not smart, just evil.

 

Snuffy’s view from the isolated A-frame involves few impressionable young teens.

 

Snuffy just wanted cha cha heels, not to feed children meagre portions out of old guilt or suck a new soul into the past to pay for her crimes. Just cha cha heels.
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1990s Classic Ski Tale #17

178. Winterkill – Nicole Davidson

Karen moves from New York City to Killington, VT, from shopping constantly to everybody being about ski parties and a tiny amount of people to befriend. She manages to run into the kids who rule the school in her grade nearly immediately on her first day and then starts dating the one who kind of pushes her into dating him, but I guess was a good guy overall, Matt.

During the party after the annual ski race qualifier down a difficult run full of moguls, Karen follows a distracted seeming Matt outside and watches him get chased and run over by a car. She didn’t expect to be a murder witness, she was just starting to remind Matt he has her, the cool new girl from NYC, when their chance at love with bickering and her watching him win the big race is all gone.

Then Karen figures out, while she’s in her “not leaving her bedroom for anything” level of grief, that the police are going to stop investigating the hit and run and she’s awake, she’s up, she’s ready to find out who hit Matt. She finds vengeance amongst the small group and ends up on the worst run of them all, the Devil’s Fiddle, before any justice or magical opal necklaces can save her.

 

The faces of pigs who will not enjoy a ski vacation regardless of how much intrigue and murder or big races happen. They might enjoy nibbling the lodge.

 

Danger Crumples, Merricat, Peregrine, and Ozymandias certainly aren’t skiing on the Devil’s Fiddle, they’d need a montage to do that. That run’s got a history.
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“Doctor, witchcraft is dead and discredited. Are you bent on reviving forgotten horrors?”

7. Blair Witch Files: The Witch’s Daughter – Cade Merrill

17 year old Cade Merrill is letting out some of his research and the stories that have been sent to him that are adjacent to the legend of the Blair Witch. You see, he’s Heather Donahue’s cousin and now he’s also a collector of weird stories. The Witch’s Daughter is the compendium of his contact with Justin Petit, whose grandfather’s life changed with a slippery stairs accident and led to his connection to the Blair Witch.

In the hospital post-accident, Justin’s grandfather keeps screaming about “her” coming for him and trying to kill him and then tells Justin a story of the past involving him being a bully, a girl with seriously unfortunate circumstances that just seemed to never end, and supernatural revenge that looks like accidents. It was a pretty good story, actually.

Meanwhile, Justin keeps running into a volunteer (literally ran into her book cart the first time) named Leslie who is really cute and seems to be sympathetic as well. What a nice girl. She even guides him to looking up surrounding facts so that he can make better judgments about what his grandfather is so terrified about. This leads to finding an obituary on microfiche…which is unlikely. Vital records, yes, obituaries, no because those are in newspapers which don’t fit readably on fiche, and then in the end the obituary is referred to as “an obvious mock-up” (Thank you).

My favorite topic assuaged, Justin is super taken in and trying to get Leslie’s attention nearly everywhere he can. She also gives him a diary that belonged to her grandmother, who may very well be the supernatural murderess, and provides the more direct connection to the stories about the Blair Witch. It’s all presented alongside small comments from Cade Merrill, plus the occasional email, and has an ambiguous ending – including the advertisements for a contest to win a “TRiP to the Set” of Blair Witch III, which doesn’t exist as a movie. Very devious.

 

Wisting knows how to look things up properly and he’s telling Camille about it while she tries to win a trip to visit the set of Blair Witch III. She’s going to be very disappointed.

 

Wisting searching for something that would actually be on microfiche in the microforms department. Legit.
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The wizard from the prologue has never left the mall.

135. Doomsday Mall: The Dollhouse – Bebe Faas Rice

Usually, you don’t see series for younger children associated with the word “doomsday,” but this one from 1995 is and is meant for the type of child who grew up in the 80s and 90s, when it was still totally okay to scare children senseless with books and television. I was certainly afraid of the dark. Yes, I was. However, I didn’t have this series then and frankly the cover looks like someone had access to Photoshop, but didn’t know how to use it effectively. They should have had someone paint the cover- that was still possible then too.

Anyway, on the way to their new home which her parents won’t tell her about, Susan finds a creepy toy store at the back of the mall. There are several toys in the toy store that don’t really seem appropriate for children, like an actually bleeding solider toy, and then Susan sees the dollhouse. It’s perfect to her, just a great, huge, empty dollhouse that the super creepy proprietor Mr. Tidwell whispers to her about. Then when they get to their new home…it is that house. They’re the same. This in no way leads to misadventures in child-level Needful Things. Wait, yes, it does. And there’s even child peril when she decides to burn the dollhouse while her baby brother is in the real house. Geez, Susan, when the creepy wizard toymaker tells you it’s the same, it’s the same. You’re like 10, figure it out.

 

Merricat has taken over Danger Crumples’ house and stolen his dinosaur companion Stephen. She is the dude from Needful Things in a tiny guinea pig package.

 

She’s got all kinds of things to haunt children in her library.
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“Take it easy, baby! You’re just bein’ kidnapped.”

110. The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore – Joan Lowery Nixon

Christina Lattimore is a Houston teen from a very prominent family run by her grandmother, executive Cristabel who does not want to be called any version of grandma, and she’s pissed she can’t go to France with her girls’ school friends…and then she gets kidnapped.

It’s not the worst kidnapping ever, she doesn’t get molested, the basement she’s in is not super creepy, and they let her have a hairbrush eventually. Also, a Gothic novel like her best friend reads and keeps trying to get her to read all the time. Finally, time to read something new, all she had to do was get kidnapped.

My favorite part of the book was Christina complaining about how she couldn’t remember the plot after she read the Gothic, just that she knew that no one ran away from a big house in a nightgown in the plot and she wanted the cover to have something to do with the plot. Ha. Exactly. It’s a book cover standard, not really a plot standard. In my readings it seems like most of the heroines fainted instead of actually running anywhere. Sometimes they go outside and walk around, but it’s not as much running as those covers would have anyone believe.

When Christina gets rescued, she’s accused of staging her own kidnapping because she wanted the money from her grandmother to go to France. Then she has to go out on her own, with a helpful journalism student, to figure out who set up her kidnapping and clear her name. She can’t trust anyone, not really, and the police are willing to help but also very busy. Sounds like she could use a cathartic run across the lawn.

 

I’m not sure if Hen Wen thought she was being pignapped when I adopted her from the humane society, but she settled in really well and really quickly.

 

Hen Wen has taken her turn at a Gothic novel cover, she knows exactly how much running was really involved, for her, none. She’d rather read whatever she wants in her sweet A-frame.
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