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Dark Forces #3
The Doll
At the State Fair, Jack wins a strange doll for Cassie's collection, unaware of the doll's sinister power to control her.
- GenresHorrorYoung AdultTeen
Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
October 28, 2021
3.5 stars
June 21, 2019
I've had this book for a long time, since grade school, but I never got around to reading it. It just never made it to the top of the stack. Sounds almost like a horror story right there!
It's about a wholesome teenage girl who collects dolls. One day she goes to the fair and sees a doll as a prize in a game booth. Somehow, her boyfriend manages to win it for her. Then strange and terrible things start to happen.
Derivative, but entertaining.
It's about a wholesome teenage girl who collects dolls. One day she goes to the fair and sees a doll as a prize in a game booth. Somehow, her boyfriend manages to win it for her. Then strange and terrible things start to happen.
Derivative, but entertaining.
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June 29, 2021"Dark Forces books blend supernatural suspense into the familiar world of high school-- romance, cars, and pizza" as well as, uh, ✨ competitive stationary doll exhibitions at the state fair? ✨ How do you do, fellow kids?!
January 20, 2009
I read all of the books in this teen horror series over and over in junior high and high school. I'm sure if I read them now I would find them hideous (in the bad way), but because I loved them so much then, I'm giving them all five stars!
November 11, 2019
Two kids (who act like they are 20 but I think closer to 15-16) win a doll at a carnival (the rest up this point is poorly written back story, and not all of it is believable) who turns out to be a evil spirt and tries to posses the girl. It fails and end. It is not written very well and seems very "phoned in". Do not bother with this one!
September 17, 2023
The Doll is book #3 in the Dark Forces series published in 1983. I recently found five of the fifteen books in this series at our local library bookstore. I am really bummed I didn't know about these books in 1983 when I was the right age to really fall in love with them. The Doll is a story about a young couple, Cassie and Jack attending a state fair. Jack wins a beloved doll for Cassie at a carney dart game. Unfortunately, the doll is possessed and ends up causing havoc while trying to possess Cassie. This is a short, fun YA horror story.
August 29, 2014
http://www.thehorrorhoneys.com
Twitter: @jbrivard
Well, it’s finally happened. Your Hardcover Honey has become one of those annoying geeks working on a laptop in public, iced coffee at hand. With my husband cramming two years of continuing ed into two days using our trusty desktop and my son addicted to the shrill joys of “Regular Show” on Cartoon Network, even this smooth jazz and calls of “Strawberry Smoothie for Carla!” here at Panera are more conducive to work this morning.
Although…….people are looking at me a little strangely. Could it be my battered paperback of this week’s read “The Doll” that is causing some concern? Understandable! That cover image certainly is a keeper and has stayed with me long after the details of the book have fled my memory. The second in my re-read of Dark Forces books was another successful experiment as it was a one-day read, yet neatly encapsulated all kinds of stuff I find scary (dolls, country fairs, out of control horses……..religion)!
In “The Doll”, teenaged Cassie Craig is, for some reason, a collector of dolls, and is very excited to head to the annual county fair, where she expects to win a blue ribbon for her doll collection this year. Yeah, I know, just go with it. As a side benefit, she will get to see her long-distance farm-boy boyfriend Jack, who will be at the fair with his younger brother, Nate, who will be showing off his cutting horse, Pebbles (side note, I don’t know what a cutting horse is, but apparently Pebbles is the best one ever).
Reunited at the fair, Cassie and Jack quickly come across a fortune-teller, who warns them of dark times ahead. And then, barely 30 pages into the book, The Doll makes her first appearance, as Cassie and Jack come across a midway dart game where she is one of the prizes. Cassie is immediately seized with an intense desire to possess the doll, who is dressed in a long white dress and has hair that Cassie deems “almost real” (so, kind of like one the Real Housewives of so-and-so?). The carnie (carny?) is just setting up and asks that they come back tomorrow, and Cassie spends a restless night tossing and turning and thinking about how much she wants the doll.
The next day, back they go to win the doll and when a man in line ahead of Cassie appears ready to land his tenth dart and win the doll for his girlfriend, Cassie finds herself seized with a sudden urge to stop him…..which she accomplishes by throwing her own dart INTO HIS LEG. Holy moly does this chick want a doll, huh? After playing it off as an accident, Cassie is thrilled when Jack successfully lands ten darts of his own and wins the doll for her. And almost immediately, things start changing. Jack notices within hours that the doll’s hair looks darker than when they first saw her, no longer strawberry blond, but more of a dark red, closer, in fact, to Cassie’s own hair. And weren’t her eyes a lighter blue before? Not the dark blue of Cassie’s eyes that they now appear to be? Cassie even tells Jack “Feel her skin, it feels real too!”
When Cassie and Jack (and The Doll) go to see Nate compete in the horse event with Pebbles, things take an even darker turn as Pebbles (in the classic “animals sensing evil” tradition) quickly rears up and away from The Doll and breaks his leg coming down. You can probably guess what happens next for Pebbles, right?
And when disaster strikes Cassie’s doll collection shortly thereafter, her new doll seems to be the only thing that can comfort her. While holding it, Cassie notices that The Doll seems to be heavier than earlier, and its hair even seems longer. When she and Jack meet up later in the day, Jack notices that Cassie is carrying The Doll on her hip as one would a small child Things get even more bizarre from there, leading up to the final scenes of the book, an epic battle of good vs evil in a graveyard, headed by a friendly minister and the county fair fortune-teller against a talking possessed doll. Yes, yes, of course that makes sense. There’s Bible-holding and hymn singing and so on.
OK, so here’s the thing – once AGAIN just as in last week’s read “Beat the Devil”, I only remembered the scary aspects of the book and not any of the religious soul-saving. Now I am prepping for my next Dark Forces re-read (The Game) and wondering if that one will end with a religious experience as well. Has the Dark Forces series been church recruitment material THIS ENTIRE TIME and I never knew it?
Hardcover Honey verdict: Much like last week, I cannot be objective about "The Doll." It scared me as a kid and the scary stuff still works, but the ending is more than a little lame. So 3 tiny talking dolls out of 5 for this one?
Twitter: @jbrivard
Well, it’s finally happened. Your Hardcover Honey has become one of those annoying geeks working on a laptop in public, iced coffee at hand. With my husband cramming two years of continuing ed into two days using our trusty desktop and my son addicted to the shrill joys of “Regular Show” on Cartoon Network, even this smooth jazz and calls of “Strawberry Smoothie for Carla!” here at Panera are more conducive to work this morning.
Although…….people are looking at me a little strangely. Could it be my battered paperback of this week’s read “The Doll” that is causing some concern? Understandable! That cover image certainly is a keeper and has stayed with me long after the details of the book have fled my memory. The second in my re-read of Dark Forces books was another successful experiment as it was a one-day read, yet neatly encapsulated all kinds of stuff I find scary (dolls, country fairs, out of control horses……..religion)!
In “The Doll”, teenaged Cassie Craig is, for some reason, a collector of dolls, and is very excited to head to the annual county fair, where she expects to win a blue ribbon for her doll collection this year. Yeah, I know, just go with it. As a side benefit, she will get to see her long-distance farm-boy boyfriend Jack, who will be at the fair with his younger brother, Nate, who will be showing off his cutting horse, Pebbles (side note, I don’t know what a cutting horse is, but apparently Pebbles is the best one ever).
Reunited at the fair, Cassie and Jack quickly come across a fortune-teller, who warns them of dark times ahead. And then, barely 30 pages into the book, The Doll makes her first appearance, as Cassie and Jack come across a midway dart game where she is one of the prizes. Cassie is immediately seized with an intense desire to possess the doll, who is dressed in a long white dress and has hair that Cassie deems “almost real” (so, kind of like one the Real Housewives of so-and-so?). The carnie (carny?) is just setting up and asks that they come back tomorrow, and Cassie spends a restless night tossing and turning and thinking about how much she wants the doll.
The next day, back they go to win the doll and when a man in line ahead of Cassie appears ready to land his tenth dart and win the doll for his girlfriend, Cassie finds herself seized with a sudden urge to stop him…..which she accomplishes by throwing her own dart INTO HIS LEG. Holy moly does this chick want a doll, huh? After playing it off as an accident, Cassie is thrilled when Jack successfully lands ten darts of his own and wins the doll for her. And almost immediately, things start changing. Jack notices within hours that the doll’s hair looks darker than when they first saw her, no longer strawberry blond, but more of a dark red, closer, in fact, to Cassie’s own hair. And weren’t her eyes a lighter blue before? Not the dark blue of Cassie’s eyes that they now appear to be? Cassie even tells Jack “Feel her skin, it feels real too!”
When Cassie and Jack (and The Doll) go to see Nate compete in the horse event with Pebbles, things take an even darker turn as Pebbles (in the classic “animals sensing evil” tradition) quickly rears up and away from The Doll and breaks his leg coming down. You can probably guess what happens next for Pebbles, right?
And when disaster strikes Cassie’s doll collection shortly thereafter, her new doll seems to be the only thing that can comfort her. While holding it, Cassie notices that The Doll seems to be heavier than earlier, and its hair even seems longer. When she and Jack meet up later in the day, Jack notices that Cassie is carrying The Doll on her hip as one would a small child Things get even more bizarre from there, leading up to the final scenes of the book, an epic battle of good vs evil in a graveyard, headed by a friendly minister and the county fair fortune-teller against a talking possessed doll. Yes, yes, of course that makes sense. There’s Bible-holding and hymn singing and so on.
OK, so here’s the thing – once AGAIN just as in last week’s read “Beat the Devil”, I only remembered the scary aspects of the book and not any of the religious soul-saving. Now I am prepping for my next Dark Forces re-read (The Game) and wondering if that one will end with a religious experience as well. Has the Dark Forces series been church recruitment material THIS ENTIRE TIME and I never knew it?
Hardcover Honey verdict: Much like last week, I cannot be objective about "The Doll." It scared me as a kid and the scary stuff still works, but the ending is more than a little lame. So 3 tiny talking dolls out of 5 for this one?
January 1, 2018
I have heard of the Dark Forces books in passing for years, but this is the first I have come across. I can tell it was written with a young adult audience in mind. The plot moves quickly and smoothly without much explanation or extra detail that would weigh down a younger reader. Even still, the story was still enjoyable (even with the heavy handed Christian overtones of Act III).
Not the best thing I’ve ever read, but pretty good for what it was. I cared about the characters and felt for them when things went horrifyingly bad. That is saying something.
September 14, 2011
Another one of my top favs for the Dark Forces books which were the greatest thing ever at the bookstore when I was 12-13. I loved the creepy doll, how it was acquired, the mounting evil and the helpful priest! Very fun read!
February 22, 2011
Totally creeped me out as a kid.
February 6, 2013
I read this book and a few others in the series in jr.high, and it stayed with me, very creepy for a young read. Would love to have the whole series for my children.
December 10, 2013
I really should read this again. As an adult. Maybe it will end the curse.
October 2, 2015
LOVED this book in a weird way! Read all the Dark Forces books when I was little! This one though was soo creepy, I still remember it!
June 8, 2022
A very simple but effective read. I was on the fence about my rating. I strongly dislike doll possession storylines and plots. However, irregardless of this, as far as the story was written, it was complete. I honestly tried to come up with some shortcomings and I could not. Considering it is part of a series of horror teen paperback novels written in the 80s and it managed not to seem particularly outdated, merits acknowledgement. For anyone interested in reading this, it is easily comparable to a better version of a goosebumps book.
March 10, 2020
I read this when I was younger and I loved all the dark forces books. It's a good book for young adults who like horror. It's about a girl who gets possessed by a haunted doll.
July 21, 2020
I have always been creeped out by dolls... Plastic babies with dead staring eyes *shudder*, so this one affected me. It's really a good story, until the very end when the priest steps in, then it turns typical. I wish the ending would have explained who Luci (the demon) was and how she got into the doll in the first place, instead of the tired old "battling with Satan himself" bit. No matter- I'm still giving this 5 stars. The story is disturbing and moves along well. I have nostalgia in a big way for this book, and it's got killer cover art, which drew me to it in the first place back in the day.
January 3, 2023
That was certainly more religious than I wanted, but the creepy doll bits were good.
May 13, 2021
Longest exorcism scene ever lol. Also were/are doll exhibits really a thing at fairs? Still a fun creepy read though.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews