Our protagonist Chelsea Richards is moping while playing her sax-a-ma-phone, feeling like she's an adopted daughter given how different she is from the rest of the family. Her mother jokes that she wasn't adopted, she was hatched. Look, I'd scoff at that, but I read The Lizard of Oz. She's also mopey about moving to this dumpy old house on, where else, Fear Street. Chelsea is upset about her appearance not being like her parents, to which mom makes shit worse by saying she should lose weight and wear makeup. Gee, should she smile more, too?
Chelsea leaves and goes to visit her friend Nina Darwin. Turns out Nina plays the flute and the two met by bumping into each other for real, both having their instruments busted up in the process. So they've been pals ever since. She heads to Nina's and sees her with Nina's boyfriend, Doug Fredericks. No relation to Dr. Fritz I presume. Nina and Doug head to Doug's cousin's and invites her, to which Chelsea declines. After they leave and Nina complains about being fifteen without a boyfriend, suddenly a boy comes over to her asking to be her boyfriend. Which, okay Stine, calm the hell down.
The boy is actually four creeps in a Honda Civic, which, okay Stine, REALLY calm the hell down. Chelsea turns down their advances and they go after her. They drive towards her and grab her arm before one of them flicks a cigarette at her and then they leave. Like, okay, very glad Stine didn't go where I feared this was going to go, but maybe not having Chelsea end a case of near-kidnapping and rape still whining about not having a boyfriend who likes her would have been a far better way to end this.
Cut to Chelsea at Shadyside High admiring the new boy in class named Will Blakely. They seem to hit it off well enough, though Chelsea thinks she blew her chance when she spilled the contents of her backpack out by mistake. That night, while working at her dad's restaurant, she thinks too much of Will and starts making a mess. That's when she runs into another boy, about seventeen/eighteen in a leather jacket and a Metallica shirt. He introduces himself as Tim Sparks, or just Sparks as people call him, and asks Chelsea out on a date. Thankfully, at least not yet, this isn't just to drag her out to a car, but we are early aren't we? Her father interrupts her before she can respond and Sparks makes an angry face and leaves.
While Chelsea again daydreams about Will and Sparks, suddenly three young men with stringy blonde hair barge in the restaurant and tell Mr. Richards to empty the register. When he fights back, they knock him down. The teens leave and Mr. Richards is taken to the hospital with his condition being serious but stable. With her parents at the hospital, Chelsea calls Nina to come over, but has to deal with Nina and Doug making out, which makes her jealous as well. I mean, I get it, teen angst and her own issues with not having a boyfriend, normal teen stuff, but, like, your dad almost died. Feels like certain things aren't taking precedent. But she then thinks about Sparks. Specifically how Sparks left and the three robbers showed up so soon after. So, while she still has feelings for him, she's starting to worry that he set this all up.
We then cut to the point of view of a male character, not completely confirmed if it's Will or Sparks or another. He laments about how he wouldn't fit in amongst the elites in Shadyside, and then talks about how he resents his mother for leaving him with his alcoholic dad who would beat him all of the time. How he is out to get revenge on his mom for all of the mental turmoil. And then, in what is no doubt the most R.L. Stine moment of any of these books, the boy sees a white kitten and calls it over. To which he then grabs the cat and strangles it to death.
And it's been a while, but I think we need a time out.
Like, we get it. He's unhinged, he's out for revenge and all that, but did we really need to confirm that further with straight up killing a kitten? Like, given the first chapter, we have enough proof that this guy is a creep. And that his motive is to lure girls that look like his mom to kill them. The way he speaks and his lust for doing so on a near-Oedipal level (which if that's part of the problems then that's a whole other can of worms) represents that well. Like, all of that was proven well enough before we get a scene of a cat being strangled. And it just feels like Stine going for added shock value to drive that point in further when, yeah, we get it already. Dude's the villain.
It reminds me of a scene from Digimon 02. For explanation sake, the first half of the season's main villain is the Digimon Emperor/Kaiser, Ken Ichijouji. We're three episodes deep, but we're already given enough examples to portray Ken as the villain of this arc of the season. It is well established, especially with how he abuses his own Digimon, Wormmon. Getting back to what I'm getting at, there's a scene in the original version which has a puppy coming up to Ken and being cute, to which Ken straight up boots the dog. Thankfully represented as just launching the dog off his foot than a kick to the gut, but my point persists.
Like the show, which is already making it obvious this dude's a bad guy, at least for now, doesn't need to go all "kicking puppies". And neither should R.L. Stine feel that choking out a cat is needed to already convey our villain as a villain. I get it, maybe I'm being trivial on this stuff, but when you have enough reasons to establish your character as a villain, you literally don't have to do a scene where they beat up a bag of puppies or something. I've ragged on Stine a lot about how animals are treated in his stories and this feels like his most egregious. Also, remember that scene when Tai's mom straight up smacked him in the head? And not even in comical fashion, like straight up full force? Man, Digimon had issues. Anyway, back to the book.
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Back to Chelsea who is alone at her dad's restaurant as, since this book hasn't had enough creeps already, two more boys enter and harass her. Before this gets bad, Sparks arrives and the two make their leave. Again, while Chelsea still has her thoughts, she's also upset that once again she can't just ask Sparks out. And it turns out Sparks is the same because when he gets to his apartment, he starts going mental and throws his phone out the window. So that definitely seems to confirm that he's probably not our villain then.
So we go from that to a German Shepherd getting into the school. It hangs around in the school until the kids let it out. Whether or not someone tried to strangle it is up for debate. Nina mentions that Doug's been cheating on her with our old pal Suki Thomas. been a while since we mentioned Suki here. After Nina leaves, Chelsea runs into Will and the two start to hit it off during a walk in the woods. To which Chelsea accepts a date with him. Her first date ever. So, the book title's not lying at least. She tells her mother who is covered in blood from the nursing home after an accident there, but nothing too important. Chelsea works at the coffee shop again and Sparks shows up yet again. When Chelsea mentions the date, he doesn't take it well and leaves before he explodes.
Chelsea and Will head out to Waynesbridge to see a movie featuring John Candy and two of the Quaid brothers. We then get some interesting coincidences with Will. His car has no defroster and he's really protective of his wallet. And then he takes her to River Ridge, just like earlier. We then shift perspective again to Will thinking about his sister Jennifer. And how he resented Jennifer for being the one to leave with his mom. Yep, Will's our cat choker. He take the cord of his sweater and is about to wrap it around Chelsea's neck until another couple arrives, foiling his plans for now. But Chelsea invites him to her empty house on Fear Street, so he may have his chance after all. He tries a few times, but keeps getting interrupted, so he leaves for now.
The next day Chelsea gets visited by a man from the FBI named Agent Martin mentioning a suspicious young man in the area. Chelsea believes that description fits Tim Sparks, so she tells the officer about him. After gushing about Will to Nina, she thinks it's probably wise to tell Will about the FBI as well. That night at the restaurant, Sparks shows up again and he's both drunk and, unfortunately, very handsy. He dives at her, but he ends up getting his hand burned on the stove. This gives Chelsea enough time to call the FBI to deal with him. The FBI arrest Sparks who is confused about what's going on, just as Will arrives for Chelsea's next date.
They return to Chelsea's house where once again Will is about to choke her with his cord before she reveals that she told Nina about him, which means that he now has to kill two girls instead. As Chelsea invites Nina over, she then gets a call from Agent Martin. Sparks isn't the one they were looking for. This gives Chelsea a chance to see Will holding the cord and she realizes "oh crap." Chelsea tries to run, hoping to catch Nina before Will does, but Will catches her first and chokes her out with the cord. Just as he gloats about his newest kill, Nina arrives.
Will tries to choke her, but Nina fights back. Will overpowers her and is about to finish her off when Chelsea gets back up. It freaks Will out as he's sure that he killed her. She goes to use a knife on him, but is unable to. Will gets the knife and is about to finish her off when the FBI arrives and arrests him. He still thinks he killed Chelsea, but she reveals that she pretended to die to trick him. And so the book ends with Chelsea now with Sparks, who does apologize for what happened and promises to better himself. So, I guess happy enough ending?
First Date is a bit clunky. Not the worst book ever and it has a very solid pace to it. It just feels like it has a whole bunch of ideas that they never go with. The whole thing about Chelsea not looking like her family feels like something that Stine thought of but didn't know what to do with. The stuff with the robbers never gets resolved. There's a character named Ernie the Fry Cook that keeps mysteriously vanishing whenever Chelsea's in trouble and that never goes anywhere. Just a bunch of lingering threads, or to be more specific, lingering sweater cords.
It's also a book that feels steeped in moments of putting a young girl in peril with a bunch of would-be rapists. The boys in the truck, the two young men in the shop, even the boy we're supposed to look at as better for Chelsea. Yeah, that ending did not sit well with me. Like, he tried to attack her in a drunken rage. And no, having him arrested by the FBI doesn't make that even. Yes, he did apologize and in the end, he's still better than the literal murderer, but that already feels way to slippery slope for me to look at that as a happy ending.
Will is an interesting villain. Very by the numbers for the most part, but compared to most Fear Street villains, at least Stine builds up his motivations. His hatred for women coming from his mother abandoning him which in turn made him this maniac willing to kill young girls and apparently small kittens. Like, we could have built on any other thread in the book, but no, we need more animal abuse. Stine's got his priorities. And because we know so much of Will so soon, a lot of the second half is just Will, to an almost cartoonish level, trying to lower the cord around Chelsea's neck only to be inconvenienced before he can do so. Closest he could have gone was the first time in Chelsea's house when she offered to make him hot chocolate. Though Nina would have maybe caught him, so I see why not.
Chelsea's an okay protagonist. Though her priorities are all over the place and she does get annoying with all of her pining for a boyfriend. Again, she complains about this at the same time her dad's in the hospital. Hey, another thread we never get much resolution to. I've heard that Stine often wrote the ending first then worked around it, and this book may be the worst offender. Nina exists mostly as a plot device to ensure Will doesn't succeed. Wish she got a bit more character, but oh well.
In the end, First Date has all the makings of a solid Fear Street book, but sadly suffers in feeling so slapdash. There's a good idea surrounding it with some decent suspense, but also gets a bit too cartoonish in its writing to really take seriously. I'd say if Stine had a better plot outline and kept the book more focused and not, you know, felt he needed to choke out a cat, then this would have been a better book. It's a book I will say feels like it could have gotten worse, but its second act saves it from disaster. Enough to put it in super light recommend territory. First Date gets a B-.
It Was Acceptable in the 90s: Metallica T-Shirts, Lots of Heavy Metal Shirts in General, Wearing One Earring, MTV Airing Music Videos
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