NNtG: Ghosts of Fear Street #21: The Creature From Club Lagoona

What would a Woo! Party Summer be without a trip to a resort? Relaxing by the pool at a tropical destination. Sounds pretty sweet. But can there be kid-friendly horror from that idea? Well Ghosts of Fear Street sure thought so. Will this be a trip to remember, or will all we get is a lousy book? Let's talk about The Creature From Club Lagoona. 

I love this stupid cover. not scary in the least, but sells the concept of the story well enough. A club, a pool, and a monster straight out of the Black Lagoon in swim shorts with a fruity drink. It's definitely in the top tier of Ghosts covers that I always think of when I think of the books. Another one of Steadman's best. Only downside is so much of the art is obscured by text. The titles, the tagline, the R.L. Stine contest and the audiobook ad. An audiobook featuring Will Ferrell of all people. The Stine rabbit hole is bizarre.

Tad Hawkins, his nine year old sister Polly and his parents are on a plane headed to Club Lagoona, a world famous resort. Club Lagoona has attractions like a glass bottom boat, a Log Flume of Doom (How was that not a Goosebumps book?) and something called the Creature Water Slide. But the main attraction is the large saltwater swimming pool known as the Atlantis Swimming Pool. The family are super excited for their trip with the exception of Tad. 

Despite being a great basketball player for Shadyside Middle School, Tad's got one problem. One that would definitely be bad to have on a trip to a water resort: He can't swim. He's actually afraid of water. Though given his book of choice during the flight is Jaws, maybe he's not doing a good job of not reminding himself about it. Club Lagoona also has a motto "Let's get wet!", which, I don't think the nine year old should be saying "ready to get wet" so enthusiastically. They arrive at Club Lagoona, which is an island off the Carolinas that is both surrounded by water and has a whole bunch of water-themed areas. So Tad's in his own personal Hell. 

The family arrive on the island and have to walk a rickety bridge to get across to the resort. Tad makes the dumb decision to look under the bridge to see a shark rising up. A shark that then talks, welcoming the Hawkins family to the resort and saying "Time to get wet!". They enter and check out what they can sign up for. Tad sees soccer and basketball, but they turn out to be water themed sports. Did this book predict blitzball? Tad runs into a small man in a green jumpsuit who warns Tad to get out while he can, and to avoid the deep end before he runs off. So, with everyone super excited to do water activities, Tad tries his best to avoid anything with water. He spots the Atlantis pool, which is as gigantic as advertised. He spots a man diving into the deep end, but doesn't come up. Instead there's some loud whirring noise. Panicked, Tad gets a lifeguard, but the lifeguard's confused. There's nobody down there. 

 After that ordeal, someone grabs Tad by the leg. That person with no clear boundaries is the swimming instructor Barry, or Barracuda, his Club Lagoona name. Everyone gets a Club Lagoona name. As do the Hawkins family. Mother Catherine becomes Catfish. Father Raymond is Stingray. And the most obvious ones, Polly and Tad are Pollywog and Tadpole. So after that... intriguing introduction, Barry makes things sound more awkward mentioning a big race coming up called Sink or Swim. Rocks versus Jocks because the rocks usually sink in the water. Of course three out of four Hawkins members are excited, but not so much Tad. They leave to get their bathing suits while Barry tells Tad that it's time to get wet. STOP SAYING THAT. 

So Tad is now in the pool, which is his legitimate nightmare. Made no better when he starts to sink underneath. He hears the whirring again and manages to see something in the water. Something green. He then sees that it's actually a tentacle of some sort. Oh no. "Get Wet" was bad enough. When he ends up back on the surface, he tries to tell Barry, but Barry says that it's just seaweed that they put in the pool for that authentic saltwater experience. I mean, that's far from the worst attempt to lie about a sea monster in the pool that I can think of. As Barry leaves, Tad calms down about any potential monster in the pool, but realizes that he's definitely a rock, not a jock and he's going to be screwed during Sink or Swim.

The next day, the Hawkins family are excited to get wet, but Tad fakes being sick to get out of any more water-themed activities, but the family don't believe him because... I mean they really want to get wet. It's practice for the Sink or Swim, which requires getting wet and Tad doesn't like getting wet in this book which really hits home the concept of getting wet. Tad swims, but doesn't do very well, which gets him with a group of boys who are equally bad at swimming. Neal (named Eel) and Mark (named Shark) also aren't too fond of Club Lagoona. During the practice, Tad once again sees the creature in the water. He later overhears Polly mentioning a creature, but it was just the water slide. 

After having dinner with his family at a fishbowl shaped aquarium/restaurant, Tad once again spots the little man again who says that Tad knows too much before running away again. Tad then starts to play one of the games at the arcade. The next day, Tad and Polly notice a letter on their parents door saying their leaving for aqua aerobics. Polly leaves, but Tad already knows something doesn't smell right about this note. Something very fishy. Mark and Neal also mention getting the same note. Later, Polly doesn't show up. When Tad meets with Neal, Mark is gone too, having had an "extra lesson" with Barry. This book is just one giant stranger danger warning. Made even more odder when they learn from the receptionist that there was no Mark Browning at Club Lagoona. So either this is one hell of an aerobics class, or Club Lagoona might be evil. 

Tad tries to use the phone, but just gets a message about getting wet and crazy laughter. Barry then shows up, ready to give Tad and Neal the extra lesson. The boys are sent into the pool. As Tad goes deeper he sees kids by a giant drain in the pool. Suddenly the giant tentacle grabs the kids and pulls them down.. Tad gets back up to the surface, but before he can warn anyone, Barry sends him into the deep end, where a tentacle grabs Tad and pulls him and Neal downwards. The two boys wake up in what looks to be a tropical jungle. 

Their families are all there, having been pulled down as well. They search the area, but every spot seems to be blocked by a giant see-through wall. Almost like a living aquarium. Suddenly, a giant eyeball peers at the family as the monster pulls its tentacle into the bowl and grabs a bunch of people, including Mark and his family and drags them out to eat them, complete with crunching noises for added emphasis. Well that got dark. While the other families search for food, Tad sneaks off to try to find a way out of the giant tank. He spots a hole where a hose would connect and hopes that might be what connects to the Atlantis pool. 

Tad tries to climb through, but a wave of water knocks him outside. As he recovers, he sees the monster grab him and drag him out of the water. Tad manages to escape and see an island to land on. However, upon making it, he feels an earthquake and realizes he's actually on the sea monster's back. It rises higher and higher into the air and soon grabs Tad in the face. And then Tad realizes that he doesn't have a tentacle on his face. He has a pair of goggles. Because he was in the arcade the whole time playing a game called Underwater Terror 2. Yep. He never actually left the arcade from earlier in the book. Mark and Neal are fine. There was no giant sea monster or tank. It was all a VR game at Club Lagoona. Wait. When he chased the man the previous time and started playing the VR game, he somehow just forgot overtime that he was playing a video game? Because the Virtual Reality was that immersive? Okay then.

But there IS one thing about all of this however. Tad wasn't imagining his family, Neal, Mark or their families being in the game. They're all in there. As if their intellectual properties were just straight up stolen. The boys do the Sink or Swim and Tad starts to do good, until he hears the whirring and sees the drain sucking him in. And this time it's not a game.

It's funny. I should be angrier at that swerve, but I'm more just rolling my eyes than straight up angry. I think because I knew that this was likely going to be the outcome, especially when we get Tad starting up the game and we just move on from there. That we were going to get the reveal that much of what we saw wasn't real, only for the true twist to suggest it was. And sure enough that's the case here. Its addition almost speaks to a lack of a more coherent ending to the story. That by the time we reach the end we get no update on the small man or really why any of this is happening. So it becomes super frustrating. This is another from Gloria Hatrick who did Nightmare in 3D, which I really liked and that too started to fall apart by the end. Perhaps that was her Achilles heel. Amazing concepts but a lack of a strong satisfying conclusion.

Tad is a decent protagonist. You feel for his fear of swimming and you do want to see him overcome it. The book kind of does that, but it also feels like something is lost in the final draft to really build on that overcoming of Tad's fears. The other characters all exist for the most part. Mark gets the Superfluous Clay award as he really matters the least. The horror of the monster and the giant tank is such a cool idea that, again, I wish we had an answer to. Though it's a shame we didn't get a gill man like the cover suggested and went with a kraken instead. If I were to guess, Club Lagoona serves as a tourist trap to lure unsuspecting tourists to be food for the monster that lurks in the waters surrounding the island. The people running the club are the people who live on the island and, in some sort of deal with the creature, created this strange human tank for the monster to eat its prey instead. Hey, it's at least a thought. 

And that's really what makes the VR game twist hurt this book so bad. If the ending is real, and will still end with Tad and the others as food for a giant kraken, then why is there a VR experience as well? Why put in the effort of making a VR experience of the peril the tourists are about to undergo? It kind of reminds me of The Mummy With My Face from Goosebumps Triple Header II. How the planned attraction used the likenesses of people against their will and how in the end it was all fake anyway. Part of me thinks that was always going to be the outcome, that we were always going to get the fake out. But Hatrick may have thought it wasn't that interesting to end on given everything built up in the book beforehand. But the addition of this twist at all just makes it feel like any actual story this book could have had goes away in an instant. And when a book just ends feeling unfinished, or lacking any satisfaction, that can be more frustrating than just a bad twist.

In the end, this feels like a book with something missing. Something lost within the drafts of the story to make point A connect with point B. Something got lost in the shuffle. And a wall was hit. And unlike Stine, the attempt to press forward just made things so much worse. And it's such a shame because, again, this book has such a cool premise with an okay mystery and a freaky climax and monster. You don't get that many kraken monsters in these books and I really wish it could have paid off more. If it found its footing and had a more satisfying ending, this could have been in the conversation of solid books from Ghosts of Fear Street, but just ends up a case of what might have been. At least it wasn't a dog's dream, I guess? For a book that emphasized getting wet, it sure left me high and dry. The Creature From Club Lagoona gets a B-. 

TOTAL NUMBER OF TIMES "GET/GETTING WET" IS UTTERED: 18