It's time for another foray into Shadyside and oh no, we have a Super Chiller. That is almost assuredly a kiss of death. And "kiss" is an apropos word for our next book. Because what would Woo! Party Summer be without some vampires? I mean, maybe like most summers since you don't really associate vampires with the summertime. But that's our case this time. Is this book all bite, or just suck? Let's see with Goodnight Kiss.
So yeah, they both bungled this date. Gabri was hoping for a fresh victim, and since Jessica couldn't just cop to it, she also had her night ruined. Gabri's more upset because he needs the "nectar", which, and I know the current memes surrounding Morbius and all, but I'm ancient so I just think of the 90s Spider-Man cartoon and Morbius' need for "plasma". The two argue as both need fresh blood, and Gabri turns into a bat and flies off. Both of them still need to scratch the blood fix, but aren't sure how, or who, they're going to get it from.
Two girls named Monica and Elly are walking by as Gabri, in bat form, tries to bite Elly. Jessica shows up, also as a bat and shoos him off since, given they're so out in the open with this attempted blood sucking that it would reveal that vampires exist. But both are still thirsty and thus Gabri proposes a challenge to Jessica. They will each seduce and hypnotize someone and turn them into a vampire. But because vampires can only get a sip a night (AKA this book needs padding) and it takes three sips to turn someone into a vampire, they have three nights to get the job done and the first to do so wins the bet. But, to keep this fair/kneecapped, Gabri will pick the boy for Jessica and vice versa.
We then cut to our actual protagonist, April Blair, being tickled to near death by her younger siblings Courtney and Whitney, AKA the "Terror Twins". And unlike a Goosebumps parent who would blame her for it, Mrs. Blair says that it should be April who takes initiative to get them to stop. But they're called the "terror twins" for a reason. She and her family are at a beach house in Sandy Hollow for the summer, which mostly means that April will be spending that time with her boyfriend Matt instead of spending time with her family. I mean, who's going to play Mystery Date and get the dud now? After an argument with her mother over Matt being immature, Jessica leaves, feeling like too many people call her a pushover. And that's when someone grabs at her from behind. That would be Matt. You know, maybe Mrs. Blair's got a point.
Matt and his friend Todd talk with April a bit, and we learn that they all come from Shadyside with Matt in particular living on, where else, Fear Street. Specifically across the street from the cemetery. They look around the area at the arcades and the ice cream shop, Swanny's. No Pete's Pizza by the look of it. The theater is showing Living Dead films and the summer carnival is being set up. Todd hopes the Gravitron is there and I think all the muscles in my body just pulled backwards remembering that ride. The three then head over to the beach to meet with other townies including a boy named Ben. Meanwhile, Gabri and Jessica are checking out the area and pick their marks. Jessica picks April for Gabri, which he thinks is some BS since April already has a boyfriend. But instead of taking Matt, Gabri chooses Todd as Jessica's mark.
Speaking of Todd, he went walking on his own on the beach and is soon stopped by Jessica, claiming to have just come to Sandy Hollow and lost her way to her beach house. Todd is instantly smitten and he ain't even hypnotized yet. He leads her to her "beach house" and soon the two make out, which leads to Jessica getting in her first bite. Meanwhile, April's alone as Matt seemed to just disappear. She soon runs into Gabri, who says that he's been in Summer Hollow before and can show her around while they look for Matt. When they find an empty spot at the beach and with April's attention caught by the waves, Gabri also goes in for his first bite, only for a bat to attack them and Matt to show up quickly. The bat is Jessica who tells Gabri that this wasn't part of the challenge. He can't just drag her somewhere and bite, he has to seduce her, THEN go for the bite. She may be a blood sucking demon, but she's a stickler.
Matt calls Todd the next day and Todd relays the night with Jessica, as well as the rather interesting hickey on his neck. He's also just really, really sleepy this morning. Totally not the early signs of vampirism I'm certain. So Matt and April head out together without him. Later that night, Matt and April run into the new couple at a restaurant called Pizza Cove which I'm certain is fine pizza, but where the hell's the Pete's Pizza? Gabri shows up as well. But neither vampire want any of the pizza on account of the garlic powder. And because it's not Pete's Pizza. #PizzaCoveIsTrash.
Jessica lures Todd to the beach and seduces him almost enough for bite #2, but a girl's scream ruins that plan. Turns out a girl was bitten by one of the bats on the beach. Jessica realizes this was clearly Gabri screwing her over like she did to him the previous night. But when Todd checks on Jessica, he notices she's very ice cold for such a warm summer night. Almost like she's a creature of said night, but that's impossible. A couple nights later, April goes out again with Matt at the arcade with Ben and the other kids. One of them is impressed by April's Jaguar, to which she says that the price is great too. Is... is this an ad for Jaguars all of a sudden? This is the most "Stine really wants this car" we've gotten since Say Cheese and Die! which actually came out a bit after this book, so this is more the first case. Reader beware, Stine wants a big garage.
April wants a date with Matt, but he and Ben are more interested in going to the Friday the 13th triple feature instead, and since April doesn't like horror movies, she declines the offer. She runs into Gabri who doesn't have a very good poker face for being such a pale townie. He says that he works in the next town and lives somewhere else too. Ah, the old Mr. Snrub defense. He invites her to go with him to the carnival, which means that she'll be easy to bite tonight, barring any bat-related interferences. Despite not wanting to go on any extreme rides, Gabri decides it would be smarter to go into a simpler attraction. The house of mirrors. You no doubt already see the flaw in this idea. After they bump around for a bit, April finds Gabri and notices that his reflection isn't in any of the mirrors, which he accounts to bad lighting. He has her prone again, but some little girl runs into a mirror and starts crying, so this was somehow a doubly stupid idea.
Gabri catches back up with April who gets a blue Sno-Cone then mentions how there's no natural blue foods in the world. Dude, Stine. BLUEberries. Like, there are an abundance of blue fruits and vegetables, what are you talking about? Like normally it's you who plays Mr. Educator. Anyway, April enjoys her blue Sno-Cone then suggests they go on the Ferris Wheel next, which Gabri thinks will be the perfect place to finally get this over with. I mean, it works more than the house of mirrors. And sure enough, this goes well. Not just in that it seems like April legitimately likes Gabri, and Gabri seems to be liking her somewhat, but the two finally do make out, finally putting Gabri on the board with his first bite on April.
Next day, Matt can't get Todd to go with him during the day, so no luck there. He also knows that April went off with someone else. That night, Jessica is with Todd again at the beach and we do get an interesting moment in that Jessica can't remember her past. How she was as a 16-year old human and what her life was before she became a vampire. We got a little of that too from Gabri who before biting April tells her that he used to dream that he could fly. Well, before he actually could. But since she apparently already bit him a second time, she's ready to win the contest and finally turn Todd into a vampire. As she bites, a bat tries to interfere, which distracts her. Unfortunately it also means she overfed on Todd and killed him. So, yeah. Todd's dead now.
The next day, Matt finds Todd's body by the ocean. Also, now that Todd's out of the picture, it means that Jessica can now finally get to what this book should have been about in the first place, and now be her going after Matt. Speaking of which, Matt gets a pretty decent nightmare of seeing Todd running, only his face is the mangled version that Matt saw the previous night. Soon bats descend like a flapping cloud and swallow Todd up. Matt wakes up and then begins to suspect that maybe that dream was telling him something. That maybe the ones who killed Todd were the bats. That maybe these bats are really vampires. He tells April this, but April doesn't believe him because... Well, first off he did ditch her for most of this vacation. Second off, we really haven't had anything supernatural occur in front of April, save for the mirror, which she could have likely fallen for. And third off, speaking of fallen for, clearly she's falling for Gabri. So, no real because ____ character this time.
April pretty much equates this to a dumb joke because Matt's been watching horror movies. Well, this isn't a horror movie. It's real life! She runs off just as a convenient storm hits because this has to be just cheesy enough I guess. Matt feels he's lost April and April isn't buying it despite, I dunno, check your frigging neck. After talking with Ben, which might be the most healthy relationship so far, Matt soon finds Jessica at the dunes crying. He chalks it up to being about Todd. She then heads towards the cliffside and slips off. But he soon sees her by the water below, perfectly fine. The two then start to passionately make out, which is when Jessica takes her bite.
Jessica tells Gabri about how since Gabri was incidental in breaking up April and Matt, it's given Jessica an advantage as she's now one bite deep into Matt and back in the challenge. He visits April and after playing with April's siblings, sees the gift she got for her birthday. A silver cross. Well that put a spanner in things, huh? Thankfully he places it around her neck so badly that it drops and falls into the sand, so that was easy enough. Matt, now extra tired from the bite, sees the corpse of Todd in his bedroom. His swollen, eye-sunk, puss-filled face. So he's dead, but is alive at night. So he's a gargoyle, or a resident of Dark Falls. He warns Matt about the vampires, but Matt's aware of that, he's just really tired and has no energy to do anything about it right now.
After running into Ben again (seriously, this is the most stable relationship of the book), a still weary Matt tries to warn April, but again she ignores him. She notices the missing silver cross which begins to make Matt clue in. The cross, the not wanting to eat pizza with garlic, only being out at night, possibly being an extra from The Lost Boys, Gabri must be a vampire. But again, April isn't believing him and we really have reached THAT point in the Super Chiller, huh? Where we do the same thing like two or three times to pad things out. This book really could have been cleaned up by about 30 odd pages and lost nothing. But Matt has definitely lost April.
Matt then takes a camera and takes a picture of Gabri, hoping it'll be proof. But, 1992 book, so the developing shop's closed for the night. He gets them developed and sure enough, the pics he took of April and Gabri together only show April. Jessica finds him and tries to go in for the next bite, but Matt spots April and Gabri heading into the ocean on a boat. He rushes to call her, but the boat gets too far away. And it's raining bats apparently as a swarm begins to approach. Matt finds another boat and begins to row to April. He finds the rowboat overturned, then finds April's body in a nearby abandoned beach house, all while still carrying an oar.
He finds April still alive, but barely. As he tries to wake her up, Gabri attacks him. And we have a chapter that says "Matt Dies" up next, so let's see if that actually happens. Instead, Gabri ends up being impaled through the heart with the oar handle. Gabri coughs out a moth before turning to dust. Matt thinks this is over, but then Jessica shows up to attack him next. April awakens and manages to fight Jessica off while Matt grabs the oar again. Jessica dodges it, so Matt tries a butane lighter in his pocket, which doesn't light either. That is until it finally does and Jessica's head catches fire. The whole beach house lights up just as Matt and April manage to escape in time.
Goodnight Kiss has a lot of good ideas, and executes some of them pretty well, but also suffers for the same reasons almost every Super Chiller book does. Padding and wheel spinning. Todd really feels like the Superfluous Clay of the book. He does exist at least for Matt to clue in on the vampires, but it ultimately doesn't matter in the end given Matt's fate ends up sealed. And the latter half does just feel like the eternal wait to make it to the fireworks factory. And even with all of that, the finale, while exciting in places, feels super rushed. Which is such a shame given that, honestly, Gabri and Jessica might be the best Fear Street villains I've covered so far. And given the nature of most Fear Street villains that is definitely praise. Like, intentionally positioned as the villains, not like, you know, Reva Dalby.
I wish the book had more of a chance to build on the characters of Gabri and Jessica. The little pieces of them not remembering their childhoods, their humanity, or what it was like to just live as a normal teenager. That maybe they are finding love through Todd and April. That maybe besides just feasting, they want them to be forever linked as vampires. Especially Jessica and Todd, as even though she's using him for his blood, she at least seems to like him. And because we focus so much on the Todd stuff we're given next to nothing with her and Matt aside from the first feasting. Another reason why making Todd's fate just to be a corpse so frustrating.
Matt and April are okay protagonists, though April kind of stops mattering by the second half, going from protagonist in her own right to the damsel in distress that we learn wasn't that distressed. Todd exists to die. Ben you'd think would matter or have some point to the book but he doesn't. And, like I said, we have two really strong villains in Gabri and Jessica that I just wish had a chance to have more done with their characters. Scares are still basic and minimal, though far less gotcha stingers aside from the "Matt Dies" chapter. I mean, he kind of does, but not in that chapter.
So, what we have is another just okay Super Chiller that by all means could have just been a basic length Fear Street book. Some good ideas, but clear cut padding and wheel spinning really kneecaps it by the end. You should have done like the vampires did, Stine. All this book really needed to be was a quick sip. But you drank too much and it ended up a bloated mess by the end. There is a sequel (technically a sequel and an extra vampire story in a bound collection for Goodnight Kiss, but one direct sequel) so I'll have to see how they follow up the misadventures at Sandy Hollow. That's the problem with Sandy Hollow. All the damn vampires. Goodnight Kiss gets a B.
It Was Acceptable in the 90s: Arcades, Walkman, Horror movie marathons in theaters, Def Leppard Shirts, Getting photos developed
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