It's time for another trip to Shadyside. And we have some extended family issues to deal with this time. One that has a sequel and a concept Stine would reuse later when New Fear Street came around. So clearly this is a concept Stine had a lot of ambition for. And anytime I think of Stine and ambition I immediately dread what I'm getting myself into. Will that be the case here? Let's find out when we learn about The Stepsister.
This cover is fine. Not exactly the most exciting or dynamic, but one that at least feels like a scene from the book. Our protagonist Emily clearly about to read something shocking about her stepsister Jessie. Though her facial expression is more low energy surprised than shocked. What does work for the cover is Jessie. Her cold, more evil expression and this sort of supernatural glow that radiates from her. Very much a case of making it clear "Oh, well the blonde is clearly the book's villain". Overall, does an okay job selling it, just feels like a lower energy cover than we usually get.
Emily shows Jessie to their room and immediately Jessie starts to act more snobbish, mostly saying how she doesn't care for red hair and that their house which is on, where else, Fear Street, is very ramshackle. She then snaps out of it for a second and apologizes, saying that the divorce with her parents was rough and her mom pretty much gave Rich and herself away to her father. Tiger shows up and jumps at Jessie, who freaks out at the dog, calling him disgusting. Yep, and there's our confirmation that Tiger's going to be dogmeat soon. She then rips the head off Max, one of Emily's teddy bears, then apologizes for it. 13 pages deep and yeah, if we need confirmation that she's our villain, we sure got it. Nancy shows back up and we learn that she's been dating Gary Brandt, because we need some past character cameos, and that there's been tension between Nancy and Emily because Emily is dating Nancy's former boyfriend Josh.
The family has a party to welcome the Wallners to their new home. It goes sort of fine, though Rich is more interested in reading Pet Sematary then partying, which holy crap we're only about 20 pages in and he's referenced King so much in this book. Did Stine have a bug up his butt about King in 1990 or something? We learn a bit more that Hugh is more of a slob compared to Emily's dad Dan Casey who used to be an avid reader and pediatrician. We get some mild info on what befell him as the family went camping in Fear Street Woods and took a motorboat out to Fear Lake, all while an unexpected storm brewed. The boat capsized and both Emily and her dad fell into the cold lake. Emily survived, but her dad didn't, drowning in the water. A bit of time passes and the family is settled in. But things are already going awry for Emily. First Jessie takes one of her sweaters to wear and claims it's hers, then seems to deliberately erase her school report on Chile. Angered that it seems like Jessie's already trying to usurp her, she lunges at Jessie. Yeah, that'll make you look like the innocent one.
Of course, everyone blames Emily for everything, and she's forced to apologize to Jessie. After they leave, Jessie tries to kick Tiger, which again angers Emily, but not enough to tackle her this time. She talks with Nancy who mentions that maybe it was an accident and that Jessie does have some issues. She needs to see a psychiatrist twice week and had to recently get a new one since moving to Shadyside. Something about an incident at her old school, but it's way too early to give us an answer. After studying with Josh for a bit, Emily goes to bed, only to wake up later that night and overhear Jessie on the phone saying wanting to "literally kill her." The next day at school, she learns that Jessie's been talking with Josh, but we don't get an answer as to what about just yet, so Emily is concerned but not full on red flag yet. We then get a scene with both Emily and Jessie having a whipped cream fight which might be the only wholesome moment they've had in this book so it's something. Emily takes a shower only to look in the mirror and see her hair has gone orange and yellow. Mr. Wallner notices that the bottle of shampoo that Emily uses smells weird. To which they then notice the nearby bottle of peroxide is empty. Nancy accuses Jessie, who freaks out saying she didn't do it, before briefly mentioning someone named Jolie.
So now everyone's a bit on edge, especially Emily, who has no idea what Jessie's going to try next. That night, Rich is brought home by the cops for stealing a cassette tape from the record store. Mr. Wallner is frustrated and tries to get an answer, but Rich won't talk. Emily and Josh go to a dance later where she runs into Krysta Myers, a mean girl at school and seemingly Jessie's one friend there, who takes a little jab at Emily's forced haircut after the peroxide incident. Emily returns home and notices that Tiger isn't there to greet her. Yup. Yupyupyup it's THAT time, isn't it? Oh Bob. Sure enough, Emily finds Tiger, or should I say Tiger's CORPSE. With a big stab wound in his torso. Emily immediately assumes it must have been Jessie given she really hated that dog. The rest of the family arrive to see the dead dog. Jessie claims she didn't do it, even if she clearly hates dogs, while Mr. Wallner thinks it could have been Rich who, blaming his interest in the Pet Sematary book because hey, do you know that Stephen King exists?
As Emily is still soaked in the blood of her dog, Jessie tells Emily that she drew her a bath. Which Emily immediately suspects must be tainted somehow. If she peroxided the shampoo, then god knows what she put in the tub. She opts out, so Jessie takes the bath instead, which seems to go normal so that confuses Emily even more so. That night, she has a nightmare of Jessie and Krysta in her room, Jessie about to slash her with a knife. She's awakened by Rich who says he wasn't the one who killed Tiger. Before she tries to get back to sleep again, Emily notices that Jessie left through the window. She then finds Jessie's diary and reads it. It mentions that Jessie had a fight with a girl named Jolie and that she would soon be found with the corpse of Jolie at the bottom of a slope. Jessie says that she didn't kill Jolie, she fell on her own, but knows that nobody believes her. But she's happy that Jolie's dead anyhoo, so whatever I guess. The next day, Emily heads to school to test out a new word processor for the lab. You know, word processors? That thing that Windows used to have for free before paywalling it for no good reason? Anyway, she heads to school only to discover Tiger's corpse stuffed in her backpack.
More things continue to escalate. Rich got in a fight at school, which again angers Mr. Wallner. Josh is starting to get into Jessie, all while Emily is being slowly cucked out of the conversation. At school, Krysta and Jessie both snap at Emily, blaming her for being so mean to Jessie. Then, when Emily goes to the restroom, smoke begins to billow from a wastebasket. She tries to escape, but the door is jammed. She's saved in time, but immediately assumes it's Jessie. However, even Nancy states that Emily really has no proof of any of her claims that Jessie's the one responsible. For the shampoo, for her dead dog, for the attempted arson. Hell, for all we know this is actually a sequel to The Fire Game. Although, even more strangely, since then Jessie starts to be far nicer around Emily. Some time after, Emily, Nancy and Jessie head to the auditorium for a concert. Their seats are conveniently in the nosebleeds, which soon leads to Emily being shoved over the bleachers. So either she was shoved, or hit by a t-shirt cannon. But unlike Maude Flanders, Emily only injured her knee and isn't dead. But notices Jessie above the bleachers, looking rather satisfied. Later, coming home, Emily sees Jessie and Josh together in his Toyota. Flustered, she rushes into her room where Rich is there, still reading. She then goes to get a nightgown and finds a bloody knife in Jessie's dresser. The same knife that stabbed Tiger.
Mr. Wallner, wanting to try to bring this family closer together, decides that they should all go on a camping trip in South Carolina, which Jessie is enthusiastic about all of a sudden. Rich, not so much, but that's been him all book really. The family arrive at camp and the girls go out to collect woods. Emily finds herself lost in the woods, worried that Jessie is following her. She then finds herself in a nearby cemetery, where she also ends up being pushed into an open grave. She tries climbing out, but when she does, she gets smashed in the arm and knocked back in. She manages to escape and sees her attacker. Not Jessie, but Nancy. Yup. Nancy's been our saboteur and dog murderer this entire time. Nancy blamed Emily for the death of their dad, and stealing Josh, and pretty much everything else. She was also the one in the car with Josh that night, not Jessie. She shoves Emily back into the grave and starts to pour dirt on top of her. Jessie manages to show up in time and shove Nancy into the grave. She goes to attack Emily, but gets hit with a shovel instead.
Some time passes and Nancy is now in a hospital for treatment. We learn a bit more about what's been up with Jessie. She has an older boyfriend named Darren. Three years older, which is why Mr. Wallner isn't fond of her being with him. So the reason she snuck out at night was to see him. She also was actually trying to get along with Emily, but how Emily reacted to her led her to think that she was hated the whole time. She says that she found Jolie's body, and she didn't kill her, but ever since then, everyone accused her of murdering Jolie, which is why she's been going to a psychiatrist. Emily apologizes for her actions and says that they're sisters for real now. They then see that Rich is no longer reading Stephen King, but the Hardy Boys.
This book isn't too bad, though it is a tad formulaic. The standard fare of a Stine story, right down to how the mystery flows and some of his more well-tread tropes. Right down to killing a pet, which at this point is a gimme with these books. Especially ones where there's no teen kill count. Though on most occasions he'll kill the pet just to do it. The mystery in this one is fine, but super obvious the further it goes that it can't be Jessie or even Rich who are the villains. A case of making things too obvious too quick. Although I will say it took me a while longer than normal to realize it was Nancy all along. But then it clicked that yeah, we never see Jessie do anything worse than steal a sweater and maybe erase Emily's paper by mistake. She even drew Emily a pretty nice bath. Nancy probably would have poured sulfuric acid in it. And if Jessie's a murderer, why would she keep the evidence in her drawer with the dog blood still on it? Of course it's Nancy. I do wish the book kept her frustrations with Emily just with their father's death. The Josh stuff feels tacked on, the need for romantic drama that so many of these books have. There was enough of a hook with their dad's death.
The book does suffer from padding issues like so many others do. 165 pages for a story that feels cut and dry super quick where we just get more and more "accidents" to Emily to make page quota. Literally the concert scene was the best case of what I mean. It definitely comes off as a book that is taking a few too many pit stops to make it to the fireworks factory. The book does try to be a bit more family drama oriented than most. Being about both a new family, stepsisters at each other's throats, a boy getting in trouble, a rather harsh father and a mother trying to keep everything together. Even with the murderous sister, this might be one of the better fleshed out families that we've gotten in Fear Street. Definitely feels like Stine wanted to try hard on that, especially for a book that's heavily focused on a family horror.
Emily is a decent protagonist. You can see why she'd suspect Jessie so easily given she barely knows Jessie and only gets scant pieces of information which immediately makes her suspect Jessie of wrongdoing. Jessie as our Red Herring works fine, someone you could suspect of being the villain, while never truly feeling like one. Rich is interesting, a troubled kid who clearly needs some help and maybe straightened himself out by the end. See, it's those damn Stephen King novels. See how he corrupts the children. Stine was ahead of the curve with that, I'm sure. Mr. and Mrs. Wallner are also okay parents, although Mr. Wallner sucks, especially with his kids. He seems like someone who has a hard time keeping anything together and his gruff attitude doesn't exactly help. Although, I can kind of get why he'd be a bit freaked out by his 16 year old daughter going out with a 19 year old. A definite case of how one's mentality on an issue can vary depending on how old they are when they read a story. If I was a teen reading it, I'd side with Nancy, but being an adult, I at least get Hugh's point.
Nancy as the villain is fine for the swerve and the book does a good enough job in building just enough little hints to how her father's death in particular changed her. We learn her dad was an avid reader, and she mentions a few times that she stopped being a reader. And a general feeling like she too was trying to pin everything on Jessie to make sure that Emily is none the wiser before she can finally kill her off. Then she could blame Jessie for the death. And for as hokey as her issues with Emily also coming from the boyfriend issue, I get why that would affect her too. So, while this is sort of a double whammy. A villain motivated by poor mental health brought on by trauma, and also because of a boy she liked. A case of Stine almost doing a great job, then faltering just enough that it doesn't feel too fresh.
So, for a Fear Street book, this was fine. Nothing out and out unique, but as a fun little mystery, it does just what it needs to do. As mentioned, there is a sequel to this. Which focuses on Nancy returning from the hospital. Sounds interesting, but knowing how Fear Street works, especially Stine's sequels, this feels like a bad case of "here we go again." Hopefully I'll be surprised, but given this IS Stine, I'm not holding my breath. The Stepsister gets a B.
IT WAS ACCEPTABLE IN THE 90S: Sassy, "A total dweeb", Pet Sematary, Cassette tapes, Record stores, People Magazine, New Word Processor Programs, Honda Civic, Toyota, Being REALLY passive aggressive about Stephen King
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