The Stinal Countdown: New Fear Street #01: The Stepbrother

It's time to return to Shadyside. In this case NEW Shadyside. By which I mean the New Fear Street books. As I mentioned in the Camp Out blog (If you're reading these chronologically I'm sorry) Fear Street ended its run with Archway Paperbacks and switched over to Gold Key for the remainder of its original run. Which started with New Fear Street. The book we're covering was at first intended to be another Archway book, but got moved over here. And yes, the title sounds like it's a Stepsister sequel, but thankfully it isn't. But it is a Super Chiller which, oh I'm in for some crap aren't I? Let's hope not as we learn about The Stepbrother.

This cover is weird. Not like the worst ever, but not exactly one that makes me want to up and read it. I think it makes sense when you get into the book itself given what the twist ultimately boils down to, but I still think it looks a tad goofy. I do like the fiery background, that works, but it doesn't really make for a cover that I think about all that much. 

The originally planned cover is also goofy, but I think in terms of horror it works much better. With the titular Stepbrother looking on creepily as our protagonist kisses someone. It does come off as a freaky scenario that is also in line with Fear Street's general look and feel for most of their covers. Definitely the better of the pair.

Sondra Craft and her friends Beth Calloway, Jess Wollman and Mallory Stevens are in Beth's room on a stormy rainy night. Bored, they decide to do the most obvious thing to do to pass the time: hypnotism. Mallory picked up a book on hypnotism and offers to try it on the girls. Sondra and Beth accept, saying it's better than watching Oprah. Well, one Oprah, not fifty. It doesn't work on Beth, but when Mallory tries it on Sondra, suddenly Sondra hears a girl's voice saying "Make her stop!" That voice being Sondra herself. So yeah, we have nightmares and hypnosis in this one. Been a while since Stine pulled out that old chestnut. Sondra tells the girls about the dream of her screaming and the feeling that she was in a burning building with someone, while the girls say that she was also screaming that "we're going to die." But inevitable dream death can wait as the girls would rather focus on Sondra's upcoming seventeenth birthday. One they promise she'll never forget. So if they end up the villains then it's on point for Stine to be as unsubtle as possible.

Sondra talks with her boyfriend Zach Ramsey about her hypnosis, but mostly wants to move on from it. She invites him to dinner, but ends up running into Eric, the titular stepbrother of the book. Eric and his father recently moved in with Sondra and her mother, and Eric is very morose, very never-smiling, which bothers Zach enough to cancel any dinner plans. But after talking with Eric later that night, Sondra doesn't seem to have any real problem with him, and chalks his awkwardness to moving in with a new family. She has another nightmare, this time knocking over a lamp which sets her room on fire and melts her. The next day Sondra heads to school and runs into Eric there as well, who just transferred. He talks with her friends at lunch and seems to be enamored with Mallory in particular. Sondra also sees Zach at another table, still acting weird. She then heads to the library to return a copy of the Scarlet Letter, but the librarian seems confused that she wrote her name as Penny Hansen.

So now having fire dreams and writing a different name, Sondra heads to Mallory thinking that maybe that hypnosis trick broke her brain. Mallory then suggests that Sondra see her parents' friend Andrea, who is also a hypnotist. Because if there's one thing that will surely stop this hypnotism-activated brainfuck, it's more hypnotism. Sondra runs up the stairs when she hears someone calling for Penny. She responds, even if she doesn't know why she'd answer to the name Penny, when she then feels someone shove her down the stairs. It's Eric, who says that he caught her from almost falling. Also Mallory is there. Back at home, they talk some more with Eric saying that hypnosis is all bunk, which bothers Mallory. After she leaves, Sondra tries to sleep, but wakes up in the middle of the night to see Eric in the kitchen. She goes to make a pot of coffee, plugs in the coffee maker, only to suddenly almost get electrocuted. The whole outlet catches fire. It's stopped in time and Sondra isn't hurt, but now she's pretty sure that whatever the hell's going on her in head seems to slowly be coming true.

The next day, Sondra and Mallory head to Andrea's house which is on, where else, Fear Street. Andrea suggests that whatever the hypnosis triggered must have come from a past life. So she hypnotizes Sondra which seems to work as Sondra enters the trance as Penny Hansen and has ended up back in 1958. She's in a relationship with a boy named Paul, but is more interested in Gary, the young mechanic at Peterson's Garage. Penny is conflicted. She loves Paul and is going steady, but also wants Gary. But she's also worried about Gary. The trance ends with the two boys arguing and the sight of fire. Sondra wakes up, still confused, but Andrea thinks that something in the past life has been unresolved and that maybe someone else is also going through the same situation. A case of history repeating itself. She talks this over with Zach, who notes that the stair fall and the electrocution both happened when Eric was around, so maybe he's been the one messing with her. She drives for a bit, looking for the Burger Hop restaurant, but can't find it. She runs into a man who tells her that there hasn't been a Burger Hop in Shadyside since 1960 when it closed down and the good people of Shadyside soon realized the perfection that was Pete's Pizza. 

Sondra heads home and the next day starts singing a song with the lyrics of "You are forever mine, until the end of time". She, of course, doesn't realize she was singing, but Eric and Mallory show up and tell her she was, complete with Eric knowing all of the lyrics to the song since it was an old 50s song that plays in supermarkets. Sondra then meets with Zach and the two are about to go for a drive when suddenly the garage door crushes on top of the car. Neither are killed, but the car's a mess. She then sees Eric staring from out of his window. Zach says that this now confirms that Eric's the one responsible. But Sondra doesn't want to believe it, especially since Eric saved her from the electrocution. If he had wanted to kill her he could have done it there and then. But then we wouldn't have a book. Or at least not a Super Chiller length book which sometimes I prefer being in that timeline.

Beth holds a party with everyone showing up, including Zach, Eric, Mallory and Sondra. And with Mallory there and clearly not realizing how hypnosis fucked her friend up, decides let's do more hypnosis. Eric, still the skeptic, decides he'll undergo hypnosis this time for a larf. However, when he's under the trance, he begins to violently twitch. He's awakened, to which he says to Sondra that Penny is going to die again. Sondra runs off with everyone trying to catch up with her. They make it outside where Zach is in the middle of the street, and Eric drives at him, almost running him over. But when pressed about it, Eric doesn't know what's going on. He remembers hitting the brakes, but they wouldn't work. So now Sondra begins to realize that maybe Eric was one of the boys Penny knew in a past life, but why is he after Zach? It's not like he could have been the other boy or something, perish the thought. 90+ pages to get to that answer I guess. The next day, while Eric is out of his room, Sondra sneaks inside and finds an old record with the Forever Mine song, as well as a copy of Popular Mechanics from the 50s as well as a Burger Hop menu. So either he's Gary the Mechanic (which I think I know what the swerve is already) or he's just really into 1950s memorabilia.

Sondra heads to the record shop SH-BOOM at the mall and finds the record. The store has a booth where she's able to listen to it. It starts to bring up some odd memories, but they're stopped when the room starts to catch fire. And there's a figure that looks like Eric in the smoke. However, when the store clerk helps her out, she sees no smoke, no fire and no Eric. She tells Zach about this as well, and he mentions having a nightmare about fire and a girl's hand reaching for him, and the Forever Mine song played as well. So now Sondra starts to believe that maybe Zach was also a part of this whole past life thing. They return to Andrea's to be hypnotized again and get more answers. Zach gets hypnotized and in his trance starts to call out to Penny. He almost walks out of an open window, but Sondra stops that from happening. Awakening, Zach says that he was there with Penny that night in a burning building with someone laughing at them, killing them both. He's certain it's Eric and that Eric was Gary the mechanic given all of the near deaths that a mechanic could have done, like rewiring a coffee maker and messing with a garage door. 

That night, Eric enters Sondra's room. She grills him on the record, the magazine and the old menu, to which he says what I said earlier, he's just into old memorabilia. When he called her Penny at the party it was a goof. He and Mallory were in on it. But, of course, Sondra doesn't fully buy it. She talks with Zach some more, but he seems more focused on taking her out during her birthday the next day. Sondra then heads out and talks with an old man who knew about the fire. It was at an old gas station in 1958 where two lovers were engulfed in a fire and died holding one another. Then not long after there was a suicide from a boy who had a crush on the girl who died. So now Sondra begins to think that Eric, or Gary at least, must have a crush on her which, thank god this book is called the STEP brother is all I'm saying. If incest fics are your thing you can have em but yeah that's a tricky tripwire Stine almost walked over. This is confirmed that night when Eric gives her a necklace as an apology for the whole "I called you Penny as a joke, bro" thing.

Sondra's birthday night arrives and Zach blindfolds her and takes her to a gas station. I mean it's not the Ritz, but taking your girlfriend to the place where she's been having past life trauma isn't a great birthday present. Sondra isn't happy about it, but once she hears Eric outside, she panics even more. Made no better by the doors being locked. Eric bursts through the backdoor and says that he knows the truth of what happened that night. Gary didn't set the fire, it was Paul. The two boys fight as Eric tells Sondra to remember. She goes back in trance and sure enough, it's Penny with Gary in the gas station that night, together. The pair dance to Forever Mine as they soon smell smoke as someone lit the gas station on fire. Sondra wakes up and blames Zach, who is now tied up, but he says he didn't do it, Paul wasn't the one who set the gas station on fire. And then Mallory shows up and reveals the truth. Zach wasn't Paul in a past life, she was. 

So, yeah. Mallory was Paul. Sondra doesn't see how because she's a girl and Paul was a boy, to which she says that the spirit can be the same regardless of the body. See when he killed both of them that night, he shot himself after. He would soon be reborn as Mallory and I guess was able to retain the knowledge that she was Paul in a past life through her dreams. So it's also why she got into hypnosis, to wait for the day of Sondra's seventeenth birthday to redo the events of Penny and Gary's death. Also Zach was Gary in the past. That she never forgave Penny in either life, so now they have to die again. She douses the area in gasoline. As she lights the match, Eric grabs her, causing her to drop the match. The gas station goes up in flames, but so does Mallory as the match hit her shoe and set her jeans ablaze. Zach and Sondra are freed and the three manage to escape. 

Sondra wakes up as Eric tells her that it's all over now. The three arrive at Shadyside General Hospital where Eric apologizes for thinking Zach was the bad guy in all this. They laugh it off and Eric thinks that maybe he was just a cool guy in the 50 who collected old stuff. The pair laugh as Zach looks on confused. And I guess they all live happily ever after... until Paul is reincarnated again sometime in the future. 

This book is fine, but very obvious in its mystery. Granted, you might not immediately think that Mallory could have been Paul, but the book doesn't have much in terms of subtlety. Of course Mallory's the villain. She incites everything with the hypnosis, is always around when things happen or almost happen to Mallory and just always gives off the feeling that she's the one trying to finish Sondra off. And given the book's heavy push on the idea of past life and reincarnation, it makes it feel like if Stine was going to try to swerve the story, he'd have Paul be reincarnated as female. And no, I'm not calling this trans rep in either way, good or bad, since I don't fully believe that it counts. Yes, Mallory has memories of being Paul and she wants to get revenge for her past life. Yes, by the end she's referring to herself as Paul, but I buy it more from the voices in her head of her life in a different time and place and not her thinking of herself as being Paul or male. It falls in that similar area of The Cataluna Chronicles of William possessing Marisol, but I don't think it comes as close. Also no, I don't look at it like I do with The Babysitter III and Jenny thinking she's Mr. Hagen. That was literally a Stine asspull that came out of nowhere while at least here it's established that this has been with Mallory her entire life.

It's a book about hypnosis and Stine has done hypnosis a lot. And most of those times are just fine in how they handle it. This feels a bit more fresh in how it's handled, by using hypnosis to awaken past lives, by having the mystery become something of a case of an incident repeating itself. That the past won't stay buried no matter how many times you're reincarnated. Which does make me wonder. This book was set in the late 90s, with the book being released in 1998. The incident was thirty years prior in 1958 and our protagonists are around seventeen. So they'd have been born around 1981. So what happened with their spirits between then? Did they all get reborn and die, or did all three spirits just wait it out for over a decade before settling into new bodies? Is that how reincarnation works within the realm of Fear Street? I mean, it makes more sense than a time-travelling closet but these are the kinds of plot holes Stine falls into a lot with these books.

Sondra is a decent protagonist. You feel for her given so much of what's happening is beyond her control. The memories of Penny were awakened to her by Mallory, not her own. So she's unfortunately stuck having to solve this mystery and fearing for her life. Zach makes for a solid boyfriend character who you'd think is the villain if the mystery wasn't obvious enough that he wasn't at all. Though, again, bringing her to the gas station? That definitely smells of Stine not finding another way to get them to the gas station to set up the finale. Eric is a solid enough red herring, even if it starts to be way too obvious he isn't the villain here. Mallory as the villain makes more sense in the long run given the build and her involvement throughout. So I don't fully feel like it's a case of Stine pulling something out of his ass and hoping it would work. Beth and Jess are Superfluous Clay for the most part. At least Beth had the party, I guess?

More importantly, does this truly feel like NEW Fear Street? Not really, but then again it is a holdover from the previous era of the series. It still falls into so many of Stine's normal tropes that nothing really feels all that fresh about it. But even for a Super Chiller, the book doesn't feel like it spins its wheels too much. Each moment builds into the story and the mystery. It could be truncated to a smaller book and lose really nothing, but this is also a case where the added pages don't fully bog things down. So overall, I'd say it makes this book decent. It has some good moments, and the story is just fine. It suffers from a mystery that feels obvious early and becomes more obvious as the pieces fall in place. The "Mallory is Paul" stuff could be perceived as problematic, but I don't think it comes close to being concerning. It's ultimately a recommend. It may not feel like NEW Fear Street, but familiar is never too bad. The Stepbrother gets a B+.

IT WAS ACCEPTABLE IN THE 90S: Oprah, Record stores

IT WAS ACCEPTABLE IN THE 50S: Popular Mechanics, Captain Marvel (The Shazam one),Old Records