The Stinal Countdown: New Fear Street #03: Scream, Jennifer, Scream!

It's time for another trip into NEW Shadyside. Even more interestingly, we're almost finished with this series. Yep, New Fear Street really is that quick of a book series. And this time we have a book about cheating students, a possible snitch, and potential murder. Could this all lead to a good book, or will I be screaming in anger? Let's find out with Scream, Jennifer, Scream!

This cover is fine. I like the face of Jennifer screaming, which means the book cover at least doesn't lie. I like the shattering glass given off this more horrific look and feel. What I don't like is the teens up front. It makes this cover feel less like a really cool horror book cover and more here's the cast of a failed Fear Street series pilot, which is surprising that never happened. I mean we got the movies but still. Overall, fine, but not amazing.

Shelli Hayes heads to Liam McKenzie's for a party he's holding while his parents are off in the Bahamas. It's been one big party, mainly because they all completed their college prep test. Considered the hardest test there is, Shelli and her friends, Del Monroe, Danny Patello, Mayra Simone, the "not screaming yet" Jennifer Jameson and Liam all managed to pass it easily with the help of a little magic box. Yeah, they bought the answers off the internet. This being 90s internet obviously, not "just use chatGPT and hope you can bullshit using shitty AI" internet. Everybody's perfectly happy with cheating and just letting the lie go on except for Jennifer, who feels guilty about the whole thing. The gang tell her to calm down, but her conscience is killing her before they likely do. She tells the group that she wants to tell the truth. Of course, the others need the lie to succeed. Mayra worries she won't get a scholarship and Del can't afford to go to college without it. And Shelli, in particular is more in a panic over it than seemingly the others, given that she's best friends with Jennifer to the point she wears a pendant over her neck with her picture in it. 

But, despite their best efforts, Jennifer wants to tell the truth, even if it means she gets in trouble for it. The others tell her not to, but she asks the dumbest question you could ask a bunch of bloodthirsty teenagers trying to save their own asses, "What are you gonna do, kill me?" Jennifer leaves as the group continue to try to find a way out of this mess. They believe that they can put the blame on Jennifer, by having it look like she was the one who gave them the prep test answers, claiming they were last year's. But they soon realize that they would still be implicated for using said old test answers anyway and still doing so good. So, they could just take the bullet and confess the situation before she does, but this is a group of shitty people who decide instead that maybe Jennifer needs to have a little accident before she can tell. Maybe Jennifer DOES need to die. See that's what she gets for giving them ideas. Shelli is against this, but the others have their minds set. If one life is ruined to save five, what's the harm? I mean, to the five at least?

The group come up with a lottery to choose which of them will kill Jennifer. Shelli is against all this, but they pretty much threaten without outright saying it that they'll murder her too if they have to. They draw papers and whoever gets the highest number wins. That ends up being Danny. His plan is to wait until Jennifer's done working at the strip mall, and when she's in the parking lot, he'll run her over. Hit and Run. Oh, great. This book was already reminding me of that shitty book, you didn't have to drop the title, Bob. Shelli returns home and ponders if Danny went through with it, while also talking with her mother who brings up the prep test to hammer in Shelli's guilty conscience. The group sit at Shelli's, waiting for any answer from Danny if he did the deed. Eventually, they head to the strip mall to find cops in the area and yellow tape being placed. However, they also see Jennifer, alive and well, and talking to the cops. Also Danny's there. Or that is to say Danny's CORPSE. Yeah, he completely missed Jennifer and crashed, with his body a limp wreck and his face cut to pieces, a piece of glass in his eye as if it were stabbed in there for added measure. The gang floor it as Shelli notices Jennifer watching them and her jacket seems to be covered in blood.

The news reports say Danny swerved on a patch of ice and crashed, but nothing from or about Jennifer. The group ponder if Jennifer tried to save Danny, but was unable to, hence the blood on her jacket. So, they decide that maybe they should talk to Jennifer about it, maybe that will work and not lead to another death. Or maybe Jennifer's death, who knows? Either way, Del volunteers. Anyway, not long after, the group see Del thrown out of a window from the second story of the school. So yeah. Del wasn't a very good negotiator. He's not dead. As the group are again at Shelli's talking about the situation, Jennifer arrives. She tells them about Danny swerving and crashing, but also that she's on to their bullshit. She knows they're trying to kill her. She already started with Del. So, game on, fuckers, as she intends to kill them first. All while Shelli thinks "Jennifer couldn't do that, we're her friends." Oh, you mean the friends who are trying to murder her first? This may be our densest protagonist in a while.

Anyway, it's Mayra's turn as she drew the highest number. But since they need to ensure that there's no muck-up, Liam volunteers himself and Shelli to help. They'll get Jennifer to the rickety bridge and have Mayra shove her off to her death. Seamless. To get her there, they'll have Mayra call Jennifer saying she wants to meet at the bridge to confess everything and sort this mess out, and they'll ambush her. Shelli and Liam head to the bridge, only to see cops there. Yep, Mayra failed. Jennifer pushed her off first. The news report says that it was ruled as a suicide, complete with a note to her parents admitting she cheated and couldn't live with the guilt. Gotta admit, either Jennifer's a genius at murder or these kids are really, really bad at this that Jennifer looks like a genius by comparison. Well, now it's down to Liam and Shelli. He calls Shelli later on saying that he'll deal with her, even though she already managed to overpower the much larger Del, so this should work just fine. 

Shelli heads to Jennifer's to find Liam, but learns that Jennifer as school as she's prop designer for the school play. When Shelli gets there she finds Liam hanging from the rafters. So yeah, he sure handled her. Jennifer arrives and tells Shelli that she killed them for a reason. See, she's already dead. Wait what? Yeah, apparently Danny did run her over before crashing. That's why her jacket was bloody. So she's just been this zombie this whole time, out for revenge. Oh Danny wasn't the only one who crashed, huh Bob? This feels like a good old fashioned case of Stine hitting a wall. So she did kill Liam, and tried to kill Del. Mayra, she actually jumped herself when Jennifer told her to. I guess we found the person who would have answered yes to "well if so and so jumped off a bridge would you?" Jennifer also notes that none of this had to happen. They would have gotten in shit, but they could have taken the test again and still had a shot at it, so she was trying to do them a favor. Jennifer attacks Shelli, who makes a run for it, but eventually, she gets caught. As Jennifer starts to choke her to death, she notices the heart pendant still around Shelli's neck. That even as everyone was trying to kill her, Shelli still cared about her. Jennifer lets go, saying she can't do it, then fades away. Um... okay? So we've gotten through this whole book about murder over a college test. I bet you can already guess how this ends. 

Shelli gets her college prep test back and it's perfect. But, her dad says that since Mayra admitted to cheating, and some other kid also cheated, the whole test was thrown out, so Shelli has to do it all over again. Just, maybe stay off the internet this time and do the damn thing. 

This book is surprisingly short. Like maybe one of the shortest Fear Street books I've read at about 128 pages. And the main reason for that may be because a good chunk of the remaining pages is to advertise the next book series from Fear Street, Fear Street Seniors, which I do intend to cover eventually. Given I'm down to one New Fear Street book, it may be sooner than expected. Don't hold me to that, I'll probably take ten months to get to the first Seniors book. 

As for this book, it's just okay. It reminds me a lot of other Stine books. Hit and Run, The Cheater, even sort of You Can't Scare Me! in a way given that the focus is this group of kids going after one girl. This being murder instead of trying to scare her, but it's definitely there. Only where the Mud Monsters existing could be called into question in that book, this one ends with "yeah, sure, Jennifer's a zombie." It definitely feels like Stine hit a massive wall. However, unlike Danny, he didn't die from it. He needed to give a reason for Jennifer to both know what's up and get her revenge throughout the story, but to also end with her being defeated while preserving Shelli from actually committing a murder. So he has her killed in the initial hit and run, then just has her disappear because I guess the power of friendship healed her heart before she went to hell for her actions? Fear Street has always been this series where the balance of supernatural and non-supernatural has always been awful, and with some exceptions (Goodnight Kiss, Bad Moonlight) it always feels like Stine throws it in because he has no other ideas. And it doesn't help that he's already done this idea of the already dead person seeking revenge before in The Perfect Date. So not even that's creative.

Shelli is not a great protagonist. She doesn't really do much of anything for most of the book but ponder about what's going on and be really scared about everything. She is mostly an observer as her awful friends continue to make things worse. Granted, said "friends" also threaten to kill her, so it's not like she has much of a choice here. But I guess she's at least likeable. The only one of the group who doesn't want to commit murder, so you do want to see her at least succeed. More than can be said about Liam, Danny, Del or Mayra. They kind of deserve what they get. They cheated on the test, even though they should have known damn well that this very well could have unraveled at any moment, and not even with Jennifer blabbing. So you don't really feel bad about any of them dying. It's more a case of "well, whatever. Bye bitch." Jennifer is a decent, I guess, villain? Though can you even call her the villain since, again, she was killed by them first and this was an act of revenge? I guess anti-hero is more accurate? I found myself rooting more for her than anyone else.

Overall, this was a super quick book that didn't pad itself out too much. It did exactly what it needed and left when it had to. More books need to be like that. But it does suffer from some unlikable characters and a very nonsensical way of building to the climax. Another case of Stine trying to put a supernatural band-aid over a bullet wound. It didn't anger me like Hit and Run did, and given the villains die and Shelli still gets screwed over, it elevated this book for me. Hit and Run would have been a better book if Winks fucking died. Not the best Fear Street, but far from the worst. Jennifer didn't scream much though. Blatant false advertising there, Stine. Scream, Jennifer, Scream! gets a C+.