We have reached the end of New Fear Street already. Yep, a mere four books is all that Stine pumped out for this series. It does make me wonder though, if Stine really had any interest in this series or if all four books were just stuff from the original Fear Street that he didn't finish in time. We know that of The Stepbrother at least. So we have one more book left to go. And given the last book ended with a zombie girl, it feels a bit soon for another book about zombies. But life, AKA R.L. Stine, finds a way. Does he stick the landing, or is this just a pump-out before he gets to Fear Street Seniors? Let's find out with The Bad Girl.
Our protagonist, Dawn, opens the book by asking the reader to not judge her. She's not a bad girl, honest. I mean, this is page one and you're not making a strong impression. We then cut to the beginning, which is Dawn and her friend Jan Dixon talking about Dawn cheating on her boyfriend Clint Conner with the quarterback Will Dinmore. In fact, Dawn seems to do this a lot, with a lot of boys. As they head to the school science lab and talk about the upcoming Spring Fling, they're interrupted by Cindy Thompson, who isn't too fond of the two being in the lab. Turns out she's a bit of a teacher's pet, who is usually trying to score points with their science teacher Ms. Philbin. After the girls listen to her drone on about her project, they throw a bunch of chemicals in a beaker and cause an explosion which gets them in trouble, but they notice that the formula is now black with what looks to be gold crystals inside.
At science class, there's tension in the air as Dawn is certain that Clint knows about her going out with Will, which isn't helped by Will still hitting on her. Clint is described as the standard James Dean leather jacket, long haired loner with a supposed heart of gold. The class is to dissect frogs, to which Clint then accidentally stabs Dawn with a scalpel. At least I hope it's accidental. During the dissection, Dawn and Jan aren't too fond of dissecting their frog and name it Spot. They then decide that maybe Spot's thirsty for Evian, which is something that gets name dropped a shitload by the way. Stine must have been on a big mineral water kick in 1998. They decide to give Spot the formula instead and soon the frog disappears, as if it leapt off the desk on its own. They soon find it alive, but Ms. Philbin doubts it's the same frog since there's no way a dead frog can come back to life. Thankfully this book isn't just a 140+ page Michigan J. Frog bit as Cindy puts Spot in the terrarium, but has a hard time in doing so. Dawn begins to suspect that maybe their formula brought Spot back to life.
After school, Dawn runs into Will who wants to go out with her again. After he leaves, she hears clicking sounds and sees Clint nearby, so she makes a run for it and to the animal shelter where she works. Jan arrives to mainly complain about taking the bullet for Dawn so she could go to work. Jan also wants to test the formula again, and despite Dawn's wishes, she opens up the morgue to find a dead dog. You know this is a weird Stine book when the animals are already dead and he didn't have them murdered in the story beforehand. Jan uses the formula and sure enough, the dog comes back to life. They take the dog with them where they're met by a girl from their school named Freda who just so happened to have the dog, Floyd, put to sleep earlier in the day. Jan chalks things up as them doing a good deed and that playing god has never backfired in the history of fiction ever, so they should make the formula again and keep bringing things to life. After she's dropped off by Jan, Dawn runs into Clint, who knows about her cheating on him. She lies by saying she went to her aunt in Waynesbridge and he buys it for now.
The girls head to science class the next day and notice that Spot has gotten larger. Not only that, all of the other frogs have been torn apart. But enough about that, Clint asks Dawn out, to which she says she'll go with him. Of course, this goes bad as Jan ropes her into going with two other boys, Eric Rye and Carl Ruff, to a party on the same night. Oh no! What a very sitcom-esque dilemma! That night, Clint calls Dawn to see Scream III which, I'm assuming Stine figured there'd be a Scream sequel, but that didn't get released until 2000. A very Sims 5 moment from ol' Bob. She lies to him again and tries to reschedule for Saturday, but this appears to anger him which, I mean, do you really want to keep lying to the guy who "accidentally" stabbed you with a scalpel? This book so far is less The Bad Girl and more The Pathological Liar.
At the party, the girls see that Cindy's there, invited by Carl. Turns out she was invited there by the boys on a dare to pretty much humiliate her because they suck. Embarrassed, Cindy runs out of the house. During the party, which includes the girls drinking, the girls drive to get snacks when a girl walks in front of their car. They run her over. It's Cindy, or should I say, Cindy's CORPSE! Yeah, to make a bad night even worse, not only does she get humiliated, but she's also killed. Dawn suggests they make their leave before their caught not just drinking and driving, but drinking and driving and killing. Jan then suggests giving Cindy the formula. If it brought a frog and a dog back, then maybe it works on things that don't rhyme with log. They use the formula and sure enough, Cindy's alive. They don't tell her the part about running her over because again, these two can't fucking quit it on the lies, though in this case I guess it's fair. Might just end up killing her again if they told her the whole story. They bring her home and while Dawn is concerned, Jan thinks that everything is just fine, and oh don't worry she'll totally never use that reviving formula again. Because you can totally trust these two. They return to the party with Dawn having to deal with Eric being a creep, and, even worse for her, running into Clint who sees her with another guy, so I don't think the next lie's gonna work. Or it will. He seems like enough of an idiot.
The girls run into Cindy at school and she's totally changed. She has platinum blonde hair, isn't wearing glasses and is looking prettier than before. Also she's with Clint now, which makes Dawn jealous instead of, you know, self realization that she kept stringing him along and thus drove him away? It's the "No, it's the children who are wrong" mentality. The girls then work on the decorations for the dance, which includes putting the streamers over the catwalk. But as they climb up, someone starts shaking their ladders, causing the girls to almost fall, but manage to cling to the catwalk to safety. They head to Jan's house to find her room completely trashed, just as a convenient phone call rings with a whispery voice admitting to knocking the ladders over and that next time they won't be so lucky. They worry that it could have been someone who saw them hit Cindy, or it could actually be Cindy out for revenge. They do the stupidest thing possible and try to call Cindy out for it, who then grabs a metal bar from the window and crumples it up with super strength, so congrats on pissing off a powerful zombie.
At the science lab, Jan tells Dawn that she saw Spot explode. Just swell up and pop. They then tell Ms. Philbin about it, but she doesn't believe them because... well, not Because Goosebumps Parents obviously... Because Fear Street Teacher? After the two are at the mall, they head to the parking lot, where someone tries to run them over. Wait, didn't we JUST do that last book? I'm starting to see why this only lasted four books. They head to Dawn's and find a threatening message from Cindy on her answering machine. But they also note that the caller ID was from Clint's. So either she just called from there or he's in on this. They head to the Conner residence to find Clint, or should I say Clint's CORPSE THAT ISN'T GOING TO BE REVIVED THIS TIME! They call the cops, but smartly don't tell them the part about the zombie teenager with Hulk strength who murdered Dawn's boyfriend as an act of revenge for the girls killing her first. Now that would be downright nutty.
Clint's funeral goes down with Dawn still guilt-ridden over being pretty much responsible for his death, with Jan offering her some Evian to feel better. No, seriously. What is the freaking deal with the Evian, Bob? Also Cindy's there to rub it in their faces and to say that they really can't pin this on her without admitting to killing her first. Not that it'll matter, she'll finish them off before they can do that. So now the girls realize that the only thing they can do now is to kill Cindy... again! The girls head to the animal shelter when they suddenly hear some angry animals being freed by Cindy. She siccs them on the girls. They manage to escape as she drives off. This is the fire under their asses to make sure they kill her quick. And it just so happens there's the big science expedition at Fear Lake, the perfect place to murder someone. At Fear Lake, they spot Cindy squeezing a forest animal of some sort to death. Wow, Stine murders an animal and doesn't even feel assed to tell the reader what animal. He's in full "getting this shit over with" mode.
The girls ambush Cindy and smash her over the head with their shovels, then throw her body into the middle of Fear Lake where I'm sure that this previously dead girl is definitely dead now. And sure enough, she's back on the school bus, so that was a waste of time. So next they run her over again and make a run for it this time instead of, again, checking to see if the corpse is back to being a corpse. And sure enough, she's at school the next day. The girls then run into Freda who says that Floyd went crazy and started attacking everyone and everything until he eventually just collapsed and died again. Dawn and Jan realize that both Spot and Floyd were enraged and then eventually died from too much anger. Maybe that's how they can finally kill Cindy. So they invite Cindy over to Jan's. They tell her that they'll tell everyone that she killed Clint, then mock her for being dead. It angers Cindy enough that she starts to strangle Dawn. Suddenly she begins to convulse and collapse. The girls check to see if she's dead for real, but she grabs them, pleading for them to keep her alive, to get the formula. But the girls can't find it. Eventually, Cindy finally collapses and is dead for real this time.
The girls drink some more of the Evian water and if you figured it would play into the twist, you'd be right. As they soon find a note from Cindy that says that she had found the formula and hid it from them as she hated what it had turned her into. She wanted to die. But she made sure to hide the formula in their Evian bottle. So I guess this is going to kill them or something? Does it work like that?
Dawn is fine. A character who does bad things, but soon realizes her actions have consequences. Mainly in leading not just to Cindy's initial death, but the murder of Clint, who she continued to drive away by her bad actions. She never has a full come to Jesus about that, but you can buy that the promiscuity days are long gone. Jan serves as a decent best friend role. Clint is the boy caught in the middle of everything who ultimately dies thanks to Dawn's lies and actions. Though he does stab her with a scalpel and acts very creepy in his own right, so I can't quite say that I felt bad for him dying in the story. Cindy is a solid villain. You can say that she does deserve to get revenge for what the girls did to her, especially, you know, the whole killing her part. But for as sympathetic as she can be, she does feel like a threat. One that does have to be dealt with before she does more deadly things. And if you do want to see her win in the end, she technically does, though what would the formula actually do to the living? Would it kill them? Kill them then bring them back to life? I don't think Stine thought this one out as well as he could have other than "Well I mentioned Evian like a hundred bajillion times, I'm going to have to pay it off."
So overall, this one was just okay. It has some massive flaws, and definitely feels like a kids horror story that was turned into a teen horror story. But it does work better in that format. It has some solid horror, and flows well for the most part, save for a lot of padding by the end. It's not perfect, but I'd still recommend. But with this comes the end of New Fear Street already. It definitely feels less like a series Stine had real passion for and more holdovers of other Fear Street books that he had to wait on for a while after finding a new publishing company to work with. So it makes me wonder if his heart was more set on starting fresh with a bigger concept. One with an overarching plot. Which, given some of the times that Stine has tried that, it's not always a sign of confidence. We'll have to see what's in store with Fear Street Seniors, but for now, The Bad Girl gets a B-.
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