The Stinal Countdown: Nightmare on Nightmare Street

So this one crept up on me. I legit thought this was a book due for later in the year, but nope. Mid-February. But that means that it's that time again. Another Blackstone Publishing R.L. Stine book. So far it's 0-2 for books I've enjoyed from the line. And the information about this book that has come out doesn't exactly make me go "Oh I can't wait for this one." But sometimes the books I've come in cold to have been the ones I've really enjoyed. So let's see if Stine can surprise me with this. Let's talk about Nightmare on Nightmare Street. See, the title also doesn't make me too jazzed. 

I talked about this cover last year not long after its release as, much like the upcoming Goosebumps House of Shivers covers, it's been under fire for AI allegations. We sadly know Stine's stance on AI given the shit he's posted to Instagram, but as for this cover in particular, I don't think it's actually AI. But it's still not an exciting cover. The clearest comparison is Welcome to Dead House as it's a shot of an old house with a figure looking out the front window. The big difference being that Dead House looked much nicer, had a better angle, and a far better use of color. Here it looks like a stock photo of an old house given a really awful looking filter. The orange and red from the windows doesn't help its case either, and the design is just really ugly. It also doesn't give the reader much to really get what this book is actually about. So while I doubt it's actually AI, it's still not that great a cover to be honest. 

We get two forwards/introductions in this one, which is odd. The first being from James "Murr" Murray from Impractical Jokers which, okay? It's odd, but given that Stine has done blurbs for Murr's books, I can see why he did it. Mainly he praises Stine's work, tells us this book is full of stuff including ventriloquist dummies because of course there's dummy, and shills Impractical Jokers. Stine's introduction tells us that he got the book's idea from an everything bagel. Much like how that has every ingredient at once, this book has everything at once. All of his ideas stuffed into a book. To which I immediately went "oh fuck." He also planned this book out to be one that anyone can read and enjoy, kids and adults. So I guess it's at least motivated Stine? Maybe that's a good thing? Only one way to find out.

Joe Ferber is really scared of the new house his family just moved in to. He claims that he's seen some real creepy things. Like the words Get Out written in blood, or the creepy doll in the attic, or the gravestones in the living room, or heard things the ghosts under the stairway. Did Stine watch the first Treehouse of Horror before writing this because half of that is in Bad Dream House. But his parents and older sister Sadie all think Joe's just watched way too many horror movies and it's getting into his head. They tell the siblings to go to bed and for Joe to try and sleep off all his superstitions. Although the Ferber parents themselves are a bit odd. Mr. Ferber is setting up a random hotline as a side hustle and Mrs. Ferber makes crochet organs and body parts, like one does. She also enjoys Real Housewives of Antarctica, I guess like one does. As Joe gets up the stairs to bed, he's attacked by a bat! No, wait, it's just a bird. Oh, this is definitely a Stine book alright.

As Joe finally gets upstairs to his bedroom, he spots a black cat outside of their house and worries if that means bad luck. Sadie then notices that Joe is shivering. He hears voices. Not sure if they're in his head, they counsel him, they understand, they talk to him (There's the wrestling reference) but he sure hears them. Sadie hears nothing and tells him to go to bed. Joe tries to calm down, thinking that maybe this is all just paranoia over his new house, when he suddenly hears more noises. He thinks it's Sadie, but she says that it's just their parents downstairs. He hears more knocking, but when he checks, there's nobody outside of his bedroom. Suddenly, the mouse nightlight in his room starts glowing, then growing. It attacks him, but nothing happens. He then sees the doll from earlier, now in his bed. It pukes hot liquid in his face as he starts to scream. And then Shawn Hannigan wakes up from his nightmare. Wait, who? Yeah, this is a book with more than one protagonist. 

Shawn wakes up, unhappy that his family have moved to Nightmare Street, which I guess has been giving him nightmares, so the street's name at least isn't just a strange choice. He tells his mom and little sister Addie that he dreamt about a boy named Joe who lived in a house over an old graveyard and all of the scary things that happened. He felt that it was perhaps a bit too real. But his mom tells him to not worry about it and to go to school at the "I'm surprised this wasn't a book series that Stine came up with before" Nightmare Academy. There is a book series called Nightmare Academy so who knows, maybe one day we'll cover them? He heads to his bedroom to get ready for school but notices not only is the mouse nightlight in his room, but so is the creepy doll. He tries to get Addie to believe him that these came from his dream, but she doesn't believe him because Not-Goosebumps, but still Goosebumps-Adjacent Sibling. They head to school, passing by a house with Jack-O'Lantern on the mailbox, a street called Cthulhu Street and more things that either were or could have been ideas for Goosebumps books.

At Nightmare Academy, Shawn runs into a boy named Jeremy who tells Shawn and Addie that they're has to meet with Principal Swagaharazowajoski, or Mr. Smith because oh thank fuck I don't have to keep writing that. The principal is in a pitch-black room where he's completely invisible. He tells them that English and Math classes are full, so the kids have to take other classes like taffy pulling, or ping-pong, or animal surgery, which if that counts as the closest to animal killing then this is definitely an R.L. Stine book. Also all the teachers wear animal masks for some reason. When Shawn leaves the room he sees that the principal is a giant wolf. He heads to class and tells the teacher, a man in a frog mask named Mr. Green, that he was talking to the principal. But that's not the principal, this other woman in the classroom is the principal named Mrs. Delaney. Also the principal's office is elsewhere and there's no Jeremy and oh god, this is the whole book isn't it? I'm not even halfway there and I'm tired. Win me over book.

Shawn tries to convince Mr. Green and Mrs. Delaney that he was in a dark room with a giant wolf principal, but the room is a broom closet. Also he has fur on his hands for a second. Then he thinks to ask for Addie to back his story, only to learn that Addie isn't there, and his mom to tell him that he doesn't have a sister named Addie. Shawn begins to suspect that because nothing is making sense that he must still be in his dream. But despite his best attempts, he can't wake up. The kids in his class do book reports, which get Hunger Games and Dog Man name drops, which is neat for Stine to do I guess. Shawn then wonders about the animal mask Mr. Green is wearing and tries to pull it off to no avail. He then sees the other teacher later on eating with their masks on as if they're actually their faces and not masks. School finally ends and Shawn heads home, only the place is home was in is now an empty lot. He goes next door and gets attacked by a dog, but the woman inside says she doesn't have a dog I'M READY TO MOVE ON FROM THIS NOW! 

The woman tells him there's been no house there for five years. Shawn calls his mom, but gets a man on the other line who's had this number for years. An SUV shows up, but inside is a different woman claiming to be Shawn's mom who is taking him to piano lessons. I hear they can be murder. He goes for a lesson from a man named Mr. Francisco who is also brandishing knives and wants him to play Chopin. Shawn feigns being sick and is brought home, as in the home that was gone but is now back. As is Addie. Shawn hears barking next door, and notices it's the woman from earlier, only now she's a dog because I guess she's a weredog. That "oh fuck" is really starting to kick right in. Shawn eventually goes back to sleep and sees the house from earlier which means it's time to tag back in with Joe. 

Joe wakes up and notes that he's still been hearing noises at night. Then he starts sneezing out worms, because I guess that's a thing that can happen. He and Sadie then find a coffin in their mom's sewing room and inside is a CORPSE-I mean a MANNEQUIN! Joe trips and falls over in the dark room when they then find a camera. They take a picture and, get this, it takes a picture of the past. Oh Stine, you and your clever subversions. So I guess Say Cheese and Live? Then they do it again, or almost do it again before Sadie realizes that maybe they've done this all before? So they instead head into another dark and dusty room where there's a trunk with a ventriloquist dummy inside named Frisky. Okay Bob, where's the demon plasma and should Joe and Sadie stay out of the attic and not wear the haunted glasses and should they be afraid of flies or will the scarecrows walk at noon on ghost river while the lawn flamingos spend a day in terror bunker? 

Also, don't worry. Stine makes sure the reader knows this is all Goosebumps stuff because he tells Sadie to be careful as Frisky could come to life through some magic words. And what do you know there's magic words that Sadie reads and Frisky doesn't come to life. Instead, Sadie turns into a dummy. Well that's at least a subversion, I'll give him that one. Joe tries to find his parents but they're nowhere to be seen. Joe then decides that maybe if he reads the magic words and he turns into a dummy. Their parents come home, not notice that their kids are now dummies, then read the magic words which for some reason turns the kids back to normal instead of the parents turning into dummies? They find Frisky and Joe wants to get rid of him, but his parents, thinking it might be valuable, tell Joe and Sadie to take it to the basement, which as previously established, is full of gravestones. The gravestones begin to move and rising from the ground are ventriloquist dummies. Is... is this just Stine being pent up because he hasn't been able to write a Slappy book for four years? Also, we're very close to the end of this book and I'm searching desperately for the point.

And we're just back to Shawn now who wakes up from that. He heads to breakfast and Joe and Sadie are at the table. He tries to tell his mother that these are the kids from his nightmares, but she doesn't believe them. Then Joe tells Shawn to welcome to his nightmare. Also they're Shawn's cousins and have no knowledge of all the things that have been happening in Shawn's nightmares. 

They head to Nightmare Academy, but there's a graveyard instead, to which they notice some gravestones. THEIR gravestones. Yep, they've been ghosts all along. This apparently explains everything because since they're ghosts, they're in the ghost world which is I guess an inverse of reality where nothing makes sense. They all have a good laugh and decide to go haunt someone. 

Fuck this book. Absolutely fuck this book. I didn't think it could get worse than Shark Night but holy cow did Stine find a way. Stine's big idea for this book was "what if I added everything?" The problem with that is that just adding things to a story doesn't work if there's no substance to any of it. All those things just become things that come in and come out and nothing matters from it. And now after this, and Say My Name! Say My Name! I can officially say that I'm sick of these types of Stine books where he just throws shit in thinking that as long as you throw a scary thing in a book that counts as effort. I get it. Man in his eighties who pretty much has written it all at this point, but that's really no excuse. It's bad potpourri in book form. A case of Stine maybe having a neat idea, or a title he finds cool enough, but when it comes to writing the book itself, he has no idea how to pad the book, so here's a quick scare followed by another, then another, then another with diminishing returns.

"But you love I Live In Your Basement" you might say. Well there the horror is more dark and interesting. The world constantly changing around Marco works well and Keith feels like a threat. The book even sets the twist up far better so that it doesn't feel like a random choice Stine made on the fly like this. In that book, the inciting incident of Keith being hit by the bat does matter to create his nightmare world. Here, you can tell Stine had no idea how to tie these two separate stories together at all. So "fuck it, we're just ghosts and none of that mattered because I guess ghost world is just random shit". But also, what, did they forget they were ghosts? Or did Shawn? Why would ghosts have to sleep anyway? It kills this book so much more because nothing mattered in the end. The horror never mattered, the characters being in peril never really mattered. 

And then there's the Goosebumps pastiche late into the book. The camera and Frisky the dummy. All the little hints and nods to Goosebumps that just don't work here. The subversion of Joe and Sadie becoming dummies is interesting, but then the spell is just easily negated when their parents read it for no reason. Because, again, noting in this book matters because the twist makes it so nothing matters. It's just all reminders of things Stine's done before and better in books where they actually mattered to the story and weren't just set pieces. The twist pissed me right off. The whole "oh well, THAT happened" feel to it just does not work here and just feels like the exclamation point of this whole book being a colossal waste of time. Stine throwing whatever he thinks of at the wall and hoping that it'll be enough to warrant a scare from kids, who even I think wouldn't care much for this book given that it's nothing but randomness with no substance. 

You know why classic Goosebumps worked? It's because these stories at least had an attempt to them to have value. The stories were usually structured to make the adventure interesting and the horror more often than not felt like it fit within the structure of the story. A book like The Haunted Mask works because the build is solid and the horror fits in a story that's actually engaging. Nowadays it feels like Stine has to throw everything into a book even if it doesn't fit or if he doesn't have an endgame to it. Lightning fast, no real lasting appeal, brainrot horror that doesn't even fit the book it's in. That's what this book feels like to me. Brainrot. I call Goosebumps the junk food of kids horror because they felt like fun books that may not be good for you but you still enjoy them. This and the other Blackstone Publishing books feel like brainrot thrown together to justify a book release. Maybe there's passion in the idea, but the execution feels like Stine just throwing everything at the wall and hoping it'll stick, but the wall is just a plastic sheet and everything thrown at it just oozes to the floor. 

Usually this is the part where I talk about the characters, but who cares? Do you? Do you look at Joe or Shawn or Sadie or Addie and really feel they have anything of substance to them to make you care? I liked the initial stuff with Joe's paranoia but that doesn't matter. I guess Joe and Sadie have good chemistry, but again, I'm guessing it's the Joe and Sadie from the ghost dream so again, none of that matters, the twist outright tells you it doesn't matter. Shawn is interesting enough as the focus, but his role is boiled down to "kid in one weird situation after another" so it's not like he ever has any moments to feel like an interesting character. I miss when Stine wrote characters like Carly Beth, or Gary Lutz or Hannah or Jerry Hawkins or god help me, even Evan Ross. Kids who at least had interesting characteristics that made them feel memorable. What about any Stine protagonist in the last decade plus has had any characteristic that isn't just "kid who is easily scared" or "average kid in scary situation"? That's right, these characters are so uninteresting that Evan Ross is cooler by comparison.

I said it back when I reviewed Say My Name! Say My Name! last year. I think modern Stine's work is finally reaching a point where it's all going through the motions. Adding whatever he wants because he thinks that's what could work. That we're likely never getting a Stine with effort ever again. I'd say "my goat washed" but was he even really a goat? Who knows, maybe he surprises me with Camp Bigfoot but I really doubt it at this point. I think this book just finally broke me. Not in an angry rage sort of way, just a "what are we even doing at this point" way. I don't hate R.L. Stine. Even if some of his recent actions (Again, the Instagram post using AI slop) have made me shake my head at him, I don't harbor a massive resentment towards the man. I just feel like we're at the twilight of Stine and his quality is just getting worse and worse and what books he releases feel less and less substantial. God love him, I hope he lives another couple decades, but that realization that we're really reaching the end is starting to come. And that books of this quality are more the norm for his twilight years than the exceptions anymore. Not the full norm, there's still a book or two I like. Hell, I like the majority of House of Shivers so far, but that rot is starting to set in. I'll still cover them because I'm in it til the wheels fall off, but I can't exactly say this book fills me with confidence for the future. I could always be wrong, but at this rate, I doubt I am. 

So nope. Can't recommend this. It's a book devoid of substance, and a book that reflects so perfectly what Stine's work has become. It's a book that annoyed me, angered me, but in the end just really made me sad that this is now mostly the norm. It's a book where Stine promised everything but left me feeling nothing but sad for him. Please, I beg of you, don't get the camp book wrong, Bob. 

Also this is blog #600. Yep, somehow this train keeps on moving. Will we make it to 1000? Hell if I know, but if you've stuck around for this long, thanks for reading my work.