Since it is October I was in the mood for something a little creepy, scary and Halloween-y to read, so I picked up this novel by RL Stine out of the YA section. I loved the Goosebumps books (and the TV series) - watching/reading with my kids when they were younger, so I had really high hopes for this book. I finished the book over a couple of days - reading in 1 to 2 hour blocks - so a quick read, but I just can't express how disappointed I was with the story. This book almost seemed like a draft that just needed to be rewritten again before it went to print. The very basic story line was a good idea, and I feel he could have explored that idea so much better Below are a few things that stood out (without being total spoilers).
-depended upon too many traditional vampire legends/folklore stories, something new or even a twist on the traditional would have been better
- I stumbled on some of the sentences and had to go back and reread them to make sure I read them correctly; some sentences/paragraphs did not flow well
-a lot of unaswered questions - small things that just made the reader say "what? how did they (the character) know that? or how could they (character and/or character's family) not realize what was happening?"
-the setting is a beach town - a lot of summer vacation homes/visitors - and according to the story the only entertainment was: the beach, the video arcade, carnival (when open), pizza place - even for the summer, it would seem that kids (and families) would venture outside of this small town with its limited entertainment (at least in real life) - these were obviously wealthy families who could afford summer homes and other entertainment
-the book is separated into 3 sections and only after the reader really gets into each section do you realize time has passed or you are dealing with a different group of characters in the same location
-there were a few classic RL Stine twists within the sections, but it seemed like he needed a lot of pages to set them up & the twist took 2 sentences to reveal and it wasn't as big of a change as I had expected
"The Vampire Club" short story at the end of the book was more of what I would consider classic RL Stine horror and I liked it better than the previous 300+ pages. I submitted a book review to B&N for the first time ever - just because I was so disappointed with this YA novel.
