Tagline: The letters of death…Back tagline: The chain letter returned like a curse.
Summary: Another chain letter has arrived. The group decides that it must be a joke. After all, the perpetrator of the original chain letter is dead and buried, the victim of a horrible illness. Yet the new chain letter is similar to the old ones. It is signed ‘Your Caretaker’ and insists they perform certain deeds, or else they will be hurt.
Fran receives the letter first. She refuses to perform her ‘deed’, and almost immediately she is killed. Then the group realises that the letters are no joke and the power that originally drove their friend to start the chain letters — the same power that killed him — is still alive.
And hungry for more victims.
First impressions: I’m super excited to get back into the Chain Letter world, but not impressed that a major spoiler is given away by the blurb. I’m happy we’ll actually get some deaths, but did we really have to know Fran gets killed straight away before we even start reading it? It sounds like the deeds will be harsher and any disobedience fatal, so at least the stakes are higher. I like the idea that any and all of them could potentially die, but it still would have made more of an impact if we learnt that while reading instead of from the cover. I wonder if anyone else will die! Also, what’s this about an Ancient Evil? Are we taking a supernatural turn? Let’s find out!
Recap
Roll call:
Alison – Our heroine who’s having relationship issues with Tony.
Tony – Our second protagonist and Alison’s boyfriend.
Fran – Alison’s bestie and the Caretaker’s first victim.
Brenda – Alison’s other bestie and Kipp’s girlfriend.
Kipp – Brenda’s boyfriend and Tony’s best friend.
Neil – The original Caretaker of the first book, now deceased.
Joan – Tony’s old love interest who hates Alison.
Sasha – The new girl on the scene that Tony start’s hanging with.
Eric – A wannabe detective that helps the group.
James Whiting – The previously unnamed victim of last summer’s accident.
We begin a few months after the previous one finished [Although it was published six years later], with our girl Fran arriving home from a hard day of working at McDonald’s. Summer’s almost over and she can’t wait to get to college in a few weeks and never have to worry about bagging fries again [I worked at KFC and tbh it’s still one of my favourite jobs, probably more for social aspect and the friends I made there than anything else though. I do not miss smelling like grease]. Checking the mailbox, she’s horrified to find an all-too-familiar purple envelope and rips it open before screaming at the words on the page.
[So someone’s taken over the reigns as Caretaker, huh? They never got up to Column III, so I guess it’s only fair. Who could it be though? Maybe Tony, who spent a whole week alone with Neil before his death!] Elsewhere, Alison and Tony are ‘trying to decide whether to make love or never speak to each other again’. [Fighting already? That’s a bad sign, they haven’t been together that long lol]. Last week, Alison received a late invitation to attend New York University to study drama and plans on going after initially being rejected due to the immense competition to get into the highly regarded drama department. Tony’s excited for her to receive all the opportunities she’ll get out if it and doesn’t mind that it’s on the other side of the country to UCLA, which would be a lot closer to him. He is upset, however, that their geographical distance didn’t factor into Alison’s decision:
Because Alison was acting as if she couldn’t understand why he was upset. She was acting as if she didn’t care.
He hoped she was acting. He really did love her, more than he liked to admit to himself.
[Honestly, why even jump into a relationship before you’re about to head off to college anyway?]. Alison’s also mad that he didn’t at least wait until after sex to bring up the relocation, which is also bugging him right now, because our sensitive heartthrob Tony can’t be intimate when his mind is somewhere else [I’ll be with you, Tony! ♥♥♥♥ Ditch that sex pest].
Tony admits to Alison that he’s just feeling sad because he’ll miss her so much and he’s worried she’ll find someone better than him at NYU. Even though he’s just being realistic and honest about how he feels, Alison interprets it as him calling her a slut and having no faith in her loyalty [Alison’s pissing me off already. They’re both young and hot and will have lots of admirers at college, so as if they’ll be able to make their relationship work long distance? Yeah it sucks, but that’s just life].
[Lol can’t believe I’m so invested in these characters’ lives]. Tony ends up telling her the difference between them is that he would never leave her, and suggests if she really wants to be with him, she’ll stay [Ugh don’t say that, Tony!]. Obviously she can’t do that [And it’s extremely unfair of him to even suggest that. Maybe I don’t like him anymore either lol] and they seemingly break up as he walks out the door.
Later, Alison heads over to Brenda’s for a shopping date, all the while thinking about Tony. She understands that people have to go their separate ways sometimes because life is just like that, but it doesn’t mean they have to break up:
She thought he was being immature about the whole matter. He wasn’t acting at all like the guy she had fallen in love with. That Tony had been as cool as an unlit candle and as secure as a rock. This new guy was clinging to her like an emotional cripple.
[His best friend who was also planning on killing him just died, Alison, cut him some slack! I agree with Tony, she’s really not being understanding at all]. At Brenda’s, the two girls discuss the fight with Tony and Brenda points out that if Alison does stay, and her and Tony break up six months down the line or something, she’ll have blown her big chance and have nothing to show for it. She encourages Alison to go to NYU and find a new boyfriend if she has to, because ‘”We’re young. We’re going to be in love dozens of times before it’s all over.”‘ [Brenda makes a very good point and it’s the exact same advice I’d give to my best friend if they were in a similar situation].
Alison doesn’t seem to appreciate the sentiment so Brenda changes the subject to the urgent voicemail she received from Fran [It was urgent Brenda, why haven’t you called her back yet?], and the girls decide to make a pit stop by her house before heading to the mall. There, Fran shows them the new letter:
[Why isn’t Alison’s name on the list? Why’s she safe from the Caretaker? By discussing the letter with her, are the others just making the situation worse for themselves?!] Alison wants to call the others while Brenda, much like last time, believes it’s all a joke. Fran, however, knows it’s real because her task is already in the classifieds, which once decoded, reads ‘Drown your puppy tonight, Fran’ [This new Caretaker isn’t messing around! Thanks to the blurb, we already know Fran dies so I guess we know she couldn’t complete her task]. Brenda decides it must be someone in the group who sent the letter, since it’s so similar to the original, and reckons it was probably Joan just trying to scare Fran, not really expecting her to go through with it, because ‘”Anybody who dresses like her has got to be sick”‘ [What, punky? Fuck off, Brenda].
Alison suggests her name isn’t on the list because this new Caretaker might be someone outside the group, someone who doesn’t know the full story of their accident in the desert or the original chain letters. If it was one of the seven [Well, six after Neil’s death in the last book] playing a joke, they’d know to include her [Makes sense to me! But then how would someone else even know about anything anyway?? And if we’re going down the supernatural route, I’m sure the ghost/demon/whatever else would also be aware of Alison’s involvement, right?]. Alison also believes they might even be innocent of the man’s death, because ‘for all they knew, the man could have been lying dead when they hit him’ [Yeah it’s possible, but none of them seemed to believe this during the first batch of letters].
Alison calls the others, but their phones all go to voicemail, thankfully even Joan’s, who Alison’s not too keen to speak to because Joan hasn’t forgiven her for ‘stealing the guy she considered to be her boyfriend’. Alison doesn’t understand why Joan’s so weird about it – she knows Tony had gone out with her a few times, but ‘Tony said he hadn’t even made out with Joan’ [Oof, so now Tony’s lying?! Pike, why are you trying to ruin these characters for me?]. She leaves a message for all three to call them back at Fran’s house and despite Brenda’s protests, Alison decides they’ll skip the mall trip and stay right here until they hear from everyone. As Fran pats Barney, her cocker spaniel, Alison hopes the new letter is just a joke, but Fran’s task is so horrible that she can’t help thinking that the new Caretaker doesn’t really want Barney dead – ‘Maybe he was only interested in having an excuse to harm Fran’ [I think you might be right, Alison!].
Back to Tony, who headed straight to the mall for a bite to eat after leaving Alison’s place. There he meets a beautiful ginger who looks about 21 named Sasha, who says she’s a nurse at the local hospital. For reasons unknown to him, he has the urge to impress her, so he lies about going to UCLA instead of the local community college. Sasha notices from his body’s stiffness that he’s got a back injury (an old football injury that’s flared up recently) and suggests a deep tissue massage might help. And guess what? It just so happens that Sasha’s considering being a physical therapist, so she knows all about deep tissue massages! Tony offers his body if she ever wants to practice [Tony, NOOOOO!], even though he’d be super mad if he ever caught Alison doing the same thing, and Sasha gives him her number before leaving so he can call her when he wants one [OK I guess I hate everyone in this book now].
Tony then heads over to Kipp’s place, whose never-before-heard-of little sister Lesley is tending to an injured bird [What an angel]. Up in Kipp’s room, the one loose end the first book left untied finally gets a knot – the trail of blood left behind after Kipp’s kidnapping was a result of Neil siphoning his own blood over a period of time [Gross]:
It still boggled Tony that Neil, in his weakened condition, had had the strength to kidnap Kipp. Neil had done a lot of amazing things back during the days of the chain letters –some were almost supernatural.
[I’m interpreting that as Neil had some help that we didn’t know about. Most likely supernatural help from the titular Ancient Evil?!]. We also learn that Kipp and Brenda are going through a rough patch, with Kipp suggesting Brenda doesn’t find him attractive or even like him any more [Brenda was always my least favourite. She doesn’t deserve you, Kipp!], before Tony complains some more about his own issues with Alison [Can we please change the subject, I’m sick of hearing about it and we’re only on page 34 lol].
The boys finally listen to the answering machine and Tony calls Fran’s house, where Alison reads him the letter. It’s similar to Neil’s letters alright, but Tony’s never been able to fully comprehend that Neil had written them, because they’d been so crafty while Neil was so simple – ‘it was almost as if the letters had been dictated to Neil by someone else’ [OK, so Neil definitely had help]. Tony thinks back to one of the last things Neil said during their big showdown:
“I kept wondering and worrying and I tried, but this thing got in my head and I couldn’t get rid of it. I don’t know where it came from. It was like a voice, saying this is true and this is a lie. It wouldn’t shut up! I had to listen, and I did listen, and then…I did all this.”
[I wonder if Pike knew there’d be a sequel and purposely set up all these references to Neil being helped in the first book? Otherwise he’s done really well to tie them both together!] Tony hangs up to call Joan, whose mother reports that Joan has been backpacking in the mountains for a week and isn’t back for three more days, ruling her out as a suspect. Kipp suggests someone outside their group got hold of one of Neil’s letters, but Tony’s sure they destroyed them all, and any others Neil had would have been destroyed in the fire [And if someone did find a copy of an old letter, they’d still know to put Alison on this new one anyway].
Next we’re introduced to a new character, a young man named Eric Valence who dreams of being an homicide detective. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t pass the physical to get into the police academy due to being deaf in one ear and 50% deaf in the other one [Note from future: I was waiting for this to have some relevance to the story, but it’s only ever alluded to a few more times and serves no purpose other than inclusivity, which is nice :)]. He vows to get there one day, even if it takes a little longer [That’s the spirit, Eric!]. His uncle is a cop though, albeit one that just sits behind a desk all night, but Eric visits him at work often and his uncle lets him look through all the unsolved murder files of the last 20 or so years. It’s all confidential information, some of which hasn’t even been made public, but in ‘a weak moment’, Uncle John had given Eric the passwords to access the files.
Eric is looking through them one night when he comes across a file on the late Neil Hurly. It’s a closed case that doesn’t appear to be an unsolved murder [So why is it in a file with unsolved murders?], but nosy Eric notices the main form of identification was an emerald ring that Neil always wore [Which Alison now owns] which was undamaged from the fire [True, the emerald was apparently fine]. Eric is super suss about this because last year, he dated a girl that loved emeralds and wanted to get her one for her birthday. The relationship ended before he ever bought one, but in his research about the gem, Eric discovered that emeralds are soft, chip easy and can be ruined simply by ‘forgetting to remove it before washing the dishes’ [I didn’t know that! We love an educational book!], so there’s no way Neil’s ring would have survived the fire. It must have been placed on the corpse’s hand after the fire. Neil had no dental records [What? Why?], so the only other form of identifying his body was his mother who confirmed he was home alone when the fire happened.
Eric reads that the Hurlys hadn’t always lived in that area, so the next morning he calls the dentists in their old town and one of them sends through some X-rays of Neil’s 13-year-old teeth. He compares them with the X-rays of the burnt body and realises they’re two different people [!!!]. He then plans to pay Mrs. Hurly a visit to confront her, suspecting foul play [He’s practically frothing at the mouth at this point! It’s cute. But at the same time, this isn’t something he should be interfering with. He’s not a cop and he’ll just create more trauma for poor Mrs. Hurly :(].
On Friday night, four days after Fran received the letter and one day after the deadline for Kipp to receive his, Alison gets a call at 1am from Fran’s mother. She needs a lift to the hospital since she can’t drive in her hysterical state because Fran’s been in a car accident [!!!!].
Since Alison still lives in the tract, so far away from everyone else, she organises for Tony to drive Mrs. Darey to the hospital and meets them there, where they all learn that Fran is dead:
“Her head went through the windscreen and struck a thick branch of the tree at an unfavourable angle. That broke her neck and –”
“And what?”
The officer looked puzzled. “I have been to a hundred serious car accident and I don’t know how it happened. It must have been the shattered glass of the windscreen in combination with the impact of her skull on the tree.”
“What are you saying?”
The officer lowered his gaze once more. “Your friend was decapitated in the accident. We found her head in a nearby bush.”
[Poor Fran but I love this! Was she decapitated before she hit the tree? Or was she still alive after the crash and then decapitated? Also, would she really have been taken to the hospital if she was already dead? Like, they’ve given Mrs. Darey hope she’s still alive by just saying she’s been in an accident and is in hospital. Wouldn’t the police just come to Mrs. Darey’s door and tell her?]
The rest of the group meets later that morning to discuss their situation, including Joan who’s back from her hiking trip. Kipp’s received the letter now, and his task is to ‘Burn sister’s entire right arm’ [Wow, this Caretaker really wants to kill them, giving them tasks he knows they won’t complete. Hopefully we get more deaths, even though I like most of them]. They decide the only thing that makes sense is that Neil indeed had an accomplice, but they’re all stumped as to why Alison wouldn’t be on the note [Interestingly, no-one seems to suspect she’s the accomplice. It’s too obvious to be true, but like you’d at least be suspicious, right?].
Brenda and Joan dismiss Fran’s death as a simple accident, although none of them can explain how she was decapitated. If it happened after the accident, there would have been saw marks, so it doesn’t make sense. Most of them believe she was run off the road, though. Tony suggests the accomplice/new Caretaker could be someone connected to the man they ran over in the desert. They still have no idea who he was, after all [Good point. I bet we’ll find out]. Anyway, Kipp refuses to do his deed and eventually decides to go away for a while, much like Fran did in the first book, and not tell anyone where [Well Neil and Brenda found out where Fran was pretty easily, so good luck, Kipp].
After the meeting, Tony heads to the high school to run around the track. Soon, he’s exhausted and falls asleep in the grass [Poor guy didn’t sleep last night after Fran’s death. Still, I would go home to my bed, not lay in the grass]. He wakes from a nightmare and, mad that Alison had suggested they go to the police earlier, which would certainly result in Tony’s incarceration, he decides to call Sasha [Oh, Tony]. She invites him over and they flirt hardcore, and when he brings up a massage, she tells him ‘”You can have a massage and then some, Tony”‘ [Just fuck already lol].
They then head to a club for a boogie [So no massage?], but Sasha , who also smokes [Gross, smokers are jokers xoxo], can tell his mind is somewhere else and asks him about it on the way home. He opens up about his issues with Alison [Ugh don’t start this again], and Sasha suggests they drive by her house to see if she’s with someone else just like he is [I don’t trust Sasha, there’s something off. Could she be the accomplice? She did initiate their first conversation at the mall after all!].
We then jump to Alison to see what she’s been up to since the meeting. She drives around aimlessly until she arrives at a beautiful lake in the mountains where she meets a handsome guy around her age, Chris, and follows him back to his lakeside cabin for a little chat on the porch. [Surely the same cabin where Tony took Neil before he died?].
As they talk, Alison feels as though she really knows him even though they’ve never met, but can’t explain why. She asks what he does for work, and he explains that he’s a farmer, growing seeds and harvesting them when the time is right. He says his farm is in Los Angeles, and admits to growing people when Alison jokingly asks what he grows [The whole conversation seems off; I think he’s definitely being literal here, not that Alison seems to understand it yet. I can’t tell if he’s evil or good though].
He then tells Alison she’s grown up quickly, and admits they met not long ago, but that she wouldn’t remember him. He tells Alison he’s here to guide her [So he’s a guardian angel or something?] and seems to know about the chain letters, explaining the letters aren’t important and it’s more about what they represent – ‘”An unbroken chain. It’s very ancient – not a happy thing. But it can be broken”‘. He reveals being put in the box on the new chain letters is worse than death and that an act of love can break the chain:
“You have to hurry. Go to where it all began. There are two places, you know. Find them and you will reach the end of the chain.”
He mentions being her ‘”greatest admirer”‘ [Is it Neil? Like an angel version of him or something? Or just a standard guardian angel? Or maybe even the Ancient Evil posing as a friend?!] and tells her a someone will come to help her but she needs to trust that person, before saying goodbye and entering the cabin. Alison sneaks a peak inside, but there’s no sign of Chris or anyone staying in the cabin, so she heads off.
On the way home, she decides the two places where it all began must be the road where they hit the man and Neil’s mind, since he was the one who started the chain letters. He’s dead though, so the next best place to start is his burned down house, where she finds not-detective Eric Valence, who introduces himself as a police officer [You’re a dirty little liar, Eric!]. Despite not believing his lie, Alison’s suspicious that the police could be onto them and refuses to talk to him about anything. She turns to leave, but Eric says he knows Neil didn’t die in the fire and wants the truth, and Alison stupidly admits he died of cancer. Eric can tell she knows more than she’s letting on and explains he just wants to help her, and after remembering Chris’ words about trusting someone, Alison agrees to join forces with him [We know he’s trustworthy because we’ve already met him, but like, would you really trust a complete stranger with the information she’s about to spill? Especially since the letter said not to discuss it with anyone outside the group? Not that Alison’s on the letter, but still].
Over coffee, Eric explains his real connection to the police and how he’d stumbled on Eric’s file. Alison then tells him everything, starting with the night of the Beach Boys concert right up until Fran’s untimely death. Thankfully, Eric believes every word because the story is too extraordinary to make up, but according to Alison’s mind, he seems to be taken aback when she reveals Tony is her boyfriend [That’s a bit conceited, Alison].
Since he’s already promised to keep everything confidential and she refuses to go to the police, Eric suggests the group focus all their attention on finding the identity of the man in the desert, explaining ‘”The fact that there was no other car in the area indicates that he might have been dumped there, already dead”‘. Eric also thinks it’s possible whoever sent the first letters is sending them again and asks if Neil ever indicated he had help. Just as Tony realised earlier, Alison remembers what Neil had said about the voice in his mind, but doesn’t believe he had a physical accomplice:
“I’m not so sure about that,” Eric disagreed. “If he was mentally ill from a tumour in his brain, then his accomplice could have dominated him in such a fashion that he would be unable, even at the end, to admit that he was working with someone. It’s a theory that’s all. We’ll have a better idea which direction to take when we find out who the man was.”
Eric then takes Alison back to the station where they use a filter to look up people matching the man’s description on the computer files, because ‘”you wouldn’t believe how many people disappear in L.A every month”‘, to which Alison stupidly asks ‘”Where do they all go?”‘ [How the fuck would he know, Alison? Would they be missing if anyone knew where they went?].
After a few hours of searching, they find an article about a missing businessman named James Whiting, with the accompanying photo resembling the man in the desert. He was married with two kids and owned a record store that’s still going, and since they can’t find an address for his wife, Carol, they decide they’ll visit the store in the morning. Then Eric realises the date on the article – it’s from the middle of July, whereas the concert took place at the end of the month, meaning James was already missing for two weeks before they struck him down. From Alison’s earlier retelling of the story, Eric knows the blood around James’ mouth was wet, indicating he had died that night. So where was he and who was he with for those two weeks?! [Ooooh, the plot thickens!]. Eric is also disturbed by how bare James Whiting’s missing person file is, ‘”as if parts of it have been erased”‘ [The plot thickens again!].
Eric follows Alison home in his own car to make sure she arrives safe, and even walks her to the front door [What a sweetheart!]. He’s worried about her, but she reassures him that something bad only happens when it’s your turn on the chain letter, which reminds her to tell him her name isn’t actually on the list. Although Alison believes she’s safe from the Caretaker because of it, this little fact worries Eric even more. She tells him to call her in the morning and gives him a hug and a kiss on the cheek goodbye.
We then jump back to Tony and Sasha, who happen to be watching Alison’s house at that exact moment, because of course they are [Can’t wait for Tony to blow it out of proportion and start whining again, even though he’s the one trying to get a massage from his new friend. I’m sure Sasha will be more than happy to encourage his relationship fears]. Sure enough, Tony decides she’s a ‘cheating bitch’ and ‘She’s everybody’s girl. Whoever wants her can have her’ [For fuck’s sake Tony, it was a friendly kiss on the damn cheek! I can’t stand this guy now, Pike’s really ruined him for me >:|]. He asks why Sasha was so adamant they come by, and we get this exchange:
Her green eyes were on him. “Sometimes a girl gets a feeling about someone just by hearing about her. I had a feeling about Alison.”
“What do you feel about her now?”
“That she’s a whore.”
Tony nodded and started the car. “My sentiments exactly.”
[Omfg I can’t with these two. It was a kiss on the cheek!!!!!!!!!! Tony can fuck right off, and so can Sasha. She’s the whore, offering deep tissue massages all over town. She’s also clearly our new bad guy, the Ancient Evil, because you know who else had green eyes? James Whiting and Neil].
They return to Sasha’s apartment where she forces him to accept a massage while he’s naked. He falls asleep on the massage table and has a nightmare of Kipp visiting his Aunt’s house, investigating a noise in the garage and being doused in gasoline and set on fire [Being burned alive is one of the ways I definitely do not want to die, so I hope that’s not a premonition for Kipp :(]. Tony wakes up and calls Kipp’s aunt’s place, and Kipp answers. Relieved, Tony tells him everything’s fine before hanging up and returning to Sasha, who asks if he was calling Alison. Tony tells him he was calling his friend Kipp, who’s ‘”staying with his aunt in Santa Barbara for a few days”‘ [No-one is supposed to know that, Tony, you fkn idiot. Sasha’s gonna go kill Kipp now. I hate Tony] to avoid some trouble, but it’s a long story.
Sasha pulls him to the bedroom and asks her to tell him about it to help put his mind at ease [Don’t you do it, Tony! Sasha could not be more transparent lol]. Idiot Tony proceeds to tell Sasha about Neil, the chain letters and the new Caretaker [It doesn’t say he tells her about the man in the desert, but surely he would have for context, right?]. Sasha ‘listened silently between caresses and kisses’ and when his story’s over, they make out some more before falling asleep.
The next morning, Eric calls Alison with bad news that the record store’s current owner wouldn’t be in until Tuesday, but the good news is that same owner is none other than the brother of James Whiting [Hurrah!]. Alison also doesn’t hear from Tony all Sunday, despite trying to contact and come Monday, there’s still no sign of him – he doesn’t even show up to Fran’s funeral [I hate him. That’s so rude. She was your friend too, Tony].
After the funeral, Alison heads back to the lake but finds the cabin just as empty, only this time there seems to be a layer of dust over everything, indicating no-one has stayed there in months. She briefly wonders if her encounter with Chris was all a dream or an hallucination, but knows in her heart it was real. Later that night, Brenda calls Alison with some bad news about Kipp:
Brenda moaned. “He was at his aunt’s. Tony just called me. The Caretaker got him there. Soaked him in gasoline and set him on fire. Oh, Ali, Kipp’s gone.”
[The exact same way Kipp died in Tony’s dream!! Maybe Ancient Evil Sasha manipulated Tony’s dream into a nightmare in order to get Kipp’s location or something like that?] Alison calls Eric to tell him the bad news. She plans or organise a meeting with the remaining group tomorrow, but Eric tells her to do it in the afternoon so he can be there for it, because he wants to go to the record store and the newspaper office first to see if he can find any information to help them about James and who’s sending the letters. He seems to suspect the Caretaker has made a mistake, but annoyingly won’t elaborate. Then Alison tries to call Tony, who just breathes into the phone without talking, and Alison’s positive she hears a girl whispering in the background [It’s that slut Sasha!].
At the meeting the next afternoon, Brenda reveals her task – ‘Cut off your trigger finger and give it to Joan with her letter’. Eric rocks up and as expected, Tony is super rude to him, even though he’s just trying to help them. Tony eventually reveals he knew where Kipp had been, but won’t say if he told anyone [Fuck you, Tony! It’s literally your fault Kipp’s dead] before storming off. Alison chases after him, but he’s not interested in anything she has to say. He calls her a whore before spitefully confessing that after he saw her kissing Eric [IT WAS ON THE CHEEK], he cheated on her with Sasha, who’s in his car right now watching them. Alison notes the girl’s weird green eyes and the evil that she radiates [Seriously, she’s gotta be the Ancient Evil].
Tony then spits on Alison’s face and storms back to his car, where he makes out with Sasha before driving off, laughing [I really hate Tony now. What a disgusting piece of shit, especially when he’s acting this way purely based on his own assumptions. I can’t believe how great he was in the first book, and now he’s a completely different person. I hope he dies, or at least doesn’t get a happy ending. If Alison ends up with him again, I swear to god…].
Eric approaches, telling her the other two girls are too unstable for his information, so he tells just her – he didn’t find anything out at the newspaper office, but James Whiting’s brother seemed elusive, like he knew something, but wouldn’t wouldn’t talk. He did, however, give Eric the address of Carol, James’ wife.
Alison and Eric visit Carol and Alison tells her all about what happened to her husband the night of the concert, but not about the letters. To Alison’s surprise, Carol gives her a hug and tells her not to be so hard on herself because James was already dead when they ran over him, and she knows who killed him [Whaaaat?!].
She launches into a story about how her husband suddenly started losing weight and spending all his time at the record store, even after hours. Eventually, Carol found him snorting cocaine and after checking their bank balances, which he looked after, she realised he’d blown all their savings on drugs. She confronted him about it and he was willing to get help, and that’s when she found some something while doing some gardening:
“I dug a little deeper and found a green trash bag filled with the remains of desecrated animals. There were dogs and cats and even a skunk. And all of them had been beheaded and their fur shaved with strange symbols.”
[Fran was decapitated too! Definitely a connection between the cult and the new Caretaker]. Carol didn’t suspect James of being involved, but when she told him about her discovery she could tell he was responsible. After she took the kids and went to stay with her sister, he called her, begging her to come back and admitting he was trying to get away from some bad people he’d gotten involved with, including a young woman named Charlene who he’d been having an affair with [Sasha maybe?!]. It turns out Charlene was involved in a satanic cult and needed James ‘”to be her victim in a ritual murder”‘:
“Charlene was an apprentice. She wanted to be a fully fledged witch. To be one she had to murder an innocent. Someone who loved her.”
Charlene, whose real name was Jane, ‘”had committed suicide by falling on to a propped-up knife”‘ in her bedroom, surrounded by black candles and pentagons painted on her body with her own blood [This is intense!]. Before that though, she confessed to her parents that she’d pounded a sharp needle into her lover’s skull [Oof, brutal] earlier that night and dumped his body in the desert. They’d just assumed she was high on drugs at the time and sent her to bed, never even suspecting she was involved with Satanism. Charlotte/Jane’s suicide was on the same night as the Beach Boys concert, which means James was definitely dead before Alison and the gang hit him [Well that’s a relief for them, but I wonder why they’ve been targeted with the chain letters if it’s not because they killed him?]. Strangely enough, Jane’s body went missing from the morgue before she could be buried, and Carol believes members of the cult came and took it.
At one point, Alison asks what hair colour Jane had, presumably suspecting it’s Sasha, but Carol says the girl had blonde hair [Hair dye is a thing, so it’s probably still Sasha anyway]. Anyway, they ask Carol not to go to the police and she’s totally understanding, since it’s not like Alison’s group did anything except give James as decent a burial they could [There’s something bothering me about this whole scene – Alison and Eric introduced themselves to Carol using fake names, but Carol is calling them by their actual names the whole time, and no-one seems to pick up on it. Is it just a simple editing mistake, or does Carol know more than she’s letting on? Probably just an issue in the proofreading process I guess].
Carol doesn’t know the address for Jane’s parents, but knows their last name, Clemens, and that they lived in Riverside. Alison wants to check up on Brenda first before heading to Riverside, so they head to her place and find Brenda drunk off whisky and missing her right index finger [Honestly at this point, they know they have to complete the task if they want to live. Luckily for Brenda, hers was probably the easiest to do, morally at least]. Alison also realises that just like the original Caretaker’s tasks, these new ones are individually tailored to each group member, but with one big difference:
…each task was personally damning. Fran had loved her puppy more than anything. Kipp had loved his sister more than anybody. and Brenda loved herself, her body – she was incredibly vain. But her vanity had now taken a serious blow. For the rest of her life she would be disfigured.
[Good point, Alison! Joan loves her bad girl image, so I wonder what her new task will be].
Alison and Eric then head to Joan’s, since the Caretaker seems to be speeding up the cycle by having each person deliver the letter personally to the next recipient, but they learn from Joan’s father that Joan left right after Brenda came over to drop something off, and he has no idea where she went. Alison wants to check on Tony, thinking Joan may have completed her task already and delivered the letter to him. Alison also believes that Sasha [I’ll just keep calling her Sasha because that’s who we mainly know her as, but we’ll just have to remember she’s the same person as Jane/Charlotte] has done something to his mind to make him act the way he did today [I guess that could be true, but I still don’t like him anymore xox]. Eric is adamant they visit Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, arguing that the reason Alison’s name isn’t part of the chain letter might be because ‘”the Caretaker knows you won’t be around when he gets that far”‘ [Alison interprets this as Joan’s task being to kill her, but with the new pattern of tasks, it makes more sense that Tony’s deed would be to harm Alison].
They head to The Clemens’ place where they’re greeted by Jane’s father. His wife dropped dead, seemingly of of a heart attack, while dusting Jane’s room shortly after their daughter had died. Looking at the photos around the living room, Alison recognises a photo of the blonde-haired Jane, who has stunning green eyes… Sasha!!!! [Duh, Fred]. Alison grows hysterical and starts shouting about how Jane is alive and is the reason Mrs. Clemens had a heart attack, upsetting Mr. Clemens, so Eric has to drag her out of the house.
Then she realises that the lake she’d visited where she’d met Chris is where Tony took Neil before he died, and Chris must be reincarnated version of Neil, which is why he seemed so familiar despite being a stranger [Took you long enough, Alison]. They head to the desert to dig up Neil’s body, which we know from the first book was buried in the grave they’d originally dug for James Whiting.
Elsewhere, Tony is sleeping at home having yet another nightmare. In it, he’s trapped in a metal box, a metaphor of the box in the letter. Brenda suddenly materialises in the room, missing some fingers and with her now-whiteless eyes like ‘twin black marbles in a flat face’. She hands him a knife and explains they just need to open their hearts so they can leave before opening her blouse and encouraging him to plant the knife in her chest. He refuses and Brenda’s features dramatically become witch-like, a bigger knife appearing in her own hand. She tries to stab Tony’s heart instead, but he ends up killing her in self-defence.
Tony’s suddenly out of the box and inside Neil’s room, watching him as he gets rejected by Alison after asking her out. Tony then grabs the phone and asks Alison out himself, and she accepts, before Tony’s suddenly back in the metal box. Alison appears with a knife and tries to stab him, but he manages to trip her and she falls on the knife before turning into Sasha, who giggles as she tells Tony this isn’t the box but just a warm-up before leading him away.
Tony awakes from the nightmare and finds Sasha asleep nearby. He notices that she’s still wearing her blouse, something she’s never taken off [That’s because you’ve been fucking a dead body, Tony!]. Sasha wakes up and asks what he dreamed about, and it’s like he has no choice, with something deep inside forcing him to tell her. Sasha then tells him she had met Neil in the desert two months after they hit James Whiting while he was bringing flowers to the grave:
“I kissed him to make him feel better. I kissed his head. I kissed his knee. Do you remember he had a sore knee?”
“Yeah. He had a bone tumour in his leg. He ended up with a brain tumour. That’s what killed him.” Of course, Neil had not had these tumours two months after the incident in the desert. He had only developed them later.
[So Sasha had given Neil the cancer so she could manipulate him more easily!]. She explains that she was the one talking to Neil inside his head, and explains that she’s gone further than kissing with Tony, so he’ll do more for her than Neil ever did [OK, so I guess Tony isn’t so bad after all. Still, he wasn’t that great in this book before Sasha was on the scene either].
Joan arrives at the door and hands Tony a bag, telling him she did what she had to do and now it’s his turn. She appears to recognise Sasha, who tells her ‘”You’ll know me a lot better sooner”‘ and that she’ll come for her later before shutting the door in her face. Tony finds a gun and Brenda’s severed finger in the bag, along with his task from the Caretaker – ‘Blow Alison’s brains out’ [Alison isn’t on the list because she’s supposed to die before her turn! So Joan’s task was to provide the weapon that would kill Alison? I’m not sure if that makes sense with the pattern of Column III’s tasks, because Joan hates Alison. Maybe it’s more about what killing her will do to Tony? Not sure why she had to bring Tony Brenda’s severed trigger finger either].
The gun is fully loaded and now Tony hears Sasha’s voice inside his own head encouraging him to kill Alison, revealing that she and Eric are digging up Neil’s grave in the desert right now. Sasha tells him that after he shoots the ‘”whore digging in the mud”‘, they’ll bury her and make love on her grave before revealing what we already know – she’s the Caretaker.
Meanwhile, true to Sasha’s word, Eric and Alison are digging in the makeshift grave and are just discovering Neil’s body when Eric’s knocked unconscious with a baseball bat. It’s Sasha and Tony, who’s well and truly under her spell at this point. Sasha explains there’s an endless amount of Caretakers who’ll come after her and that the chain letters are an initiation process, preparing people to welcome them into their hearts before damning their souls [I like this concept! I think it could have been explained more clearly though, because I’m not entirely sure I’m understanding it correctly].
As Tony prepares to shoot Alison, Eric grabs Sasha’s leg and yanks her down into the hole, confusing Tony long enough for Alison to knock the gun from his hands with a shovel and whack him in the head. Sasha’s got the upper hand over Eric by now and with Tony recovering quickly, Alison bolts to her car. Before she can escape though, Sasha smashes through the window and grabs a fistful of Alison’s hair, the shards of glass lacerating her arm in several places. Instead of blood dripping out, it’s embalming fluid [Gross].
Alison gets the car started and speeds off, a clump of her hair ripping off in Sasha’s grasp in the process. The pain causes Alison to drive into a clump of tumbleweeds, but as she reverses she hits something. She loses precious time debating whether to check if it was Tony she’d ran over, allowing Sasha to rip the door off its hinges:
The girl stood in the moonlight three feet to Alison’s left, dripping embalming fluid from her crushed guts and grinning from ear to ear. There was a tyre mark across her tattered black blouse. Alison saw how the girl could have survived the wreck with Fran. She must have been in the car with Fran, after all.
[Love this description!]. Sasha forces Alison over to where Tony has the gun pointed at Eric and throws her to his feet. She explains how she had to intervene to get the group to Column III because Neil couldn’t take them that far, and Alison realises they got through Neil’s deranged madness with Fran, ‘the one girl in the whole world who loved him’. Also remembering how Chris told her love can break the chain and to trust what’s in her heart, Alison attacks Tony with some warm words of love before wrapping her hand around his on the gun he’s got aimed at her chest and pulling the trigger herself.
This breaks Tony from Sasha’s spell and in a fit of rage he shoots her in the head at point blank. As Tony and Eric mourn a dying Alison, who’s at feeling at peace since she’s saved Tony from the box, a figure approaches out of nowhere as Alison closes her eyes. The stranger [We know it’s Chris, the same guy Alison met at the cabin] tells Eric and Tony that it’s over and they’re safe.
A long, snake-like creature escapes Sasha’s mouth and lunges for Alison, but Chris is too quick for it, crushing its head before telling them Alison has passed a great test. Tony recognises Neil’s eyes and voice from the stranger and begs him to heal Alison before she dies, and Chris/Neil lets them in on a little secret:
“Joan took a long time to bring the gun to your house, Tony, because she first had to find blanks to fill it with. She never did the bidding of the Caretaker. She fooled the Caretaker.”
[Wow, who’d have though Joan would be the unlikely hero of the book! I wish we’d seen more of her in both books, she’s great]. He goes on to explain that Sasha died because the gun was pressed against her temple, the weakest part of the skull [But isn’t she immortal?], and Eric realises that although the gun was pressed against Alison’s chest, it only would have torn up the skin and won’t be fatal. Then he disappears into the night as Alison begins stirring and the book ends.
Final thoughts
I’m not too sure what I think of this one. I don’t think I’m entirely sure of what was going on exactly. From my understanding, the purpose of the three columns was to prepare them for the box, and then when they were in there, they’d become Caretakers themselves, which would then continue the never-ending chain. I think that sounds right, but it just wasn’t explained well maybe?
This article explains that Pike only wrote this sequel because he was offered lots of money, so I think he’s done really well connecting both books without having to retcon anything, which is a huge credit to his writing abilities. If you think about it, although a supernatural element was quickly dismissed by the group in Chain Letter, it makes a lot more sense for Neil to have had Sasha’s help throughout his turn as Caretaker since he was so weak, and he even alluded to being influenced in the final showdown. There’s even a decent amount of throwbacks to the first book’s events that help tie it all together as one complete story rather than two separate ideas.
My biggest issue was the strong focus on Tony and Alison’s melodramatic relationship, which I found to be huge drainer that didn’t feel consistent with their characters in the first book. Tony’s behaviour can be explained by Sasha’s influence, but to be honest I wasn’t really feeling him because of how much he was whingeing about his situation with Alison anyway. Alison wasn’t as bad, but I definitely liked her better in the first book too. I wish we’d spent more time with the other members of the group, especially Joan who had the smallest role in both books but still managed to be a standout character to me.
I definitely didn’t enjoy the sequel as much as the original, so 67 severed trigger fingers out of 103!
