Tagline: He had to learn her secret—or die trying!
Back tagline: Dying for a Kiss
Summary: She’s pale as a ghost, blonde, and eerily beautiful—and she seems to need him as much as he wants her. Cory Brooks hungers for Anna Corwin’s kisses, drowns in her light blue eyes. He can’t get her out of his mind. And the trouble has only begun: Shadyside High’s star gymnast is losing sleep, skipping practice and acting weird. All the guys have noticed, but only Cory’s friend Lisa knows the truth: Anna Corwin is dead and living on Fear Street. Now Cory must explore its menacing darkness to discover the truth. He has already been warned: come to Fear Street and you’re dead!
First impressions: Cory, Lisa and David are mentioned so fkn often throughout the series, so I thought I’d finally recap this one and see what they’re like. I remember reading this when I was younger, but it’s been well over a decade so I’m not too sure what I’m in for. I still can’t believe how much spoilers are in the blurbs for the earlier books compared to how vague and misleading the later books can be, lol. Gymnastics is an interesting sport of choice, but I suppose it was all the rage back in the ’80s, right?
This cover’s pretty bland, but it’s not the worst one we’ve seen. Kinda spooky with the fog, and very mysterious. I have several questions though –why is Anna standing in the middle of the road so late at night? Is this how she walks, or is she dodging away from something [Imagine how terrifying it would be to see someone’s top half swaying side to side like that as they walk towards you down a dark road on a foggy night! Actually, it’d be fkn terrifying in the daytime too]? Why is the road so narrow? Maybe we’ll find out. Let’s read!
Recap
Roll call:
Cory – Our Anna-obsessed protagonist.
Anna – The mysterious new girl.
David – Cory’s bestie.
Lisa – Cory’s best friend/love interest before Anna came along.
Brad – Anna’s overprotective brother.
We begin with a prologue where Anna Corwin is lying ‘perfectly dead’ at the bottom of the stairs, having been pushed to her death by a sibling who’s giving us a bad guy POV. This murderous sibling has clearly always been jealous of Anna and has dreamed of killing her a lot, and never even thought it would be as easy as one push. Then the front door opens, and our bad guy puts on an Oscar-worthy performance of devastation as they rush to who I’m guessing is the parents [Surely the parents would be like, “How long as she been like that? Did you even call an ambulance or something?”].
We now meet Cory Brooks, our third-person protagonist who’s standing on his head and one hand while balancing a full lunch tray with the other just to prove to his ‘best friend and fellow daredevil,’ David Metcalf, that he can in fact do it. But then he’s distracted by a beautiful, pale blonde walking across the cafeteria, which causes him to drop the tray and fall face first into his spaghetti. The girl disappears but those few seconds were enough to captivate Cory, who immediately asks David who she is but David has no idea who he’s talking about because he didn’t see her [Is she a g-g-g-g-ghost?!].
Later at Cory’s locker we meet Lisa Blume, an apparent Cher lookalike whose locker is next to his, and I’m sure I detect some flirting but she seems to be in the friendzone, the poor girl. They’ve lived next door to each other in North Hills [Rich!] since they were little kids and are so comfortable with each other that ‘their friendship seemed a natural part of life.’ Lisa offers him a spare T-shirt to wear since his is covered in sauce from his spaghetti faceplant, but what the hell is she thinking?! Cory can’t wear a girl’s shirt!!! Luckily for him it’s from The Gap [Do I smell product placement?] which, according to Lisa, makes it’s unisex [I have no idea if this is accurate information or not. We did have Gap stores in Australia up until a few years ago, but I’m not sure how successful the business was over here. I’m sure it was huge in the ’90s though!].
After Lisa heads off to class, Cory notices the ‘hauntingly beautiful’ blonde girl again as she’s scurrying to class. She walks so lightly that she seemed to be floating, which is Stine’s subtle way of telling us she might be a ghost, and he calls out for her to wait. Blondie stops, looks scared and says something, but he can’t hear her all this way down the hall. He can apparently lipread from this far away, though, and he’s almost certain she’s saying ‘”Please don’t,”‘ and then she vanishes into a classroom.
Three days later, Cory’s had the worst gymnastics practice of his life and complains about looking ‘”like a spaz on the bars today.”‘ He storms out of the locker room knowing full well why he was so shit – he hasn’t seen Anna since that brief moment in the hallway on Monday (but not for lack of trying) and he’s unable to think of anything but her [This is extremely unhealthy, Cory. You saw her for less than a minute all up. Provably less than 3o seconds!]. He even had what I can only assume was a wet dream about her on Monday night:
In the dream he was eating lunch in school. She seemed to float across the lunchroom. She came up to his table, her blue eyes shimmering like the ocean in sunlight. She leaned down and her hair fell over his face, soft and fragrant.
She started to kiss his face, his cheek, his forehead, his other cheek, soft kisses, so soft he can feel them.
He wanted to feel her kisses. He tried to feel them. But he couldn’t feel a thing.
He reached out to touch her face. His hand seemed to go right through her.
And then he woke up.
Anyway, Lisa’s still here because she working on the school paper, and they start walking home together. Lisa presses up against him during the stroll because she definitely likes him, although Cory assumes she’s trying to keep warm, and asks about his plans for Saturday night. Neither of them have plans yet, and because he’s completely oblivious to her practically throwing herself at him, instead of proposing they hang out, he asks if she’s seen this mystery girl. Lisa recognises the description as new student Anna Corwin, and Cory immediately pries for more information, ecstatic that someone finally knows who he’s talking about because apparently everyone he’s asked so far has never seen her.
Anna doesn’t talk much in class though, just haunts the back of the classroom like a ghost [We get it, Stine], so all Lisa knows is that she moved here from Melrose and she lives on Fear Street. We now get the very first description of the eponymous street, which has ‘a special meeting for everyone in Shadyside.’ It’s allegedly cursed, and the blackened shell of Simon Fear’s burned-out mansion sits on the first block, where terrifying howls of hideous pain are said to be heard escaping from late at night [Ooky spooky!]:
People in Shadyside grew up hearing the stories about Fear Street—about people who wandered into the woods there and disappeared forever; about strange creatures that supposedly roamed the Fear Street woods; about mysterious fires that couldn’t be put out, and bizarre accidents that couldn’t be explained; about vengeful spirits that haunted the old houses and prowled through the trees; about unsolved murders and unexplained mysteries.
As they reach their houses, Lisa tries her luck about Saturday night again, but she’s barely said a word before Cory rudely cuts her off with a goodbye and jogs up his driveway, his mind on Anna Corwin and her ‘nice, old-fashioned name.’ Later that he calls the operator for the Corwins’ phone number and since it’s the operator’s last shift, she’s happy to break confidentiality rules and provides Cory with their address as well. Cory calls Anna, despite his nerves, and a young man answer. He confirms that this is the Corwin home, ‘”but there’s no Anna here.”‘ [This would be much more intriguing and spooky if we didn’t already know from the blurb that Anna’s dead lol]
The next morning, Anna’s the first person Cory sees when he arrives at school and he quickly strikes up a conversation with the so-pale-she’s-almost-transparent beauty. She’s not much of a Chatty Cathy, though, and Cory admits he tried to call her last night to say hi, but some guy said she didn’t live there. He wonders if he called the wrong house, and Anna simply tells him ‘”No”‘ and runs off down the hall [Hahahahaha that’s one way to get out of an uncomfortable conversation].
At a gymnastic match against another school on Friday night, Cory’s doing well until he takes to the rings and spots none other than Anna Corwin sitting in the bleachers, watching him. He stares back at her and loses his grip, then laughs to himself as he realises he’s literally falling for her [Surely any normal person would have enough self-awareness to understand that such intense feelings in such little time is extremely concerning? Go see a psychologist, Cory], but when he looks back up at the bleachers, she’s nowhere to be seen.
It’s 8:30 on Saturday night now, and Cory’s sitting in his room thinking about you know who. He almost calls her, but then decides she’ll be insulted because it will obviously mean he thinks she wouldn’t have a date on Saturday night. He heads over to Lisa’s, eager to talk to someone about Anna [Lol, this won’t end well], and Lisa’s happy to see him at first, being very touchy-feely. She fingers his curls and scoots closer to him, but he’s as clueless as ever and mentions how he blew it during the match last night because Anna was there [Side note, Cory eats chips by dropping them one by one into his mouth from above because they taste better that way, which is… interesting].
Lisa’s mood immediately shifts and she basically kicks him out, suddenly not in the mood for company tonight. Cory, who can tell there’s something bothering Lisa but has absolutely no idea what because he’s an idiot, returns home to think about Anna some more. Even though there’s no way it took more than 10 minutes, an hour has apparently passed between the time he left his bedroom and the time he got back [Does Stine know how time works?]. Either way, he calls the Corwin residence now after checking the clock, and this time a woman answers. He asks for Anna, which is met with a gasp from the woman and a girl shrieking in the background that the call is for her. The woman asks why this caller is torturing her like this, insisting he knows Anna’s not there and begs him to stop before hanging up the phone as the girl in the background screams again.
Cory is super confused by what just happened and can’t think of any reason other than that Anna’s being kept prisoner in her own house – is Fear Street claiming another victim?! Instead of, you know, calling the police [Which I definitely would have done if I heard someone literally screaming like a banshee in the background of a phone call], Cory decides he’ll head on over himself to check it out. Stine definitely doesn’t know how time works because it’s somehow jumped from 9:30 to a little after 10:00 now, which according to Cory is still early enough for a house call [In what world, Cory?].
He suddenly remembers a recent news story about an unidentified family being found murdered in the Fear Street Woods, which has gone unsolved because no-one reported them missing, so he calls David, who’s surely sitting at home feeling sorry for himself after injuring his ankle recently and will be willing to come along. Surprisingly [To Cory, not me], David thinks it’s a strange idea and just wants to make sure he’s understanding properly – ‘”You want to drive over to Fear Street and break in on someone’s horror movie to find a girl who isn’t there in the first place.”‘ He agrees to come anyway, but when Cory arrives to pick him up, Mummy won’t let him go because he needs to stay off his ankle.
So Cory heads to Fear Street alone, and it’s so foggy that he pulls over before reaching his destination and walks the rest of the way. The house looks uninhabited so Cory is about to leave, but he’s startled by a creepy but kind Fear Street resident who’d been walking his Doberman, Voltaire, and saw Cory pull over. He offers his help, assuming Cory’s car broke down or something, and then warns him against visiting the Corwins uninvited when he learns why Cory’s here. The man explains that the family keep to themselves and seem pretty strange before heading off, and Cory once again has an internal struggle between knocking on the door or going back to the car. He’s well aware of his tendency to go back and forth over things [There is some really great character development in this book. Some books have absolutely none lol] and decides to just go for it. A young man eventually answers and is confused when Cory explains he goes to Shadyside with Anna:
“You didn’t meet Anna in school. Anna isn’t in school.”
“Yes, she is,” Cory insisted. “She—”
“You the one who called?”
“Well, yes. I—”
“Anna is dead,” the young man rasped. “Don’t come here again. Anna is DEAD!”
[Again, I wish we didn’t already know she was dead before we even began reading, but something weird is definitely going on so I’m intrigued anyway] Cory gets to school early on Monday to wait for Anna by her locker, but she’s a no-show today. He ends up telling Lisa everything, and she suggests he was simply at the wrong house and the man played a joke on him because Cory woke him up. She questions why he’s so obsessed with Anna anyway, and as usual Cory’s completely blind to Lisa’s obvious feelings for him. After school, Cory sneaks into the principal’s off to find Anna’s records, but of course there’s no file with her name on it [!!!].
By Friday evening, obsessing over Anna Corwin has become Cory’s entire personality and he’s even missed two important gymnastic practices! He’s currently at a basketball game where the Shadyside Cougars are losing [They’re definitely the Tigers in the later books. I wonder when the name change happens?], completely ignoring the game as well as his friends because Anna hasn’t been to school all week. After some probing by David about his unusual behaviour, Cory explains his confusion over Anna’s missing file, and David suggests it just hasn’t been sent over from her previous school yet.
Later in bed, Cory’s slumber is disturbed by a menacing phone call – ‘”She’s dead. She’s a dead girl. Stay away from her—or you’ll be next!”‘ The phone rings again shortly after, but this time it’s Anna who needs Cory’s help because she doesn’t know anyone else [You barely know him, girlfriend!]. Cory’s actually hesitant at first, which is surprising because he literally doesn’t think about anything other than Anna so he really should be frothing right now [Seriously, Cory would be the villain in any other book!], but agrees to meet her on Fear Street asap, and I’m concerned about his thought process here:
She sounded frightened. But her tiny, breathy voice also made her sound very sexy. The chill Cory felt now wasn’t entirely fear. It was mixed with excitement.
[It’s not just me, right? This definitely reads as if he’s turned on by the fact she sounds so scared? Nothing like a bit of fear in a woman’s voice to get the loins burning, eh, Cory?]. As he prepares to leave, Cory remembers another unsolved mystery from last spring, where two cars collided head-on on Fear Street. A resident heard the crash and ran outside to find both cars filled with injured people, some even ‘pinned inside the crushed cars,’ and ran back inside to call for help. Police showed up 10 minutes later, but both cars were empty – ‘There was dark blood on the seats and blood on the street. But all the passengers had disappeared without a trace,’ and none of the six people were ever found [Terrifying. Don’t get me wrong because I really do love Fear Street (mostly), but imagine if the series was more like this instead of what it became? Genuinely unsolved murders and disappearances and other supernatural experiences! There is so much potential for the series in this book alone! I need to read more early books to see where it all went haywire]. Still, Anna needs him so off he goes to Fear Street at 1:30am, running over some animal in the process but not stopping to check on it [Nice, Cory].
Anna doesn’t say much when she climbs into the car, despite Cory asking 4090467854497569 questions about where she’s been over the past week, and a flustered Cory blurts out that he needs to know if she’s real. Anna’s more than happy to show him how real she is, and there’s no better way to do that than with a lengthy, passionate kiss that lasts until it hurts and Cory can taste blood on his lips after she finally pulls away [Uhhhh???].
She also whispers something in his ear, which sounds a lot like ‘”You’re all mine now,”‘ but Cory refuses to believe that that’s what he heard [God knows why, it’s not like it makes no sense?]. She also confesses that she only called him to see if he’d come [Little Miss Manipulation!], and Cory mentions the man at her house who told him Anna didn’t live there [No he didn’t, he said she was DEAD! Why are you paraphrasing something so important?!]. Apparently the guy is her brother, Brad, and Anna warns Cory to stay out of his way because Brad’s dangerous [I bet Anna’s the dangerous one! Probably just manipulating the situation so Cory won’t keep snooping at home].
Cory finally blurts out that Brad had actually told him she was dead, and then instead of explaining anything Anna jumps out of the car and runs off [I love the dramatics of just literally running away when you don’t want to answer a question hahaha]. Cory tries to go after her, but he’s leapt on from behind by Voltaire, who’s suddenly shown up with creepy neighbour guy. He tells Cory that most people don’t visit Fear Street in the middle of the night, which sounds like a threat to Cory, so he jumps back in the car and speeds off.
The next day, Cory does terribly at a gymnastic meet against a neighbouring town. Lisa shows up with some interesting news she’d learned from a friend of her cousin’s last night, who just so happens to go to Anna’s old school – ‘”She said that Anna had been in her class—but that Anna was dead.”‘ [So someone’s taken over Anna’s identity I guess, but who? A sister who hasn’t been mentioned?] No-one knows what actually happened, but rumour has it that Anna fell down the basement stairs and died instantly [Yep, definitely a sister posing as Anna. From the prologue, I’m guessing it’s because she hopes that becoming Anna will gain her more love and affection from her family].
Cory thinks this is impossible because you can’t kiss a ghost, but he goes to the library with Lisa in search of some answers. They look over some newspapers from the last few months on microfilm and eventually find a picture resembling Anna accompanied by a striking headline – ‘ANNA CORWIN, MELROSE SOPHOMORE, DIES IN ACCIDENT.’ Cory is super confused because how could Anna be dead when she kissed him last night ‘until his lips bled’ [What is so appealing about this, Cory? I’m dying to know]?
That night Cory ends up on Fear Street again, but hauls ass out of there when he sees creepy neighbour guy and his dog heading towards his car [What’s the deal with these two?], and then has a nightmare later about Anna sneaking into his room, admitting she’s dead and suggesting he can die too so they can be together. He wakes up at midnight to another phone call from Anna, who urges him to come quick and meet her at the burned-out Fear Mansion [Is she actually in trouble this time lol?].
He rushes over to meet her with barely anything on his mind except the strong desire to kiss her again. She’s a no-show, and Cory convinces himself that she wanted his help to escape from Brad, who must have found out about her plan and is now keeping her prisoner in the house. He goes to Anna’s house and and Brad answers the door, furious when he realises who woke him up again. After Cory explains that Anna had called him, Brad accuses him of pulling some kind of sick prank and screams that Anna is dead. Then he pulls Cory into the house, but instantly orders him to leave and never come back [????], and once outside again, Cory notices a figure watching him from an upstairs window but can’t see who it is before the curtains close again.
It’s two days later at school now, and I’ll give you one guess at what’s on Cory’s mind. He finally recognises that every aspect of his life is suffering because of her and wants to just drop her out of his life, but he knows he can’t do that until he has answers to all his questions. He bumps into Lisa at their lockers, and she shyly asks him to the Turnaround Dance on Saturday night, whatever that is [Is it like a Sadie Hawkins Dance, maybe? Also, go Lisa! I feel like she’s made out to be a nosy busybody gossip in the other books she briefly appears in, but she seems great]. Cory is shocked, because they’ve never gone on a date before, but he eagerly accepts because it’ll help take his mind off Anna – ‘Going out with Lisa would help him. What a good friend Lisa was. She really was there for him when he needed her.’ Lisa is super excited, which is also surprising to Cory because it’s ‘as if she had a crush on him or something.’ [Omfg, is he really this stupid? She literally JUST asked you out, and you still haven’t got the hint??].
Anna suddenly appears and barges into the conversation, standing a little too close to Cory. Lisa introduces herself, because I guess they never officially met in physics class, and Cory’s pleased to see them getting along so well. Lisa hurries off to class, and then Anna seems to whisper ‘”You’re all mine now,'” in his ear again, but once more Cory decides he misheard her [And once more he doesn’t ask her to repeat herself]. She passionately kisses him again when he tries to ask her about what’s going on, and then the bell rings and she hurries off to class. At their lockers again later, Lisa invites Cory over to ‘”Maybe study and…”‘ [🙉], but finds something horrible in her locker before she can finish her sentence:
A dead cat flopped out of her locker and dropped onto her white sneakers. The locker was splattered with blood. The cat’s stomach had been slit open.
Lisa presser her head against the cool tile wall. “I don’t believe this…. I don’t believe this….” She kept repeating herself, not moving from the wall.
Cory saw something tied around the dead cat’s throat. It was a note written on white notebook paper.
He bent down, pulled it off, and read it to himself: “LISA—YOU’RE DEAD TOO.”
[Poor kitty :(] ‘”It’s a good thing I hate cats,”‘ says Lisa as she and Cory clean all the blood from her locker [Who the fuck says something like that in this situation?! Bloody hell, Lisa]. She reckons Anna’s responsible, probably jealous that Lisa’s going to the dance with Cory, but these accusations make Cory mad [How dare you badmouth his beloved Anna, Lisa! 😡 ].
As he’s leaving school later, Cory bumps into Anna, who’s apparently been waiting for him. He tells her what happened and studies her reaction, slightly suspicious all of a sudden, but he concludes that she doesn’t know anything about the cat. Either that, or she’s a great actress [She sure is, Cory]. As they walk, she strongly suggests he’d rather go to the dance with her instead of Lisa, and although it’s true, he surprisingly declines her offer because he can’t do that to Lisa [Choosing Lisa over Anna?! I am speechless], which disappoints Anna.
Cory eventually brings up going to her house again and tells her what Brad said, and Anna just runs off again [She should try out for the track team]. She’s not getting away this time, though, and Cory catches up to her and demands to know what the hell is going on. She reiterates that Brad’s crazy and claims to have no idea why he’s telling people she’s dead, and we also learn here that it’s just Brad, Anna and their unwell mother at at home. Anna again instructs Cory to stay away from Brad because he can’t know about them [It’s a bit late for that advice, Anna], and Cory apologises for all the questions – he’s just been so confused about everything, especially since her call on Saturday night, but Anna insists she never called him that night. Anna then spots someone down by the hedges as they’re about to make out and hurries off, ordering Cory not to follow because ‘”He’s watching me!”‘
At home, Cory’s mother is super excited after hearing the big news about him and Lisa, and Cory is shocked and disgusted at the insinuation that he and Lisa are becoming more than friends because I guess for some reason he’s under the impression that everyone is as dumb as him [His lack of awareness is driving me crazy]. Later, David calls to offer a listening ear if there’s anything Cory wants to talk about [David is a great friend, tbh. No toxic masculinity here!], but Cory doesn’t want to discuss Anna with him and instigates an argument instead.
After hanging up, Cory sees that Lisa’s lights are on and heads over for some company. He notices how cute she looks tonight and how sexy her her laugh is, and he also loves the coconut scent of her hair, so I guess Lisa’s starting to emerge from the friendzone [Woo!]. Then the phone rings, and the voice on the other end repeats to Lisa the message that accompanied the dead cat in her locker – ‘”You’re dead too.”‘
We then jump to the Turnaround Dance, where Lisa’s trying to convince Cory that Anna is behind the threats and the dead cat, but Cory doesn’t believe it for a second [Cory, please]. Lisa only becomes more certain when Cory confirms that Anna asked him to the dance, but Cory insists that it doesn’t prove anything and his beloved Anna would never do what Lisa’s accusing her of [How would you even know?!]. Lisa’s fed up by this point and causes a scene as she yells at Cory, then storms out of the gym, but a few minutes later Cory hears her terrified scream [!!!]
He rushes out of the gym and finds her at the bottom of the stairwell with a twisted ankle – someone pushed her down the stairs! She saw the culprit as she fell; a puffy-faced guy with watery eyes that Cory instantly realises is Brad. There’s only one outside door that’s unlocked tonight for the dance, and Lisa’s sure it never opened after she was shoved, which means Brad’s still in the building! They eventually find him in the music room, but he quickly escapes and locks them in.
We find out they’re on the second floor of the building, which makes absolutely no sense because why would the gymnasium be on the second floor [And it’s definitely on the ground in later books…], and it seemed to be implied earlier that the door to the outside was on this floor too? Oh well. Anyway, Cory decides to use his gymnast skills and climb out the window and onto the ledge, where he’ll make his way over to a nearby tree and shimmy down, then come back for Lisa, but unfortunately, he slips from the ledge and slides straight down the wall:
His feet hit a ledge on the first floor, and instinctively he dived forward, falling through an open window. He landed hard on his knees and knees on a wood floor.
[Hahahahaha I love that his gymnastic skills save him here] He rescues Lisa, and half an hour later they’re back at her place where ‘she leaned forward suddenly and started to kiss him, a soft, tentative kiss’ that goes nowhere because the phone starts ringing. It’s a heavy breather this time, and Lisa’s determined to call the police. Cory agrees, but he wants to talk to Anna first, promising to go see her first thing in the morning. He’ll force Anna to tell him what’s going on and explain they have no choice but to report Brad to the cops. Then Cory goes home, and their kiss goes completely unacknowledged, which I find super weird.
There’s no answer at the Corwin house when Cory visits in the morning, but he does see creepy neighbour guy and his dog hanging around once again [Honestly, why are they even in this story?]. Cory tries to phone Anna throughout the day and that evening, but no-one picks up. He eventually bumps into Anna after school on Monday and drags her to the Pizza Oven at the mall so they can talk [Where’s Pete’s Pizza? Or Patsy’s Pizzeria? I wonder when Pete’s first became prominent in these books…].
Cory demands to know everything, and Anna confesses that Brad’s been the head of the house ever since their father left when they were little, because their mother is frail and unwell. About a year ago, Brad was in love with a girl named Emily, who ended up dying in a plane crash. Brad apparently lost his grip on reality and imagined Emily was still alive. He became super protective of Anna and their older sister, Willa, who looked just like Anna but more beautiful, and eventually started calling Willa by Emily’s name. He even began telling people Willa was dead, even when she was standing right there in the room with them! Then Willa fell down the basement stairs and died, and Anna and her mother have always suspected that Brad pushed her because he was home at the time [Anna’s definitely lying about some, if not all, of this. Like, Cory saw her obituary in the newspaper, which can only mean that Anna is really Willa].
Their mother was too sick to work ‘”and too proud to take welfare,”‘ so they couldn’t do anything but believe that Willa’s death was an accident because Brad supported the whole family. Brad seemed better for a while, but then he started telling people Anna was dead too! The family moved to Shadyside hoping a change of scenery would snap Brad out of his confusion, but it hasn’t helped at all and he’s more overprotective and confused than ever.
Cory remembers the newspaper clipping that said Anna was dead, and it’s even more obvious to me now that Anna’s lying when she takes a beat to rack her brains for an explanation. Of course, dumbass Cory doesn’t catch on, though. She eventually claims that Brad couldn’t face Willa’s death, so he probably told the paper Anna died instead, and she’d simply blocked it from her memory because it was so horrible seeing her own obituary.
Anyway, she’s super worried because Mum’s off visiting her sister, so Anna’s all alone in the house with Brad. Cory’s buying what she’s selling and they share a kiss, but Anna suddenly pulls away and flees out the back door when she notices Brad staring angrily at them through the window [My guess is that Brad is trying to protect Cory and Lisa from Willa-as-Anna in a very stupid way, but I suppose if he simply told Cory what was actually going on, there’d be no book. But I’m just not sure of his logic, ya know?].
Cory spends the rest of the evening calling Anna’s home every so often, growing more and and more concerned, until finally Brad picks up and tells him Anna’s dead. Cory isn’t sure if that means he’s just killed Anna or it’s another of his pesky tricks, so he speeds over to Fear Street and bursts into the Corwin house, where Anna and Brad wrestling in the living room. Cory intervenes and manages to knock Brad unconscious, and a grateful Anna starts to lead him upstairs to her room so they can celebrate [;)], and Brad can’t resist her womanly charms.
Her smile fades as they reach the landing and she grabs a letter opener from a nearby table. She thinks it’s the perfect way to take care of Brad, and she’s not going to let anyone stand in her way, not even Cory [So why didn’t she just kill Brad in the first place if this was her plan all along??? Like, what’s been the point of this whole book? She didn’t need Cory at all, clearly, especially if she’s willing to kill him at the drop of a hat too?]. She tries to stab Cory as he backs away, but he’s soon backed against an open window and ends up falling out as she lunges at him:
Instinctively, his legs bent. He caught them around the windowsill. He was a gymnast, after all, he told himself. He had skills. He just had to use them.
He had to use them. Or die.
[Saved by the skillz again!] He swings himself back up through the window using the strong stomach muscles he’s developed over the years [I wonder how many abs he has], and then ‘Cory did a forward flip across the hallway and kicked the letter opener from her hand.’ [Hahahaha I’d love to see that]. He manages to pin Anna’s arms behind her back when she lunges at him again, and then Brad comes up the stairs, no longer in a fighting mood.
It turns out Brad had just been trying to keep Cory safe from Anna, who, of course, isn’t Anna at all, but Willa. He’s always suspected that Willa murdered Anna out of jealousy, but never voiced his concerns to protect his mother from losing two daughters. So he kept a close eye on her, and Willa seemed to be better when they moved to Shadyside. She was acting normal at home, at least, but Brad began to put two and two together when Cory started coming around asking for Anna, especially because Willa was now dressing and talking like her dead sister, too.
Apparently it was Willa-as-Anna making the threatening phone calls to Cory and Lisa [So Willa’s a murderer of cats as well as of humans!], which doesn’t add up to Cory because it was definitely Brad who pushed Lisa down the stairs at the dance. Brad explains that he’d followed Willa to the dance, figuring she was going to cause some kind of trouble, so he waited in the hall for her to come past so he could stop her [Well, that’s a stupid plan]. It was sooooooooo00Ooo0oOOo00oO0 dark, though, and he thought it was Willa hurrying past, so he made a grab for her:
“I didn’t really mean to push her, but she fell. Then when I got a good look at her, I realized I had grabbed the wrong girl. I watched to make sure she wasn’t badly hurt. Then I panicked and hid. I didn’t know what to do. I felt terrible about it. I was just trying to protect you from Willa.”
Although she’s captured, Willa’s been threatening to kill them both this whole time and insisting she’s Anna and Willa is the dead one, and the boys finally decide to call the police.
The book ends later that night at Lisa’s place, where Cory’s just finished telling her all about what happened at the Corwin residence, and he suggests Lisa pick his girlfriends for him from now on after she makes fun of how bad he is at it:
“Maybe I should,” she said softly.
He turned and looked at her. “Got anyone in mind?”
Their faces were inches apart. She moved forward to fill the inches. She kissed him, a long kiss, a sweet kiss.
“Maybe…” she said.
[And I’m not cringing for once! It’s actually kind of cute hahaha]
Final thoughts
What a great little mystery to kick off the series! It had a more serious tone than most of the other Fear Streets we’ve covered so far, and it’s way less convoluted too. Proof that sometimes, less it more! I feel like this was peak Stine; the writing was really good, especially all the character development; Cory definitely sucked but I didn’t exactly hate him and he was completely believable as a person. Even Arnie, the most minor character who I didn’t even bother to mention because he’s not that relevant, was well-fleshed out [I also don’t recognise the name Arnie Tobin. Maybe he gets no cameo appearances?]! It was nice to finally meet Cory, Lisa and David as proper characters instead of fleeting cameos to establish continuity, too!
I wonder if, as I start reading more of the earlier Fear Streets, I’ll be able to pinpoint exactly when the series started to shift into a more caricatured version of itself, getting crazier and less serious in tone. Not that that’s a bad thing, because the latter half of the series has some of my absolute favourites [What Holly Heard and Trapped!], but there’s such a clear difference in style and mood here than what I’m used to from Fear Street. I’m sure I’m explaining this horribly, but I hope you get what I mean hahaha.
One think I’m confused about, though, is that creepy Fear Street neighbour guy and his dog? What was the point? Was Stine filling pages in the very first book?!? And also was Emily even real, or was she made up to give more credibility to Willa’s lies about Brad?
Anyway, this was a simply story that still had a lot of mystery, and I’m honestly surprised I didn’t find it boring. Definitely worth a read, so 39 life-saving gymnastic skills out of 50!
