Tagline: It all happens in the dark.
Back tagline: Who killed the Counsellor?
Summary: “I could kill you!” screamed Geri Marcus.
Could she? Would she? Something is very wrong at Camp Nightwing, and junior counsellor Holly Flynn is determined to solve the mystery before it destroys the camp!
The trouble begins with frightening acts of vandalism. After each, a red feather is left behind – signature of the culprit.
Suddenly, one of the counsellors is dead. “An accident,” say the police. But Holly knows better – and she knows she’s next. Holly can’t trust anyone now, not even her best friend, as she stalks the camp killer – and hopes that it soon won’t be “Lights Out” for her!
First impressions: I love horror movies set at camp so I have high expectations for this and I’m super excited to read it. The cover is pretty cheesy, but I love it. I wonder what she’s so terrified of. Let’s read and find out!
Recap
As usual, we’ll start with a roll call:
Holly – Our heroine who hates the outdoors.
Sandy – Fellow counsellor who’s super nice, but maybe creepy.
Geri – Bitchy ex-friend.
Thea – Holly’s best friend.
John – Thea’s love interest who’s just not that into her.
Debra – A senior counsellor who bullies Holly.
Uncle Bill – Holly’s uncle who owns the camp.
Kit – Geri’s lackey and an annoying prankster.
Mick – Holly’s love interest who’s super rapey.
Another book that doesn’t take place on Fear Street! Our protagonist, Holly, does live on Fear Street, but we’re at Camp Nightwing instead for this one. We begin with a letter addressed to someone named Chief and signed off as ‘Me’ [A recurring element that is possibly the stupidest and laziest way to conceal someone’s identity. ‘Me’? Really? No-one would sign off from a letter like that! So dumb]. I’m gonna go ahead and assume Chief is dead because whoever wrote the letter is planning vengeance by posing as a camp counsellor [I hope there’s some good deaths in here!].
Now the real story begins. Holly’s Uncle Bill runs Camp Nightwing and has asked Holly to help him out this summer. He’s owned it for the last three years, but hasn’t had much success yet due to some really bad luck. The first year, a lightning strike caused one of the buildings to burn down. The second year, there was a flood and a measles outbreak, and finally last year, a camper was killed in a boating accident [I’m guessing it was Chief!] and Uncle Bill’s been having trouble getting people to come back. Even though she hates the outdoors, Holly’s a sweetheart and is keen to help her favourite uncle!
She immediately regrets this decision when she finds a spider on her pillow in her cabin. Instead of killing it, she solves the problem by throwing the pillow on another bed and making it someone else’s issue [Hahahahahaha what a mood. I’d be so mad if someone did that to me though].
Holly’s best friend, Thea, arrives, and Holly asks her to keep her relation to Uncle Bill a secret, since they don’t want anyone to treat Holly differently [Would people really do that though? I guess it makes sense in a Fear Street book]. The conversation quickly turns to the cute boys that will be there this year. Thea was a counsellor last year and had a fling with John, so she hopes he’s back this year, hehe! Holly is newly single, so she’s not to keen on boys at the moment [Yeah right, Holly! Can’t have a Fear Street book without a love interest!].
The girls are interrupted by screams for help and rush to the source. It’s Uncle Bill trapped under a cabinet in the rec room! The girls free him and Uncle Bill inspects the cabinet, which is usually bolted to the wall to prevent it toppling over. Two of the bolts have somehow come loose, though. While the girls clean up the equipment that spilled out of the cabinet, they notice a bright red feather sticking out of one of the cabinet’s bolt holes, which is super weird, but Thea suggests it somehow got here from the crafts cabin [Very particular spot for a feather to randomly get caught though…]. Amanda accepts this idea, but still can’t help wondering how it got there.
Then Geri, another counsellor who lives in Waynesbridge [The often-mentioned town neighbouring Shadyside where some hard dudes live], shows up and Holly is all like, “Oh, no! Not here! It can’t be!” and pretty much has a heart attack, which is very dramatic.
That extreme reaction is because Holly and Geri were best friends when Holly lived in Waynesbridge. Geri scored herself an older boyfriend that her parents didn’t approve of, and would ask Holly to cover for her when she was with him, even though Holly is a hopeless liar. One night, Geri’s mum called Holly, thinking Geri was there, but Holly slipped up and Geri’s mum figured out her daughter was with Brad. Geri was grounded for the rest of the semester and has hated Holly ever since. That’s literally it [Geri sucks and shouldn’t have put Holly in that situation].
Afterwards, Thea introduces Holly to Debra, the senior counsellor who Holly will be sharing a cabin with and assisting over the summer. Debra isn’t the most friendliest, person, but Thea insists she’s really nice as long as things are done her way [Tag yourself, I’m Debra]. Then Holly meets Mick, who’s super gorgeous and looks like Kevin Bacon [A ‘Friday the 13th’ reference, woo!], but there’s “something a little dangerous looking about him” [I guess we’ve found our bad boy love interest. I wonder how rapey he’ll be]. He’s writing a stack of letters to his mum because he prefers to write them all at the beginning of summer and then just send one off per week [Too obvious to be ‘Me’ though, so I doubt he’s villain].
Later as Holly unpacks alone in the cabin, she practically shits herself when she sees a bat in there. She flees the cabin and runs straight into Geri and Debra. Debra is a huge bitch about it and chases the bat out with a broom, while Geri just snickers. Bitches.
It’s time for a camp cookout now, and Mick can’t believe Holly has never seen any of the ‘Friday the 13th’ movies [And now I want to have a ‘Friday the 13th’ marathon! Great series, except for the ninth one which I could never finish because it sucked so much]. Holly’s not a fan of horror, though, so it’s extremely bad luck that she’s in a Fear Street book.
As the senior counsellors are introducing themselves around the campfire, we also meet Sandy, a new counsellor who wasn’t very talkative when Thea met him earlier today. Thea’s not sure why he’s here, because he’s obviously rich, judging by his Porsche sunglasses, and doesn’t need a summer job [Nosy, nosy, Thea!].
Thea heads off to talk to John, who hasn’t acknowledged her all night and really doesn’t seem interested. Poor Thea. Meanwhile, Holly chats with Mick and she’s clearly crushing on him already.
What was it about him that was so attractive? Was it that he seemed somehow … dangerous?
[Yep, Holly’s definitely a Shadyside girl!]. After Mick leaves, Holly spots Geri hardcore glaring at her and I smell a love triangle!
Next, we have another letter to Chief from ‘Me’ [Still so stupid, but seems to be the only bad thing about the book, which is a great change after Mirror, Mirror], admitting to loosening the bolts in the equipment cabinet and declaring that lots of deadly accidents can happen in one summer. Uh oh.
The next morning is so beautiful that Holly can’t resist a swim in the lake. She bumps into Sandy on her way there, who’s just out for his morning jog. He’s super good-looking, so Holly makes a mental note to get to know him better over the summer [Thought you weren’t keen on boys this summer, Holly?]. He warns her about the sudden deepness of the lake and about the leeches in the muddy bank. Thanks for that, Sandy.
As Holly continues to the lake, Mick appears, on his way to check out the canoes on the lake before the campers arrive later today. Holly accompanies him and they find three of the four canoes with a hole in the side, sunken beneath the water. In one of them is a red feather, just like in the cabinet! They realise the holes holes were man-made, probably done with a chisel or something [But who could have done such a thing?!].
After getting the canoes out of the lake, Holly takes the feather back to her cabin and places it in her drawer with the one from the cabinet. She’s a smart girl and realises someone must be leaving them behind as some sort of warning, but she’s running late to greet the campers so can’t worry about it too much yet.
Debra doesn’t want to hear Holly’s excuses about being late and orders Holly to round up the six girls that will be in their cabin. After taking them to their new home for the summer, the girls start unpacking. When one girl climbs to her bed on the top bunk, the thing collapses. The camper is fine, but the girls are all terrified and start crying. Debra arrives and yells at Holly, amusing Geri who’d arrived with her. They’re followed by Uncle Bill, who praises Geri for her quick thinking [Huh? She didn’t do anything?] and promises to get the bed fixed and the rest of them checked.
Inspecting the bed, Holly finds another red feather taped to one of the wooden slats and wonders whether they’re a message for her, since she had found all three of them [I think that’s just a coincidence that comes with the territory of being a protagonist]. After taking the girls out to play games with the other campers, she scurries off to Uncle Bill’s office to discuss the accidents and the feathers, but he’s too busy to talk and basically tells her to fuck off.
On her way to lunch, Holly notices Debra and apologises for this morning, asking politely for Debra not degrade her in front of the campers and counsellors like she did earlier. Debra goes off he rocker and berates Holly, declaring she won’t get special treatment just for being the camp owner’s niece [Is common decency what Debra considers special treatment? What a fucking bitch. Untag yourself, I’m not Debra anymore]. Holly sees Geri smirking nearby once again and suspects that she told everyone about Holly’s relation to Uncle Bill. [Again, I really don’t think this would be an issue in the real world, would it??].
At lunch, Thea tells Holly she found something out that will explain a lot and and asks her to meet at the lake tonight after the campers are in bed [Why can’t you just tell her now, Thea?!? This better be good]. Afterwards, Kit bursts into mess hall with a snake wrapped around his arm and throws it at Holly’s table. It’s just a fake though [Kit is so laaaame], but Holly is terrified of snakes and pretty much freezes, which just gets her another scolding from Debra [Can Debra die, please?].
Later that night, Holly and Thea meet to discuss what Thea had found out, and are you ready for the goss that’s so jawdropping Thea couldn’t possibly tell her without arranging to meet up in secret? Debra… is friends with Geri! Isn’t that just such a surprise? Who’d have thought that Geri and Debra, who Holly so often sees together, are such good friends? [And who’d have thought that Holly wouldn’t have realised until right this moment?!] They discuss the idea of Geri conspiring with Debra and Kit to humiliate Holly, which is extremely childish but sounds totally accurate based on their actions so far.
Holly tells Thea about the red feathers and is super determined to crack the case, but Thea isn’t really listening too closely. She’s upset because she asked John to meet her here as well, but he hasn’t shown up yet. Holly eventually heads back to her cabin for bed, but Thea stays behind to wait a little longer for John [Oh honey, take a hint].
On her way back to her cabin, Holly bumps into Mick, who’s coming on way too strong and starts to get aggressive when she wants to go to bed instead of going for a walk with him [And he’s not even a Shadyside guy! Not to blame the victim, but maybe there’s something about Shadyside girls that make all the boys act so sinister?]. Holly stands up to him [Go, Holly!] and he eventually takes the hint. As Holly nears her cabin, she thinks she sees a figure in the shadows exiting the door and sneaking off. She’s not sure if her eyes are just playing tricks on her, though. Ooky spooky!
Then Sandy appears and they bond over both being counsellors here for the first time before the conversation turns to siblings. Holly’s not close with her sister, who’s significantly older, and Sandy says she’s lucky to have one anyway, and seems super sad when he explains he has no brothers or sisters.
Finally Holly makes it to bed, but it’s not time to sleep yet because there’s a snake under her pillow, and this time it’s not a rubber one! The whole cabin wakes up to Holly’s shriek and once again, Debra humiliates her over her fear of snakes and calls her “worse than useless” [Someone please kill this bitch lol].
The next day, Holly tells Uncle Bill about the red feathers and her fears that someone is trying to destroy the camp, but Uncle Bill is an adult in a Fear Street book so dismisses everything as pure coincidence and reckons the feathers mean nothing, since there’s feathers all over the camp from the wild birds [She’s trying to help you, you idiot!].
Another letter to Chief reveals that whoever is causing all these shenanigans is now planning on killing “the person who most deserves it,” a girl who’s kind of cute [It better be Debra! I’d settle for Geri, though].
Back to Holly, who has figured out that a counsellor must be causing the accidents since the campers hadn’t arrived when the first one occurred [Duh, Holly]. She pretty much stalks all of the counsellors that afternoon during a baseball game, but no-one does anything suspicious.
Afterwards, Mick invites her to meet him at the lake and even though she’s a little frightened of him, she agrees because he’s soo00OOO0Ooo) cute [Classic Shadyside girl. Come on Holly, you’re better than this!]. At the lake that night, Mick clearly wants a root and I don’t know what Holly wants because her thoughts don’t match her words:
“I’d like to get to know you better,” she said, meaning it in more than one way.
“That makes two of us,” said Mick, his voice still gentle. Casually he laid his arm over Holly’s shoulder.
“I mean,” she said, inching away from him, “as a friend.”
“No problem,” said Mick, pulling her closer. “‘Cause I feel really friendly right now.”
This isn’t working at all, Holly thought. She didn’t want this – or did she?
[So is she keen on him or not? How does she want to get to know him better, in more than one way, but then just want to be friends??] Mick turns aggressive straight away [This guy is so toxic lol], and despite Holly being scared of him, she wants him to kiss her nonetheless.
Mick ends up falling into the lake and Holly is startled by how angry he is when she tries to help him. He storms off and as Holly heads back to her cabin, Geri steps out of the shadows. Geri refuses to let Holly steal Mick from her after ruining her life back in Waynesbridge [Get off it, Geri].
The next day, Holly bumps into Sandy, who offers her a listening ear for her problems. She explains all the accidents and red feathers and Sandy suggests that maybe she’s just overthinking everything, because it’s her first time as a counsellor and she hasn’t had a chance to enjoy the experience yet. The topic soon moves to the upcoming wilderness trip, which Sandy is leading and Holly is assisting with. She’s not looking forward to it though and I feel like it’s weird that a summer camp is doing an overnight wilderness trip when they’re basically in the wilderness already? Oh well.
Then Holly runs Thea, who’s still upset about John not meeting her the other night. He claims he was busy writing letters, but that’s too obvious so I don’t think he’s the culprit of the accidents. Towards the end of the day, as Holly heads back to her cabin, Geri appears with Kit and Mick to bully Holly. Mick pins her arms behind her back [Uhhhhh??] while the other two tease her with a bucket of leeches. Geri then pushes Holly into a shallow, muddy creek and pours the leeches on her [OK, I hope they all die]. They reckon this should teach Holly that she’s not better than everyone else [Wow, Holly didn’t want to root Mick at the lake so he pours leeches on her?? I swear to god if she ends up with him…] and Geri sees it as revenge for Holly ruining her life two years ago [Geri ruined her own damn life!].
Mick suddenly develops a conscience and convinces the others to stop tormenting Holly, leaving her convinced that at least one of them is behind the accidents. On her way back to her cabin, Holly hears cries of protests and follows the noise to a clearing, where she sees someone running away before John steps out from behind a tree. He says he’s alone and gets mad, accusing her of spying on him before threatening her [Why are all the guys in this book such assholes for no reason? Sandy is the only nice one, which probably means he’s the villain!].
Holly storms off in a huff and bumps into Sandy, who she thought she saw watching the leech incident from afar earlier but isn’t too sure. She doesn’t bring it up, though, lying that she’s covered in mud because she fell into the creek. Then Sandy hands her a list of the people going on the wilderness trip and Holly is horrified to see that Geri, Mick and Kit will all be attending [Poor Holly :(].
That night at dinner, Debra is nowhere to be found and neither is John! Holly goes to suss out their locations, eager to accost Debra for being late, and finds her in the crafts cabin.
Everything in the room – the floors, the walls – was covered with bright red splatters.
Splatters of blood.
Blood that was flying from the spinning electric potter’s wheel.
Holly continued to look, horrified and sickened. The wheel turned rapidly, on each pass rubbing away more of the thing slumped over it.
The thing that she saw had once been a human face, but now it was a body mass of raw pulp.
[…]
Only the long black braids identified her as Debra.
[Love this! Debra def deserved it too, hopefully the other bullies get a gory death as well!] It looks like Debra’s necklace had gotten caught in the wheel. John suddenly appears, and Holly stays with the body while he heads off to alert Uncle Bill. Holly then notices a red feather intertwined with Debra’s necklace and we have officially upgraded from accidents to murder [Woohoo!].
The next day, Holly tells an investigator about her theory with the feathers. He’s terrible at his job, though, and for whatever reason doesn’t see the link between the feathers and all the accidents, and tells Holly the investigation has concluded that Debra’s death is an accident [Surely the police would at least look into the idea that everything was deliberate?].
Geri, takes over as senior counsellor for Holly’s cabin and accuses Holly of murdering Debra [Fuck off, Geri]. That night while everyone is at the campfire, Holly sneaks away to search through Mick, Kit and John’s cabins for proof that one of them is the culprit.
Kit’s belongings are boring, although he does have some stationary and envelopes in his desk. Is he writing letters to Chief? Apparently Holly isn’t nosy enough to read his letters, which makes sense because she doesn’t even know about the letters to Chief, so is content with looking through his drawers.
As she’s going through John’s stuff, she finds a small, locked box. She finds the key under a slat on the bunk and just as she’s about to open it, John bursts in. He’s not at the campfire because he’d helped a camper to their cabin after they got sick, and Holly’s excuse for being in a boys’ cabin is that she lost something and thought maybe Kit had found it [Hahahaha, nice try, Holly].
John’s not an idiot so doesn’t believe her, and she comes clean about her theories. He orders her not to spy on him again and not to tell anyone about the box. Holly then ventures over to Mick’s cabin, but he’s writing a letter inside so she can’t rifle through his stuff. She does notice through the open door that there’s some Native American rattles hanging on the wall, each one decorated with a red feather [I still think Sandy’s the killer, though. Mick’s an ass but seems too obvious to actually be the killer]. We then get a new letter to Chief, saying that Holly will be the next to die because she’s too nosy. Uh-oh!
It’s time for the camping trip, and everyone hopes it’ll go smoothly because if one more thing goes wrong, Uncle Bill will have to shut down the camp. Poor Uncle Bill. John is also joining the trip, taking the place of an irrelevant counsellor [But more so to expand the pool of potential suspects for Holly to work out! We know he’s a red herring, though].
Later on the trip, Holly is making a fire when she hears someone crying. Following the sound, she discovers John and Courtney, a 15-year-old camper. Apparently they’re in lo0oOoOoooOOO0oooo0ove. No wonder John wasn’t interested in Thea anymore, he’d found some younger prey! Holly also realises that it was Courtney she’d heard shouting the day of the leech incident, and it’s revealed that there’s photos and love letters inside John’s locked box. It’s a huge secret because the counsellors aren’t allowed to fraternize or date the campers. Holly agrees not to directly tell anyone, but says she won’t be able to lie for them because she’s a horrible liar [So John is no longer a suspect to Holly. Meanwhile, she’s never even considered Sandy to be the killer, so he definitely is].
The next morning, Sandy wakes Holly up early and asks her to go canoeing with him to make sure the river will be fine for the campers to tackle. Holly thinks he’s super cute so agrees to go [Come on, Holly, he’s going to kill you!]. Sandy sits behind Holly in the canoe, which can’t be good.
He starts dropping hints like crazy that he’s the culprit but Holly has somehow turned into a complete idiot on this trip and for like two pages, she’s all like “what do you mean?” or “what are you talking about?” [Holly, you’re killing me here].
Sandy finally reveals that his little brother, Seth, was the camper who died the previous summer. It was on the same trip Holly is now on, and it was Debra’s carelessness that caused him to die. [Fun fact: the words ‘careless’ and ‘carelessness’ are literally said 2939392 times in these next few chapters]. Sandy reveals that he’s never stopped writing daily letters to Seth, but hasn’t had a reply in a while. He then admits he use to call his brother ‘Chief’ and that red feathers were his sign, pulling one out of his pocket. And finally Holly realises that Sandy is the killer [About fkn time, Holly! Also, did he want to get caught or not? Why was he leaving a calling card at each incident if he didn’t want anyone to figure it out?].
Sandy wants to make everyone connected to the camp pay for what happened to his brother, and even though Holly wasn’t there last night year, he can’t let her go because she’s too nosy and knows too much. The canoe approaches some rapids and Sandy throw his paddle from the canoe, horrifying Holly, and it’s not until this point that she realises she’s in danger [I’m not exaggerating, it really didn’t occur to her that he was going to kill her until now. Even though she already realised he murdered Debra…].
Sandy lunges for Holly and she knocks him out with her own paddle before being thrown into the rapids when the canoe hits a rock. She eventually manages to swim to shore and makes her way back to the campsite, but suddenly Sandy appears behind her! He chases her into the thick woods and she lumbers up a small rocky hill, intending to hide in the cave at the top. Alas it’s not to be, because upon reaching the cave, she finds a nest of hissing snakes [Hahahaha poor Holly, can’t catch a break].
She manages to overcome her phobia and throws one at Sandy, who tumbles down the hill until he lands at the bottom, unconscious. Mick appears now and thankfully, instead of being rapey, he tells Holly he’d wanted to apologise for his shitty behaviour and followed the pair when he saw them leaving early [I reckon he probably thought they were off to have sex and wanted to join in!].
Back at the actual camp, Uncle Bill tells her that Seth was Sandy’s stepbrother and they had different last names, which explains why he didn’t realise they were related. Sandy’s not dead, but he’ll be getting the help he needs. He also reveals police found the letters to Chief and a stash of red feathers in Sandy’s belongings, and Uncle Bill feels terrible for not realising Sandy was behind everything, including Debra’s murder. But instead of apologising for constantly biting Holly’s head off whenever she tried to tell him what was going on, though, he’s like “Oops, let’s pretend this never happened, hehe,” and I guess that’s that [Holly definitely deserved an apology, though. Rude].
As Mick and Holly walk back to her cabin so she can change, a little snake drops out of a tree onto the footpath. Holly fearlessly picks it up and throws it into the woods, apparently over her phobia [So brave :’)], and the book ends [Don’t hook up with him, Holly, you’re better than that!].
Final thoughts
This was a great book! Besides the letters not really doing much for the plot except to give the reader information that we learn from the main story anyway, my other main problem is that I don’t get why Sandy was leaving the red feathers if he didn’t want to get caught. Like, if he didn’t leave the feathers, Holly probably wouldn’t have realised everything was connected? And if he did want to get caught, why was he then planning to kill Holly for being too nosy? It doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe the feathers were just a way for him to personally acknowledge he was doing these things for his brother, or something like that? I don’t know.
Besides that, I loved it! Holly was a great heroine although she suddenly became an idiot towards the end, which didn’t make sense because she was Nancy Drew the whole time up until the killer was monologuing right in front of her??
I also wish Geri, Kit and/or Mick died as well. Kit was a bully for no reason, Mick was way too aggressive, and Geri was a total bitch because of something from years ago that was her own fault? Kill them all, I say!
27 red feathers at a crime scene out of 31!
