Fright Night

July 1, 2020
A group of teens do their best to survive the night. Fright Night is in town, and local teens Dylan, Sofia, and Quin are excited to enter the woods for a night of scares. Kelly and Sandy are excited for Fright Night too, but they'll be working the attractions: dressing up in disturbing costumes to stalk the paying customers and earning a hefty chunk of change for their services. Over the course of Fright Night, the five teens mix and mingle with creepy, violent results. The narrative plays its cards close to the vest, creating a pulpy read filled with thrills and chills that unfortunately lack much nuance or substance. The result is a book that's fun in the moment but forgettable once the book is done. The teen characters lack specificity, so much so that the two teens who have mysterious backstories (Dylan and Kelly) are almost interchangeable. The novel's big reveal reframes this a bit with hindsight, but by then it might be too little too late. The spooky sequences are rendered admirably enough, and readers looking for a Fear Street-like paperback to bring to the beach or on the bus will be satisfied. All characters are presumably white. An adequate thriller. (Thriller. 12-16)

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