Yeah... It's pretty good.
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| This is the cover of a book I have read |
You may remember back in the first review, I said this:
"So now I'm going to read every Goosebumps book, in order of release, one a week, until I finish them. Or get really depressed and give up on life. We'll see."
Well it's almost like I'm psychic because that happened. And so here we are, months without a review. But I had read one more book before that happened. 'Goosebumps 15: You Can't Scare Me'. And while I was starring numbly at my kindle a couple of days ago, trying to motivate myself to read anything at all, vaguely aware that once upon a time I experienced joy from books, I remembered that I had read this book and never written a review.
Well, you know how it goes. You have some caffeine at 1am, the world is quiet, and it's either stick your head in the oven... Or write about Goosebumps for a while. Whatever gets you through the night.
And so here we are.
This book - and the title is too long for me to bother writing out every time, so now it's just "this book" - is about some kids who experience spooky shit.
So there's this girl, Courtney, and she's basically the perfect human. She's smart, brave, pretty, friendly, and only occasionally kind of a bitch, but in that way that all 12 year olds are kind of a bitch because they're 12 and don't know any better.
And there's this kid Eddie - and his friends who don't matter, because nothing matters - who hates Courtney because he's jealous and feels inferior to her. He especially feels weak and cowardly every time he sees Courtney being brave. So this shit kid and his shit friends decide to dedicate their life to scaring Courtney.
Eddie and his friends try putting a fake snake in her bag, getting a big dog to chase her, and probably some other stuff I forgot. None of it works. So finally Eddie decides to enlist the help of his older brother. Eddie's brother is also shit, and I'm sure Eddie has to, like, agree to be his brother's slave for some amount of time before he helps Eddie. But he does agree and even gets his friends in on it.
You see, Eddie's brother and co. are making an amateur horror film about a local legend about monsters called mud people who live in the woods and... um... Do mud people shit, I guess. They're called mud people because they are people made of mud or covered in mud. And I think they were exiled into the woods because they were sick? But I might be getting them confused with the swamp fever stuff in the last book. I don't know. Nor do I particularly care. Nor should you care. Why are you even reading this? Go away. Leave me alone.
Fuck it, we're here, I've started, might as well finish.
So, um, Eddie's brother and his friends have these scary mud people costumes and they make a plan with Eddie and Eddie's friends to lure Courtney into the woods late at night and jump out at her in mud people costumes. And this all goes according to plan and Courtney does get afraid. Victory.
And as they're leaving the woods, Eddie and his friends run into Eddie's brother and friends in their costumes, who apologise for being late. But if they were late, who were the mud people in the woods scaring Courtney?
And that's the twist. Mud people are real. And scary.
It's predictable. And most of the characters are shit. And Courtney is less shit but she's also boring.
But, um... Well, I remember liking the book just fine. Not great, not terrible. The monsters are interesting, the set-up is unique, the delivery works. It's fine.
It's fine.
I guess something in this terrible world has to be okay. Might as well be a children's book.
Okay. Go away, now. We're done.
