Mary White is the new girl in town, but she has made friends with a popular group and soon begins going out with a star football player. But unfortunately for her, she's moved into the old Myers House and is sleeping in Judith's old bedroom, and with Halloween quickly approaching, we all know who will be coming to give her a little fright.
This is in my opinion, the worst of the young adult series. The situations are unbelievable and the characters are not at all likable. In SCREAM FACTORY we had some characters we could actually identify with, but in this book, we just get a bunch of annoying popular teen girls that we couldn't care less about. Miss O'Rourke doesn't give any of the characters other than Mary the amount of meat that she did in the other two books of the series. One example is Mary's ex-boyfriend Jeff, who is quickly introduced and later on becomes a major character with barely any story behind him except that he's poor and lives across the street from Haddonfield Cemetery. Brought up on more than one occasion is the mention of an incident that happened between Mary's current boyfriend and a girl, but it is never revealed what he exactly did to this girl. With as many times as it is mentioned you would think they would tell us. And did you know that HALLOWEEN really took place in 1985 and not in 1978? Well, according to this book it did.
Now what about Michael and the suspense? Michael is once again a growling, brown toothed figure in a dirty black gas station suit with a white mask. He is not mentioned by name until page 103. Up until then he is just a dark figure swinging an axe and walking through woods. Once again he is also pulling weapons out of thin air. One moment he has a knife, the next an axe. As for the suspense, only one part was well-written which featured the demise of a few characters at the Haddonfield cemetery, but that's about the most enjoyable part of the entire book. Also, the Myers House seems to have secret passage ways that lead to the outside, which Mary uses to try and escape Michael.
Overall, I say skip this one and just read the SCREAM FACTORY and MAD HOUSE. This is a book full of unlikeable and undeveloped characters, unbelievable situations, low suspense, and a low body count. I wish Miss O'Rourke actually watched the HALLOWEEN films before writing these books. It feels like H20. Skip it and read the other two books! |
