Young Adult Revisited

Martha is one of the most annoying characters I ever encountered in one of these books, but I do feel bad for her. Her dad recently married a woman named Sally who has a son the same age as Martha named Conor. Martha and her dad lived in Chicago, but Sally found a house for them out in the middle of nowhere. Since Martha is a huge weenie, she instantly freaks out over seeing shadows on the walls, a scarecrow outside in the field, and especially Conor, who nothing seems to bother. The first night she's there, she gets so freaked out because she thinks her closet door opened on its own that she sleeps with a light on. She then gets a call in the middle of the night urging her to check outside, which leads to her seeing a bloody corpse outside her window. Conor rushes in and finds out that it's just the scarecrow and decides it was probably kids playing a prank on the new people. The next day, their parents send them to town to look for picture hooks. While lo...

Kate wrote a super scary story that won some random award at her school. Her teacher is a part-time writer who thinks Kate has talent and takes her to a writing conference. Though she looks forward to taking classes under famous horror author William Drewe, she's nervous about what he'll say about her writing. They get off the train and wait around forever until this creepy guy named Pearce pops up and takes them to the conference. He warns Kate not to get too excited about William as he hasn't showed up for classes yet and misses a lot of classes because of his drinking. Not long after arriving, she meets Denzil. He teases her about having cabin 13, which is the furthest one back in the woods, hits on her a few times, and makes it clear that he's interested in her before introducing her to his friend Tawney. They both work in the cafeteria to pay for their classes. They see the conference cat, Pet, show up with wet whiskers. Everyone acts like it's some ...

Kelsey is pissed off at her mom because she takes her to spend the summer with mom’s boyfriend Eric and his kids. They’ve apparently never met before, even though they’ve been dating forever (unlike Trick or Treat, where the parents marry after 3 months). On the boat ride to Beverly Island where the family lives, she meets a hot guy named Skip who tells her that he’s a lifeguard in town. When they arrive on the island, they meet his sons Neale and Justin, but learn that his daughter Beth just went missing. Apparently she was supposed to meet some guy and then disappeared and now the police think she drowned. Kelsey also meets the requisite creepy town drunk without any teeth Isaac, who seemingly attacks her. Kelsey automatically likes Justin, who is super sweet and nice. But she hates Neale, who acts dark and moody. Oh and both are lifeguards…apparently the whole town only has three. She finds a couple of notes left for her by Beth and wishes she had the chance to meet the sweet girl. ...