Before now the only book I had ever read by this author was The Mall which I loved as a teenager. And even when I read it recently as an adult, there was still that touch of nostalgia there, even as I rolled my eyes at all the teenage tropes. And there were quite a few. There may be slight spoilers ahead so read at your own risk although to be fair the book has been out since 1990.

Enter Kate, a would be horror writer who goes to camp and meets not one, not two, but THREE guys who seem to have the hots for her even though one is a grumpy bear about showing it. I mean, apparently the love triangle (or in this case square) in YA has been around longer than I remember but I personally found it exhausting and I can see why now there is such an outcry in the world for platonic love. On her first outing with Gideon they kiss. Her encounter with Pearce by the cave and the bear trap she initiates the kiss which was weird to me because he had been a Grade A jerk to her thus far in the A The book played with the fact that Denzil might be a platonic friend but alas more kissy times happened at the end.

I will admit the mystery of who was behind the attacks was engaging and then the reveals were a bit shocking. But then it got to the final 'twist' and I looked at my phone (as I was reading it on the Hoopla app) and was like “Are you freaking kidding me?”

And it's not even that I'm reading it as an adult that made me groan. Teen Me would have been taken aback. I may not have been as enraged as Adult Me is but I wouldn't have been happy. And the reason was that it seemed like it was phoned in. At least with other stories with this twist you can go back or remember and see the signs. This one? Seemed to come completely out of nowhere and was just thrown in I guess for a shock value? But it seemed weak and honestly the villain being the way it as originally presented would have been better.

That 'twist' is what dropped the book to a two-star because up until then it rain pretty much on course for a teen horror from that time. But that wasn't a good one even by the standards of those days. I did not have said nostalgia for this book so I read it a bit more critically than I did The Mall, even though it's the same 1990's Point Horror teenage genre. All that said, for me at least, it wasn't great The Mall even with all of its problematic threads and there are quite a few.

I'm also sad that Tawney was actually that dumb. :(