Della, the main character, meets a strange man in the woods. After their advisor cancels the upcoming “overnight” on Fear Island, smack dab in the middle of a lake inside the Fear Street woods (awesome place to go camping, huh?), the group decides to go anyway. The book tells the story about the six-member Shadyside High Outdoors Club. The Overnight does involve a lot of fallen leaves - used to hide a dead body. Though I am a little bummed they were not fitting for the season (I was a little annoyed by having to imagine fresh green leaves on trees when I can look out my window and see colorful fall foliage), they were both entertaining. I suppose both are ideal times for camping and outdoors whatnot, as well as death by pottery wheel. The Overnight takes place sometime in late-April or early-May and Lights Out is set in the early-summer. Given the camping and woods theme of the books, I assumed they took place in the fall. I am sure Stine’s smile stretched ear to ear when he wrote about her demise, representative of another hallmark of the Fear Street series: creative deaths. And, frankly, I was glad Debra was dead she was a complete bitch. Just the wording - “her face nearly rubbed off” - makes it comical. I have to admit I laughed when I read it.

Let that one soak in for a second… Epic, huh? Making it even better is the description on the next page: “It was Debra who sat slumped over the table, her face nearly rubbed off by the potting wheel.” Stine, apparently, because he used it to full affect.

The thing that she saw had once been a human face, but was now a bloody mass of raw pulp. The wheel turned rapidly, on each pass rubbing away more of the thing slumped over it. Holly continued to look, horrified and sickened.

Fear street lights out