I received this book for free from Reviewer Purchase in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
The Dare by R.L. Stine Series: Fear Street #21
Published by Simon Pulse on 6/30/08
Genres: Horror & Ghost Stories, Thrillers, Young Adult
Pages: 164
Format: Ebook
Source: Reviewer Purchase
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Johanna Wise has always longed to be part of Dennis Arthur’s rich, popular crowd, and she can’t believe it when he finally asks her out. She thought she’d do anything to keep Dennis, but when he dares her to kill their teacher, she’s not so sure. Will she really kill for love?
Short and Sweet Review
The Dare follows our main character Johanna on her quest to be apart of the popular crowd. Johanna sees an in when she overhears that Dennis wants their teacher dead and for some reason our dummy of a main character offers to off him. Johanna thinks her offer is just a joke but Dennis and his crew take her seriously. Dennis and his friends start to hangout at Johannas house and they dare each other to do stupid things and it’s just so convenient that Johanna happens to be neighbors with the teacher they’re targeting. Let me just say Dennis and his friends are rich so they’re not used to dealing with consequences which is why when the teacher won’t just let Dennis pass he becomes so enraged he thinks about murder. Anywho Johanna has violent fantasies throughout the book and she feels the pressure to do what Dennis says but she can’t because she’s not a killer just an idiot. I’m not sure why she thought that his was love because Dennis was just using her and he had a girlfriend. The real victim of the story was the teacher, who doesn’t get paid enough to deal with this nonsense. Johanna was a horrible main character and quite frankly very stupid. The decision making in this book was awful and it’s obvious that their frontal lobes aren’t fully developed. This book was originally published in the 90s and you can tell. The writing and gimmicks of this book just don’t work in the 2000s. I have a few more Fear Street novels to read and I’m not sure if those will also disappoint or be a pleasant surprise. I would say just skip this book, I don’t give out a lot of 1s as ratings but this book deserves it.
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