Halloween Night (Point Horror)

Brenda and her cousin Halley just can’t get along. All they do is constantly fight and hate on each other. But when Brenda start receiving anonymous, disgusting threats — could it be Halley that hates her that much? Or is someone else determined to make sure she never makes it to the Halloween Party?

Halloween Night Book UK Cover. Published in 1994

GOT U COVERED 📘

Author: R.L Stine

Published: 1993

Series: Point Horror

Tagline: This party is a killer…

Description: A rotted Jack-O-Lantern with one eye peering out the lantern’s eye socket.

“It’s blood! She realised. Blood - smeared all over the wallpaper.

Brenda felt a surge of dizziness. Her eyes went in and out of focus. When they cleared, she saw to her horror that the dark blood smears spelled out words. Gripping the door frame with both hands, she read the words aloud in a trembling whisper:

SEE YOU ON HALLOWEEN.” - pg. 55

THOUGHTS 💭

Brenda strongly dislikes her cousin, Halley. It’s all she can talk about with her friends, Traci and Dina. It doesn’t help that she also had to give up her room for her cousin and move into a much smaller one.

Halley begins living with Brenda and her family because Halley’s mom and dad are getting a divorce, which Dina is very empathetic towards because she also comes from a divorced household. That’s why she sometimes comes to Halley’s defense, much to Brenda’s surprise. But Brenda has had enough, she sees right through her cousins’ fake actions, so Traci suggests that they take matters into their own hands and…murder her (dun dun DUN!)

“I have an idea,” Traci said,…

What kind of idea? Brenda asked skeptically.

Let’s murder her! Traci suggested".” - pg.11

Turns out, it’s only a joke. It’s for a writing assignment they got at school and the three friends think it would be a cool idea to write a story about a murder that takes place at a Halloween party (seeing as Brenda is throwing one herself) with Halley as the central character…and victim.

I liked the parts in the book where they brainstormed ideas for the assignment. How to fictionally kill Halley, what the scenario should be, who should be involved, and how the killer would get away. However, there wasn’t enough of it. Once they would start jotting ideas, they would only get two or three ideas in before they would stop or get distracted.

Well, Brenda has got reason to want to get even with Halley, because Halley starts becoming more and more of a pain to live with as the book goes on. She constantly borrows Brenda’s car, kisses Ted (Brenda’s boyfriend), then moves on to Noah (Traci’s boyfriend), and causes a divide between Brenda and her parents - who always take Halley’s side. When Halley returns one night and tells Brenda that she got into a car accident with her beloved car, Brenda has had enough of her antics. She decides that life needs to imitate art. She’s going to turn that fictional assignment into a reality.

“I’ll kill her, Brenda decided, gasping in the cold, wet air, her chest still heaving, her head throbbing. I’ll kill her for real. I really will.”

- pg.104

Only someone else has a treat for Brenda. She starts getting menacing tricks like blood on the wall, a decapitated bird head, and maggoty rotten meat in her bed sheets - all with a promise to see her at her Halloween Party.

If I’m being honest, I wasn’t too keen on this book once I finished it. Possibly because I called the antagonist pretty early into the book. It was actually so obvious, that I thought that I had to be wrong, but they made it so clear because of one specific thing that matched a character. Also, the book focused so heavily on the teen drama between the girls, that the scares & thrills felt of secondary importance. Speaking of said thrills, it didn’t have much creep factor, except for the bird head — that was pretty spooky.

Brenda wasn’t able to get much sympathy from me because she isn’t a great character herself. She comes across as very self-centered, especially when interacting with her friends. She’s the type of friend who will turn every conversation and problem back onto herself. Which if you know people like that in real life, they can be pretty annoying. However, Halley also gets no sympathy either. She has the same level of self-awareness as a pumpkin and oversteps the boundary so much, that I was hoping she’d be killed.

I also thought the air vent in Brenda’s room was going to play some larger role within the story, but that also went nowhere.

There is one character worth mentioning that I did like. Brenda’s younger brother, Randy. His one-liners and commentary made me laugh quite a few times. He was an entertaining addition to the book. R.L. Stine seems to have a good grasp on how to write younger brothers who annoy their older sisters.

The book's Halloween Party climax: murder, killer reveal, and motive (given in the last few chapters) felt somewhat rushed. Which was ironic because that’s what the characters were building up towards. It was like R.L. Stine was ready to wrap up the story real quick so he could get to his next one. There wasn’t any payoff, because the build-up fell flatter than a pancake. Leaving a lackluster feeling once I put the book down.

I was able to find an audiobook of this on YouTube and that was actually a much more entertaining listen than it was a read. The voice actors did a great job at performing this story and the added production helped to immerse the listener into the story. So much so, that it gave the book an extra tiny boost in my rating. Coming in at just a little over an hour and a half, it would be a nice story to listen to get you in the spooky mood whilst making a pumpkin pie or setting up decorations for your own Halloween party.

I’d rate this book a D+.

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