The New Year’s Party (Fear Street: Super Chiller)
Ring in the New Fear
P.J. wasn’t supposed to die. It was just a practical joke, no big deal. But P.J. had a bad heart…The kids at Reenie’s Christmas party couldn’t tell the police what they’d done, so they hid the body…and then it disappeared.
Now someone is killing them, one by one. Someone is taking P.J.’s revenge…but who? By midnight they’ll know. Because when the clock chimes, they’ll all get a kiss. The kiss of death.
The New Year's Party Fear Street Super Chiller Book Cover
GOT U COVERED 📕
Author: R.L Stine
Published: 1995
Series: Fear Street: Super Chiller
Tagline: When midnight strikes…they all die
Description: A blonde girl standing cross-armed in front of a Happy New Year banner.
THOUGHTS 💭
The past always comes back to bite you. Well in this case…to kill you.
This is my second Super Chiller book that I’m reading and it appears that the way these books are structured is in parts.
Part One - opens at a New Year’s Party and starts like many horror films of the 80s - with a prank gone wrong. Except this part was set in 1965. One can only imagine what a ‘60s NYE party was like. But Stine illustrates it well and peppers in his references to The Beatles, Paul Newman, hi-fi, Coke (the soda, not the drug😉), Mustang convertibles, and phrases like “groovy party” throughout. We are clued in on some characters but the focus is on Beth and Jeremy. At first, we don’t know the extent of their relationship, but we learn that later in the book. However, Jeremy is the target of a prank. He isn’t exactly part of the popular group, making him the unfortunate victim. The joke was pretty mean-spirited and a step too far, resulting in a bad event shortly after - essentially becoming the inciting incident that threads the rest of the story and parts together. I was on Jeremy’s side until he refused to slow down on the road…on a slippery, snowy road. Then he just became a stubborn idiot. That portion of the book gave me I Know What You Did Last Summer energy.
Jeremy jammed on the brakes. The car zigzagged wildly.
Then slid to a stop halfway across the road. Beth stared out the windshield.
The headlights showed nothing but the snowbank and the dark trunk of a gnarled tree.
“It was a boy,” Jeremy moaned. “I hit him. We’ve got to go back.”
“No!” Beth screamed, her voice full of panic. “Get out of here now. Before we get caught!”
Part Two - Time jumps to “this year”, with us being introduced to a new group of friends: Reenie, Greta, Artie, Ty, and Sean. We don’t clarify when “this year” is, so I guess it’s whatever year the reader is currently in. What’s crystal clear is that Greta and Artie (who are dating) are forever fighting and on the verge of a breakup. This would seem like a throwaway side plot, but the effects of their relationship play largely into the group dynamics and influence some of the plot points. However, the main thing we need to take away from this friend group is that they LOVE to prank each other and play silly jokes. It’s their thing to try and scare Reenie especially. It’s just typical teens goofing around. For instance, the first prank they play on her, Sean (Reenie’s boyfriend) pretends to be dead and falls out of her closet when she opens it while the rest of her friends are in her room for a study session.
During the aftermath of this prank, a familiar character from the Fear Street series is mentioned- Deena Martinson, who appeared in Wrong Number and Wrong Number 2. This book has plenty of callbacks to other characters: Corky Corcoran from the Cheerleaders series, Lily Bancroft from Final Grade, Pete Goodwin and Gary Brandt from The Overnight, Bobby Newkirk from Double Date, and Julie Prince from The Confession (possibly?). I could’ve missed more, but I love how many names throughout the series get tossed in these books to help the universe of Fear Street feel more unified. It adds so much to Fear Street, but at the same time, it also has no effect, because rarely are the characters privy to what horrible things happened to the others.
We meet Liz and PJ. A sister-brother duo that’s new to Shadyside High. PJ is slightly off and weird, but Greta is smitten with him. Ty also takes a liking to Liz and they soon go out. But as the plot continues, PJ and Greta seem to get closer amidst Greta and Artie’s constant bickering. PJ becomes somewhat of a nemesis for Artie, where many “accidents” happen between them and as a way to get “revenge”, Artie decides to craft a prank at Reenie’s upcoming house party. I’m not going to lie. The joke was kinda dumb. I’m even glad that Reenie thought so too. So often in these books, characters go along with dumb plans without much pushback, so it was refreshing to read that a character agrees with me. However, they all decide to go along with the plot. That is until it goes wrong. You see, our dear little PJ has health problems and the stress caused by such a prank could not be good for him. It could even be fatal…which it is, well kinda. Now at this point, the book kinda lost me. I was side-eyeing this whole debacle. Was I supposed to believe that a boy got pranked to death? 🤣😅😂
P.J. lay there. Pale. Not moving.
Not moving or breathing.
Reenie shuddered. Sean pulled her close, held her.
“He’s dead,” Reenie wailed. “We killed P.J.”
That’s when the slashing ensues and bodies - of characters we don’t care about - start to pile up because someone is out to get revenge on PJ’s behalf - whose body has gone missing this entire time. Hmmmm, I wonder who that obvious person could be, but the book did win me over at the end when it revealed a little twist about one of the characters. That was oddly satisfying and I wondered if anything would be resolved regarding that incident.
Overall, I think this book is okay. It’s quite a silly premise with no real stakes or scares. Nor does it have much to do with New Year’s, besides the beginning and end parts. More appropriately, this book could have been called - The Prank with the tagline jokes on you or something along those lines.
But what Stine lacks in plot, he made up for in writing style with the characters Reenie and Greta. I like them and their friendship. They felt like real teen girls and in some cases, quite mature. Maybe it was the fact that they prioritized their homework and planned their future or in comparison to the male characters. Speaking of, characters like Sean and Ty faded into the background and I didn’t necessarily finish the book with any impression of them, besides a plot point that involved one of them. Artie and Marc, however…what buffoons. They are the typical knuckleheads you come to expect in these Fear Street books. I can’t even say that Liz or PJ make much impact either. Reenie and Greta are the only ones who seemed to have some characterization I could appreciate.
I enjoyed how we jumped from the present-day to the ‘60s storyline every few chapters. It helped to move that plot along too and if you read between the lines, you’d see immediately how it played into the present.
The deaths of the characters weren’t that great either. There wasn’t any tension or atmosphere built around their deaths. It happened so fast. Maybe too fast. Resulting in other characters discovering the bodies with their heads twisted around. This was the signature of the killer so perhaps hinting at how terrified they were before their necks were snapped would have raised the hairs of the reader, especially if written from the killer’s POV.
I’m not going to lie, this book was predictable. Painfully so. I feel like the twists were set up but it wasn’t twists when you could see it from a mile away. I don’t know if this is because I’ve consumed many of these books or what, but I knew immediately and the jig was up. If I were a teen reading this in the ‘90s as I did in the 2000s, maybe it would’ve slid right by me, but that’s giving the benefit of the doubt. It does fly by pretty quickly though so the pacing was good. It didn’t spend too much time on unnecessary sequences. Everything continued until we reached our climactic scene, which featured more dramatic action and a twist I didn’t see coming. As mentioned earlier, I was satisfied with it. However, the book ended abruptly though. What was up with that?
Would I recommend this book? Not really. This felt more like a regular Fear Street book than a Super Chiller, which is usually longer and has more violence or kills. Unfortunately, this book fell flat. The New Year’s Party is incorporated but not enough to make it the book’s title. The prank gone wrong doesn’t even happen on this day. However, it was probably a good way to market the book. I mean hey, it got me to select it for the New Year-themed selections.
If you’re a Fear Street and R.L. Stine fan, I’ll recommend it as an obligation to the fandom.
I grade this book a C-
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