Teacher’s Pet (Point Horror)

Kate likes a little thrill. She likes a little scare. And she loves getting the chance to go to the exclusive week-long writing conference taught by the famous master of horror himself. He’s so good at being so bad.

With a teacher like that, you expect a little competition. With a teacher like that, you practically have to kill to get his attention. Does Kate have what it takes to be teacher’s pet?

GOT U COVERED 📔

Author: Richie Tankersley Cusick

Published: 1990

Series: Point Horror

Tagline: Look what the cat dragged in…

Description: A shadow of a black cat against a class blackboard, with the book title in neon pink font.

It was the tall, silent shadow at the water’s edge. A human shadow. Black and stark against the gathering night, it raised one arm…slowly…deliberately…in her direction. And even in her terror, Kate recognized the shape of an axe. - pg. 47

SYNOPSIS 📖

In Teacher’s Pet, Kate Rawlins is an aspiring horror writer and winner of an annual fiction competition. Her creative writing teacher, Miss Bunceton, and she are to attend a week-long writer’s conference where they will be able to sharpen their skills (and pencils) with other budding students within literature. Kate is particularly excited because she gets to attend lessons given by famous horror writer, William Drewe.

Upon arrival, she and Miss Bunceton, meet Pearce Cronan - the caretaker of the lodge - who takes them to the camp they’ll be staying at. With the cabins surrounded by trees and a thin grey fog, it’s the perfect atmosphere for Kate to gain horror inspiration for her writing, especially since her cabin #13 is located deeper into the forest. Luckily she’s provided with a map; she wouldn’t want to get lost all alone now would she. As she gets more acquainted at the camp, she meets fellow aspiring writers and camp employees: Denzil - a charismatic jokester, and Tawney - a head in the clouds poet and let’s not forget Pet - the kleptomaniac cat, who is notorious for stealing campers clothing items.

When Kate attends her first class, she learns that William won’t be teaching the class. He’s suspiciously gone M.I.A. Instead, his replacement is Gideon Drewe. His younger brother, also a writer. Kate immediately becomes smitten with him and soon becomes favoured by him, making her the titular Teacher’s Pet.

However, someone doesn’t like that Kate is getting all the special attention. Someone wants to send her a message…a deadly message.

Kate starts having creepy and threatening occurrences: finding a severed hand in a glove, being watched by an axe-wielding figure, her clothes are cut up and her cabin is vandalised (including her bathroom smeared with blood) and someone’s set a bear trap intended for her.

Perhaps the mysterious black-veiled figure named Rowena has some answers. It’s up to Kate to figure out why she is in harm’s way. Before her story ends in this final chapter.

Blood was everywhere…splattered on the walls…the tile…dripping from the sink…smeared in wide, greasy arcs across the floor. The door to the shower stall was closed. Dark stains spread out from beneath it, already congealed into thick, puddinglike masses upon the soaked rug. As Kate’s eyes fell upon the mirror, she saw herself looking back, her pale, frightened face framed by long slashes of red…And beneath her face…just beneath her red-slashed reflection, the savagely scribbled words:

TEACHER’S PET -pg.95

THOUGHTS 💭

This month’s theme is Student’s Bodies, where we focus on books have the location of a school or university 🏫as the main or predominant location for the scare’s and spooks these characters find themselves in. I thought with a title like Teacher’s Pet, it would be a no brainer that this clearly takes place in a school. EH!…WRONG!! Well ok, even though this is at a cabined-conference, we still have teachers, students and classes 👨‍🏫.

However, not much teaching is going on, nor much learning, nor much writing for that matter. Which was the first point I noted. This setting doesn’t really live up to its own purpose. It could have been set at a beach resort or a normal suburb and the main beats of the story wouldn’t really have changed. Thus the whole writing camp felt more of a way to get characters secluded rather than have them a part of a much larger world. Only the other problem is that it didn’t really feel like a writing camp with many attendees. As the reader, we know they are present, but they don’t really feature at all or make any significant changes to any events. It’s just a bunch of “extras” within a story. I would have liked to see a little bit more of interaction between Kate and these other camper’s based on why they were there in the first place.

Speaking of interactions, the rate at which these relationships develop between Kate and the males in this book, you’d swear the conference has been going on for six months vs the mere week. It’s damn fast. Faster than these reality dating shows. Especially for characters that have just met. Not only does Kate become friends with Denzil and Tawney really quickly (which, sure, is perfectly fine), but Gideon and Pearce develop this deep love/yearning 💓 for Kate in a matter of days (chapters) where lives are now at stake. It was just a little too fast paced and actually made me not care about any of their feelings towards each other.

I do love Richie Tankersley Cusick’ writing style and her choice of descriptors, personality quirks and dialogue that she gave to each character’s reaction/observation. I was able to envision them clearly in my imagination and it also helped that the other characters would provide observational commentary, which helped me to shape more than one character based on a single POV. I particularly liked Denzil the most. His lines were quite humorous and honest😅. He added the necessary flavour in a stew of somewhat bland characters. RTC also does a good job at casting suspicion on characters by dropping easter eggs and hints that make you think “oh it could be this person, because they do that or act like this”, so it conjures up some theories that are fun to debunk or prove right as you read further along into the book.

The only area that I found myself disliking the dialogue was when it came to the mystery that was unfolding🕵️. You know when people are vague and all of a sudden can’t spill out what they know and then run off without having given a morsel of info that’ll provide a clue as to what the hell is going on…well, yeah. That’s what happens a lot. Just a lot of emotion filled thoughts, empty clues and vague mysteries that have you along for a ride. I found myself skimming certain parts because I just wanted to get on with it.

The antagonist reveal was quite good. It’s very reminiscent of the movie Psycho. I enjoyed the ending, climactic drama of it all and motives, which is always the best part of these books. Getting to know the whole backstory and why the antagonist snapped. It for sure compensated for the long-dragged out middle that had me eagerly waiting for the end to be near.

Overall, this is not a bad book. It for sure has its moments, but given the setting and the reason why Kate attended in the first place, I felt the story could have gone a different route than the one it took. Of course, that’s just my personal subjective opinion (to which I admit), but would it not have been cool to be at a horror writing camp and have people start dying in similar ways to what they had written in their class assignments or perhaps in William Drewe’s published books or something to that effect. Instead we got some gothic romance tragedy. Oh well…I digress.

I would personally grade this book a C+. While it showed a lot of promise in the beginning, the book started to lose me once rapid-speed feelings were involved and mysteries were only vaguely uncovered throughout. The scares and creepy elements were strong and made for effective thrills but it fell short at feeling like there were any stakes to them. Characters like Denzil and Tawney are pleasant additions to the melodramatic energies of Kate, Gideon and Pearce. However, the climatic ending help to give rhyme and reason to everything, wrapping it up in a nice black bow. I’d suggest this book to a Point Horror completionist, but might not be on my personal re-read pile.

Share your opinions on the book below in the comments section and what your personal grading is.