With a premise like accidentally killing your best friend and she pops into school the next day like nothing happened, how can this book go wrong?

By being a Goosebumps book with just as poor character development as Goosebumps.

Strap in. I got a lot to say.

Our main character is Samantha, she's a bully why is she a bully? You don't get to find that out until nearly the end of the book. She is bullying her best friend Rachel and within thirty pages kills her. Why does he kill Rachel? Because she's a bully and she randomly corners her in front of a lake and shoves her in and all of the spirits that are in the lake grab her and pull her in.

Samantha almost feels bad but then goes home thinking that character deserves to die. She proceeds to be upset and constantly hint at what drove her and Rachel apart but also made her forever bully Rachel and make Rachel scared and upset and do her homework for her.

I'm not sure why I should care for this character because she is an outright bully and she is hurting everyone around her and her parents are apparently having a divorce so that should be why I feel bad for her? She just killed somebody and now everything after her killing Rachel feels kind of moot in comparison.

Like the summary on the back says, Rachel comes back and everything seemingly is normal, except Samantha is still a bully but scared of Rachel specifically. So Rachel is now existing bully free.

We see that Rachel barely interacts with anybody and apparently her last friend was Samantha but also Samantha's last friend was Rachel. It's a really weird dynamic and when the reveal near the finale of the book is shown for why they fell apart it's kind of stupid to realize that they've been so codependent yet also divided over the simple little event that they didn't want to happen.

So one day somebody read Rachel's book out loud and it was her journal it to the entire classroom and it was about how she felt bad for Samantha because her parents were going to divorce. And how Samantha was such a shitty person that Rachel even wondered if she should feel bad for her. Which to be fair, she's a kid so yes, but she's a shitty kid so, not too much.

And from then on Samantha vows to hurt everyone around her who even looks at her like they care.

Aight. That's stupid.

But the stupidity isn't over, because Rachel dies. Rachel actually gets a second chance to return and be alive and she still sacrifices herself for Samantha. Samantha who vows at the end to become a better person and be a good person. Then she takes the binder with all of her memories between her and Rachel and throws it into the lake so Rachel can have them back. Even though Rachel of all people would have the best while Samantha would need them to remind herself why she's trying to be better.

So the good character dies in a character that's barely redeemed themselves lives. This book really wanted us to feel fridged. A fridging mess.

I could not find anything really to make me care about Samantha, and Jessica her sister is hardly a character so both of them surviving at the end left me feeling nothing. They both desperately needed more development and less focus on racial who clearly deserved redemption and to live again. The wrong characters die and the wrong ones survived. What a mucky mess.

Samantha is no last girl, more like a trash girl.

2 stars. ( )

I thought this was good for a middle school aged scary “ghost story”. It reminded me of those high school scary movies we used to watch for fun.

It will be too scary for some middle schoolers and not scary enough for others but that’s what the back covers are for ( )

I try to express only my most honest opinion in a spoiler-free way. Unfortunately, there is still always a risk of slight spoilers despite my best efforts. If you feel something in my review is a spoiler please let me know. Thank you.

After pushing Rachel into the lake and not trying to save her. Samantha realizes what she's done. But the next day Rachel is back at school, but there is something different about her. No longer is she the meek girl that Samantha is used to bullying around. Samantha is scared of what Rachel has in mind for her to get her revenge.

Not bad. It was a creepy quick and easy read. I can see the appeal toward middle-grade children. I bought this book at my daughter's school's book fair. I had read The Collector by this author and loved it. Super creepy. While this one isn't as good or as scary, it was still a really good read. Worth the price I paid. No probably not for me. But I have a niece who loves to read and my daughter is fast approaching an age where she might enjoy it as well.

I have to say, I didn't really know if I wanted to root for Samantha. She's a bully. She was horrible and mean to Rachel and while she didn't mean to push her into the water, she did nothing to try and save her. Don't get me wrong, I know she was just a kid who probably didn't realize the consequences of her actions. But I really don't like bullies. I think that that may have been the point though. A cautionary tale toward bullies. ( )