New Kid on the Block (Horror High, No 4)

Rating:
Summary: Wannabe!
Review: If you turned this in as your creative writing assignment, you might get a 'B'. You'd expect better from an published author. The cover of the book looks so good... glamorous and cool, a brown haired girl smirks at you while a guy's sprawled body is reflected on her sunglasses... above the epitaph ... 'She's smart. She's fun. She wants to kill you.' Trust me, those words have nothing to do with the story inside. You expect a mystery. You expect a charming, popular and ruthless stranger who comes into Elizabeth's life and takes over, maybe even turning her old friends against her. You expect to wonder 'who is this girl?' and 'Is this really Amanda'? You expect people around 'Amanda' to start mysteriously turning up dead or have near fatal accidents. Well, that isn't in this book. It doesn't deliver. I was not only disappointed, but mad. Once she moves into Elizabeth's house, 'Amanda' doesn't do a thing that is particulary smart or charming or fun, neither does Elizabeth. There is no mystery to it. You know who did what to who right off. Elizabeth is the only one in the dark. It would have been a much better book if Nicholas Adams had lived up to the synopsis and kept what really happened to Amanda a mystery until the end instead of putting it all in the front of the book. It might work for you if you're one of those readers who flips to the back of the book and reads the ending first, but for the rest of you I recommend sticking to Stine or Pike unless you're into collecting book cover art.