Rick R. Reed
Amber Quill Press (2008)
ISBN 9781602729179
Reviewed by Neha N. Kashmiri (age 14) for Reader Views (2/09)
With Halloween just around the corner, a Halloween horror club seems like a perfect idea. The rules are really simple, every week one of the five will tell a ghost story and the winner gets a prize. And they even find the perfect place to hold their meetings – the house at the end of the street where an entire family was murdered in their beds, except for Paul Tuttle, the teenage son who disappeared the same night. He hasn’t been found yet but everyone blames him for the murders.
Each week the stories get scarier – stories about what really happened that last night in the house, about twins lost in the woods at night, and about a horror-obsessed teenager who literally scares someone to death. And as the weeks go on, stranger and stranger things start to happen in the house. It starts with footsteps, then a long howl just when one of them finishes a werewolf story. And then a crash that sends them all running outside.
There is someone or something in the house that wants them gone. And each week its patience runs thin. Did Paul Tuttle come back to live in his abandoned house or is it just a hobo? Or is it something even more sinister than they could imagine?
Maybe it’s because I am unimaginative but this book didn’t freak me out at all. I followed every step to make a scary story scarier, I read it at night, with my lights dim and a cat screaming outside the window, but I wasn’t scared. I did appreciate how the author masterfully wrote the story and always with the threat of someone hiding in the shadows. Maybe horror’s not my genre so I recommend “Dead End Street” by Rick R. Reed to someone who does like horror books.
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