Book Review : Fear Street Cheerleaders - The First Evil : why someone can still be possessed without looking crazy

I finally found this book, and quickly read it overnight. This may be something expected to hear when it comes to a teenage horror cliche, there must be one or two characters involving cheerleaders or a quarterback, but this one might be something new in the past, especially for me, because in some movies, cheerleaders are somehow always regarded as the villains, cocky arrogant and attractive girls as the first impression, but this book shows how much they are the same like all the other students. 

Title : Fear Street Cheerleaders : The First Evil

Author : R.L Stine

Year : 1992

Collation : 176 pages

Maybe for now I could say this is one of my most favorite ones from fear street series besides Switched. If you have read Switched, R.L Stine did not hesitate to show the complication right at the start of the story, therefore, I did not get bored at all right from the start until the end of the book. The difference with this First Evil is that this still has a long introduction but lesser than other ones I've read from Fear Street series. Technically the intro was pretty long, you get information about how cool the main protagonists were, how they get what they wanted and the bitterness from other characters, then there's a little complication happened, almost into the middle of the story, so I think that's great, something to give that actually have an indication about what's gonna happen later, but I haven't given you the spoiler yet. After that small complication, the story continued with I'm sorry another boring teenage drama even though I do like some of them but this one just walks pretty slowly, but there were three little complications happened that acted as a result from the first complication, now this is where the fun started. 

Let me start with the synopsis first,

Newcomers Corky and Bobbi Corcoran want more than anything to make the cheerleading squad at Shadyside High. But as soon as the Corcoran sisters are named to the team, terrible things happen to the cheerleaders.

The horror starts with a mysterious accident near the Fear Street cemetery. Soon after, piercing screams echo through the empty school halls. And then the ghastly murders begin...

Can Corky and Bobbi stop the killer before the entire cheerleading squad is destroyed?

If I read the synopsis, I would totally be interested, unfortunately, when I read the whole book, I wouldn't get much satisfied either, but as I said, this is still one of my favorites because the intro wasn't too long, there were several complications that made me curious about going further into the story, also cheerleaders!. I don't really want to explain the detailed summary, so I'll just get to my point of views, and yes, it contains lots of spoiler.

There was something wrong from the synopsis, maybe a little lie won't harm to attract readers, right?. Well, first, there weren't much murders, there was only one to notice, later apparently there were two. But the first one is later nearing the end of the book, takes a long journey to witness the gruesome murder. It was sadistic but somehow R.L Stine did not describe it graphically, let me give you a short image on how it was : a hot boiling water burns you for maybe, hours, and somebody locked you in the shower from getting out, until you're dead. To me, that was really gruesome and R.L Stine only describe how the victim's skin (victim's name is Bobbi) is red like a boiled lobster and the flesh seen a bit when Bobbi's sister, Corky, found the body, and to be honest, I almost cried during this scene because R.L Stine managed to get me attached with Bobbi from the start, imagine having your heroine died in a horrible way just like that. 

I forgot what are those complications that I've mentioned earlier. The first one is the bus accident when the cheearleading squad was about to go to a game but the main protagonists which are the sisters, Corky and Bobbi forgot about something left at home, so they asked the bus to turn around to the fear street where they live, but the weather was so bad, a storming rain and the bus had an accident with the cheerleader captain (Jennifer) was thrown out from the bus' door into a cemetary, Jennifer's body was faced down with its hand spreaded like a cross onto Sarah Fear's tombstone. She's not dead but she is crippled, so she uses wheelchair throughout the story. 

Second and third ones are Chip (quarterback if I'm not mistaken) and Bobbi's paralyzed body when they were supposed to move, Chip was supposed to throw the ball during the football game but he paralyzed and the whole team probably blamed it on him, then Bobbi was supposed to catch Kimmy during sort of like a jumping movement, but Bobbi was paralyzed, resulting in Kimmy fell down and badly injured, this was described a bit gruesome, I really thought this girl is dead but somehow she didn't. What made it worse is that Kimmy is the one who's been super jealous and now everyone is blaming Bobbi for that, accusing her and resulting in Bobbi has to be kicked out of the team. Before that, Bobbi has seen Jennifer walked in her house after Bobbi was confiding in her, so this means Jennifer has been pretending. 

Those stuff made me feel curious, although a bit bored with the pretty slow storyline. So basically Jennifer has been dead since the first complication and her body was possessed by Sarah Fear, the spirit wanted to kill Bobbi because she knew how Jennifer was jealous of her, but I know the actual Jennifer's jealousy towards Bobbi is not the negative one, it's more like "I want to be like you, this team needed you and you can be my pal", unlike Kimmy's jealousy that tends to be a heavy negativity. Now we suspect Kimmy is the murderer of Bobbi because Corky found Kim's pendant in the locker room, later it was found that Kim has given that pendant to Jennifer as a gift, way before the problems were started. 

So yes, Jennifer who acted so pure, kind, best listening buddy to Bobbi, is the murderer. There was a battle going on in the end between Corky and Jennifer's lifeless possessed body, witness by Kimmy and her two pals. Of course, Corky won, it was an unbelievable kind of battle but thankfully, they had witnesses. 

I love how this story goes and ended, even it made me almost cry when Bobbi died. Also another strength of this book is that this one actually shows the great mystical part of Shadyside, precisely on the fear street itself. Evil spirit showed up, there was a skeleton with white worms described (this was soooo eerie in my imagination because I hated worms or maggots), there was a gruesome murder and teenage drama. Unique stuff I found too is that the possessed one (Jennifer) actually act like a normal sane person, this tactic is great to convince that you are not the evil, this totally has something to do with the title I've given for this book review, because to me, it's different, totally different from the one I expected.

Besides the pretty slow storyline, I guess the other weakness I found is the super detailed description of activities and everything, I know this sounds inconsistent because from my other book review, I do like that kind of description so I could imagine things well throughout the story, but this one was so detailed especially the football game, and the cheerleading movements. Even though I may recognize this as a bit of weakness, this one is still super relative, anybody can enjoy this, but not me, I know how football and cheerleading work, I just want to get to the problem. But honestly though, I must applaud R.L Stine about how he managed to describe two different and contradicted sports at the same book, seemed like he had done lots of research or indirect information seeking about those stuff which was great. 

About the language, it was easy to understand, third point of view so it's way more detailed about all characters, don't get confused because some words seem like a first point of view but it's actually just reading the character's mind. Also there was this 90s slang I read that I did not understand, "cream" what is that? I should go get a little research about that slang 'cause that sounds real neat. 

This book is great for either middle to high schoolers, or grown ups like me who still loves teenhood and its drama filled with dark sensation. Kids can read this too, there was gruesomeness but as I said, R.L Stine did not describe it that detail so it depends on how your head react to it. No sexual scene, only a bit of kissy. Last but not least, the appearance of the book, the pages probably look like the other fear street books which is simple, fonts are normal, it doesn't hurt your eyes, the spacing between paragraphs are not too dense (I read the digitized version with white paper), also the cover, it looks great! it depicts so much of what the characters look like and the possessed look! too bad the two characters behind looked like it was badly edited, but still looks great though, back then I guess. Good Day!