Format: Paperback, 250 pages
Source: Literary Lushes
Release Date: July 2, 2013
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Genre: Horror
Age Group: Young Adult
Get It: Amazon • Barnes & Noble
Get ready for laughter to turn into screams in R.L. Stine's re-imagining of Shakespeare's classic romantic comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream.~synopsis provided by Goodreads
Everyone knows that Mayhem Manor is cursed. After production on the horror film was stopped due to a series of mysterious deaths, it became a Hollywood legend--which makes it perfect for Claire and her family. If they can successfully finish the film, it should be enough to save their ailing movie studio.
Sure, the old haunted house is creepy, and strange stuff has been happening, but this is Claire's chance. Her chance to become the movie star she's always dreamed and her chance to finally convince her friend Jake that she is girlfriend material. Of course, the fact that Jake thinks he's in love with her best friend, Delia, who is crushing hard on Jake's friend Shawn, who insists on following Claire around, could be a problem, but Claire is sure she can figure it out. After all, the course of true love never did run smooth.
But once shooting starts, "creepy and strange" morph into "bloody and deadly," as the lines between film and reality begin to blur...
I struggled through this book. Struggled to make it to 50 pages.
So the book starts out with a group of friends in a creepy mansion and one of them dies. Boom. Right off the bat. And instead of trying to get out of there and flee for their lives, what do they do? They look for food! "Gee our friend was just murdered in front of us. I'm famished!"
Seriously? Seriously.
Turns out this isn't real! It's just the beginning of a movie that is being remade. Supposdly these actors really died in the scenes we just read. Few questions. If they really died, why did the film crew keep, you know, filming? Why is the footage still around?
Anyway. Our sage follows Claire, whose parents own the movie studio remaking the movie, and her BFFN (best friend for now) Delia to a pool party and another rich kid's house. Drama ensues and I'm apparently reading the diary of a 14-year-old preteen.
I couldn't do it anymore. I got a chapter or two past the end of this party and checked out. The sentences were choppy, the story unbelievable and unrelatable.
Part of me was also expected this novel to be somewhat related to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. If you're going to play on the title so heavily, there should be some relation to the original other than the fact that this all takes place on midsummer night.