Fear Street: The New Year's Party. The Reason Raven Doesn't Go To Parties

Yet another holiday themed entry into the terrifying world of Fear Street? Why of course. After all, any holiday can be terrifying if you live on Fear Street (or near it, or in the same town, or drive by it, or know someone who lives there. You get the picture). As for my tastes, I love a good winter-themed horror story. I remember quite fondly rereading this one almost every Christmas break when I was in Middle and High School. Honestly, all of his winter holiday works were on a regular rotation in my yearly reading schedule. It's probably part of the reason I was terrified of high school parties (maybe Raven just isn't the most social person). So let's take down the holly and lights and get ready for The New Year's Party.

Having a chance to look back on not just this book, but the whole series I realize how strange of a journey it all was. Reading these as a teen I definitely thought of our characters as adults and capable of handling the situation without further help. Now I often scream "Tell the adults!", but Stine definitely sets up the perfect traps to prevent the adults from being helpful or even aware at times. The dangers and perils are always well set up and in this case it makes the characters and the world feel very small and helpless at times.

The New Year's Party starts off with a bang. It's New Year's Eve 1964 and the teens are out of school for some reckless winter fun. A wild blur of character introductions and dynamics occurs as we focus on Beth and her boy dramas. What still stands out about this opening scene however is the staged robbery. Yes, in classic teenage fashion seniors from the high school fake a robbery and embarrass our loner character Jeremy by making him beg for his life before revealing the prank. Jeremy is naturally upset and Beth chases after him. In what feels like another blur Jeremy hits something with his car, tries to flee the scene, and ends up crashing killing both him and Beth.

Our rather dramatic opening leads us back to the wonderful year of 1995 (it's just referred to as "this Year" in the book which made me laugh now and then). We get to see yet another group of no-good teenage pranksters that our story will focus on. Pranks are the backbone of this story and it will lead to plenty of fake-out moments. Most of these books have a bit of an ensemble cast and you'll see names repeating the further you dive into the stories. For now, we are focused on a lovely friend group consisting of Reenie, Greta, Artie, and Ty. The dynamics of this group become more tense as these pranks cause more trauma. We also have some other big characters such as Liz, the pretty girl everyone loves, and P.J., the guy with a heart murmur.

Like our last entry, this book is a super chiller. There are lots of fake-out moments that occur and pranks just happen to be the vehicle for that in this story. There is a certain edge of uncertainty throughout as we grow suspicious of our characters. This is also one where Stine jumps from time periods. So we do go back to the 1965 incident and see more of that as it grows to parallel our main line modern story.

When we do jump back to 1965 it is honestly horrific. I do not want to take away the horror of those scenes, but if you like existential horror these scenes will probably be your favorite. It is nice to see the mix of horror in this. Sometimes the threats are real and jump right out at you. Other times the horror lies in a change in reality. Being able to balance and connect both makes the work all the more exciting.

The imagery of ghosts in Fear Street is honestly one of my favorite parts of the series. Most of the ghosts have imagery of fire and smoke. This often leads to haunting scenes of ghosts dancing in this type of twisted pain. Pretty much every time we get that imagery in this series it just makes the book all the better for me and its something I look for anytime the threat might be ghosts.

If I had been rating this only based on my memory I probably would have given this a low rating. I honestly did not remember much outside of the opening scene and fake-out. Reading this book again felt like I was reading it for the first time. I don't mean to say this book is forgettable by any means. Rather I was still taken on a thrill ride in which our cliffhanger chapters kept me engaged and second-guessing what little I did remember. I am pretty thankful I decided to reread this one as it was a very well-done mix of horror types and an engaging way to work in two plots.

Final Rating: 4/5 Stars. Revisiting this story was a trip. I found a lot of the humor in it to land well and at times the fake-out scares made me laugh. A few of them also did get to me and made me think this was going to be an absolutely unhinged bloodbath. Judging it as a seasonal work it is honestly a lot less festive than some of the others. However, I can't fault Stine for that as New Year's is not always super festive to begin with. Judging it purely as another entry of Fear Street it is solid both as a super chiller and as a standard work.