Don’t Stay Up Late (Fear Street Relaunch #2) by R.L Stine Review

Published: April 7th 2015 by St. Martins Griffin

The second new book in the re-launch of R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series, which sold 80 million copies around the world, making it one of the bestselling young adult series of all time.

R.L. Stine’s hugely successful young adult horror series Fear Street is back after almost 2 decades. Fear Street is a worldwide phenomenon and helped to kick off the young adult craze which is still going strong today. In the second new book in this series, Don’t Stay Up Late, Stine explores the unbridled terror of a damaged young lady sent on a doomed babysitting job.

Ever since a car accident killed her father and put Lisa and her mother into the hospital, Lisa can’t think straight. She’s plagued by nightmares and hallucinations that force her to relive the accident over and over again in vivid detail. When Lisa finds out that a neighbor is looking for a babysitter for her young son, she takes the job immediately, eager to keep busy and shake these disturbing images from her head.
But what promised to be an easy gig turns terrifying when Lisa begins to question exactly who — or what — she is babysitting.

R.L. Stine makes his triumphant return to Shadyside in the new Fear Street book Don’t Stay Up Late.

This is the R.L Stine my adolescent self fell in love with. Over the top stories filled with gore, betrayal and sinister secrets.

I recently re-read some of my old collection of Fear Street novels. I revisited the evil cheerleader tales, the origins of fear street and the Halloween party gone totally wrong.

I loved Don’t Stay Up Late. The story begins with a tragic accident that claims the life of protagonists father and after a severe concussion, her sanity seems to have disappeared. To support her devastated mother, her psychiatrist recommends a babysitting job for her. A way to work back to normality and earn money so her mother and her can rebuild a new life.

She has horrific nightmares and I immediately assumed the story would be centered around the car accident, perhaps her fathers ghost? (I did not read the synopsis, I saw the cover and just dove in)

I was pleasantly surprised to find the story centred around her babysitting charge whom lives in fear street. He has a medical condition and absolutely, positively cannot stay up late…hmm…

Soon things start going bump in the night, Sarah doesn’t know if she can trust her friends, or even her own mind. Her boyfriend Nate is a horror fanatic and she finds herself questioning if he has blurred the lines of fantasy with reality.

The true monster…is absolutely epic. A great plot twist.