Moonlight Secrets or "Nate is Surprisingly Cool With Cockroaches"

Fear Street Nights Series! These little gems are pretty fantastic, mostly because they were written in 2005. What? I know! They have cell phones and everything. (Sidenote: Anyone read the updated Sweet Valley High books? They have cell phones too… which makes everything super tricky, because most of the shenanigans those girls got into could easily be solved by having a cell phone. So the story would always have to have a line about their phones being dead, or I think one time a cell phone flew out a car window? Classic!)

Anyways, R.L. must have realized that high school kids aren’t really the goody-goodies by day, mass-murders by night that he had been portraying them for all these years. So he has added…underage drinking! Dum dum dummm!

Moonlight Secrets doesn’t really have an interesting cover, just a girl mid-dance(?) and a picture of a BAR. Which is called “Nights”. Again with the terrible names for people and things. This has Bobby Newkick and his “Bad to the Bone” band disaster allll over it.

The book starts from the perspective of our friend Lewis. He and his girlfriend Jamie start sneaking out after midnight to have the town to themselves. They call themselves “The Night People”. UGH, really? Like 17 year olds would call themselves something that lame. Anyways, more and more kids start hanging out with them, wandering the streets at night. They would often end up on…FEAR STREET.

Since this book takes place a couple of years later, we find out that most of Fear Street has been torn up (that’s a bad idea if I ever heard one). They are getting rid of the neighbourhood to build a huge shopping complex. Soo, soon there will be Fear Streets about a haunted shopping mall? I feel a sense of déjà vu…

The last building to be torn down is the Fear Mansion. Lewis and Jamie and their friends start hanging out in the abandoned mansion, drinking beer and hooking up. Hey… that actually seems like something normal teenagers would do! One night, one of the juniors that hangs out with them, Shark, takes a tumble and discovers a hidden room! It’s full of jewelry, gold, expensive clothes and books on the occult. Since the building is about to be bulldozed, they figure it doesn’t count as “stealing” so they all loot the place.

It turns out that Lewis’ girlfriend Jamie is kinda obsessed with the occult. Her cousin died a few months earlier, and this girl promised Jamie to reach her from the dead. Hey. That is a promise that I want NO ONE to make to me. Any of you die? Don’t promise to come creep the fuck outta me later. I don’t want that. But Jamie was really into it, so she makes Lewis go back to the mansion after its been torn down, because all the ghosts will have been disturbed. Sounds about right.

They bring a tape recorder, and while they don’t hear anything at first, when they listen to it back in Jamie’s room, they realize they recorded a voice. FROM BEYOND. The voice says “If you took what’s mine, you’ll pay”. They have no clue what that could mean. REALLY? After raiding that same spot like 2 days previous? They couldn’t put these pieces of the puzzle together? UGH. I would be shoving the shit I took back into the smoldering wreck of a mansion as fast as I could.

They decide go back for more creepy voices since Jamie is convinces her cousin would try to contact her there. They don’t hear any voices but they do find a pit. Full of bones. Yikes! Instead of hauling ass outta there, Jamie decides that she really wants to see this cool silver pendent with blue stones on it…. (o we know what that is!)

Jamie predicatablly falls into the pit of bones. Surprisingly though, the bones come to life and start to strangle her! Ah! I see we have a “supernatural” Fear Street as opposed to the “regular, crazed murderer” Fear Street. Good to know. Lewis tries to fight the skeletons off Jamie, but ends up being choked too. The chapter ends with the pit collapsing on Jamie and Lewis, most likely killing them both.

One Year Later

Here, I’ll do you guys a favor and tell you up front that we’ve changed perspectives. Now the narrator is Nate, a senior at Shadyside. R.L. didn’t let the reader know this lil fact, so I read like 2 chapters thinking it was still Lewis and being ultra confused. (Although that I’m looking back, I realize that they were called the character Nate, and it’s my fault I didn’t catch on sooner. Whoops!)

Anyways. Nate is at the new Shadyside bar called Nights. Built right over top the Fear Mansion. Nate is friends with Shark and goes to hang out with him in the back booth. But before he can, Nate needs to kiss the picture of Simon and Angelica Fear. Apparently it’s tradition that everyone kisses it. Blech. I would so not kiss that thing.

Nate kinda gets us up to speed with “Nights”. The bartender Ryland knows that they all have fake IDs but he doesn’t care as long as there’s no trouble. And him and all his friends (The Night People) sneak out every night and come drink there WITHOUT permission from their parents!

Jamie comes into the bar, which I guess means she survived her brush with skeletons! She walks with a limp, and doesn’t remember the accident, but besides that both her and Lewis are fine. Which I guess is pretty lucky! She sits with Shark, Nate and this HAWTie Nikki and Shark tells the table how he screwed over his ex-girlfriend. I guess this girl, Candy, dumped Shark and then wanted him back. So he told her to meet him at the movies, but never showed! Ha.Ha.Ha. Hilarious. No one has ever stood up a date before.

Oooh, he also changed his voicemail to “Have a nice day, Candy, you slut.” Which is actually pretty brutal because everyone else who called him would get that message too! After he finishing telling this story, guess who storms into the bar? No other than our lovely lady Candy. She is mega pissed off. Jamie momentarily destracts her by asking about her cool pendent necklace! Candy says she got it at a store, and then goes back to being crazy. She exacts revenge by…making out with Shark? O wait, its so violent that she basically rips off his lips and has blood running down her face. Blech. When she takes off, Shark and Nate go outside and throw bricks at her car. Nate’s smashes in her back window and she vows revenge. Never a good idea to get into a revenge-match with a woman with blood running out her mouth…

Candy makes Nate and Shark pay for her broken window (did she have to pay for Shark’s medical bill?) because she threatens to tell everyone’s parents about The Night People. I’d call her bluff. No one would willingly piss off that many people. Shark pays for it though and decides to exact MORE revenge! This time by putting Candy’s face on a pic of a pig and sending around the school. Really? Is this the 1890s? I’m sure Shark has some sexting photos from Candy on his cell phone. Common now.

Somehow they track the picture down to Nate’s computer, and rather than rat out his friend, Nate takes the blame. And Candy’s wrath. She confronts him at Nights but Nate isn’t very apologetic. He should have been. Cindy watches him from another booth which smiling and playing with a pendent around her neck. With blue stones… And then Nate starts pulling cockroaches out of his mouth. BAH! Again with the cockroaches! He leaves the bar and pukes cockroaches everywhere…

The next day he seems fine though… did he forget what happened? He doesn’t even bother to explain it. He, Shark, Jamie and their friend Ada decide to skip a class and go down by Onononka River to hang out. It seems fun, until they try to leave. Then when Nate tries to back out onto the road, the car will only go forward. And the brakes won’t work! So they take a lil dip in the good ol’ Onononka! Ada, Nate and Shark all manage to get out, but Jamie has a little more trouble. As in she’s trapped and they have to go back to rescue her lifeless body. They actually manage to revive her, and she of course, doesn’t remember anything. Jamie decides that Candy is a witch that has put a curse on Nate. I would stop hanging around Nate.

Suspecious things continue happening around Nate. Candy extends an olive branch to him and Shark, and invites them to a party she’s having. Right after they laugh in her face and say no way, blood starts spurting out of both of Nate’s ears. Splashing Shark and Ada and everyone else around. Blerg. Also, when they’re friend Galen comes into Nights to tell Nate that he’s “figured it out” his lips get stuck to the portrait of the Fears. Like to free himself, he rips off his lips and they STAY ATTACHED TO THE PORTRAIT. That might be the grossest part of the book.

When he’s finally able to talk again, Galen tells Shark and Nate how Candy has been doing all this legitimately evil witchcraft. He found a pic of Angelica Fear and she’s wearing the same pendent that Candy wears! Unfailable proof of eviltude, for sure!

The next night, Shark, Nate and Nikki (the girl Shark is kinda dating) decide that they have to break into Candy’s house and steal the necklace so she can’t be evil anymore! That’s not really the kind of date I’d want to go on with someone I was casually seeing. It’s oddly easy to break into Candy’s house, as there is a ladder leaning up against the side. It’s like they’re asking for it. All goes well for our young robbers, and they manage to get the necklace from Candy’s room. Unfortunately… she wakes up. And is pissed off at the Break and Enter! She and Shark struggle for the necklace. Candy manages to grab it back… but unfortunately takes a tumble down her stairs. (I’m always telling you guys. Never lunge at the top of stairs/cliffs! You always go over!)

Candy breaks her neck on the way down. She also broke…the pendent. Turns out it was just a cheap metal and plastic knockoff! It wasn’t really evil magic at all! The book ends with our three thieves and now accessory-to-manslaughterers fleeing the scene. And realizing that Candy wasn’t to blame… O and then Nate finds a slaughtered pigs head in his bed. TO BE CONTINUED!

So this one was good right? I always enjoy a good supernatural one.