Feuds, Murder, and Sisters REVIEWING Fear Street Saga #2: The Secret

Welcome back to The Real World According To Sam! I'm back today to talk about another spooky read for our month-long Halloween festivities. Let's review the sequel to the first Fear Street Saga book we reviewed last Friday. 

Fear Street Saga #2: The Secret

Author: R. L. Stine

Genre: YA Horror

Year: 1993

Synopsis:

What is the secret of Fear Street? 

Why has its horror lasted so long?

Ezra Fier wants to find out. He searches for the answer among the rotting bones in the ghostly town of Wickham. But he find only betrayal and death. 

Elizabeth and Kate are in love with the same boy. How can they know that they too are caught by the evil that will haunt this family forever?

Review:

The Secret is the second book in The Fear Street Saga trilogy by R. L. Stine. It picks up right where the last book left off and continues the story of the Fier family's feud with the Goode family. Once more, we start off with narration from Nora Goode in 1900. Then we go back in time to 1737, then jump a few years ahead to 1743. 

In the early section (1700s), the book is led by Ezra Fier. Ezra was the youngest child in the Fier family in book 1, but now he is all grown up. Now he is a father with children of his own. His two daughters, Elizabeth and Kate, are useful to the plot in so much as they want to marry the same guy. One day, a guy named Franklin comes along and is asking for work, so the family hires him to do some. Little do they know, he is Franklin Goode and he is a relative of the Goode family that the Fiers have been feuding with for many years now. Kate and Elizabeth both want to marry him, and through a twist of events, many bad things happen and we jump ahead to the future. 

The next section after the interlude from Nora takes place in 1843. The son from the family we were just with, named Simon, is now the main character within the book. After the strange happenings in his family, he is dead set on finding the Goode family and exacting revenge. He also has his own family at this point in the book. Like his father before him, he also has a son and two daughters. He has been taking his family along the road, stopping from place to place to try and hunt down the Goodes. Eventually they settle into an old house, in the last known location of the Goodes. His son, Jonathan, thinks he is crazy. Jonathan's two sisters, Abigail and Rachel, are well-behaved girls and should be safe from any craziness...except for the fact that they are Fiers. Jonathan falls in love with a girl named Delilah, who may or may not be a Goode, but who finds a lot of trouble. There may be a chance to end the curse, but will it happen? I'm not giving it away. 

This book, like the one before it, was really quick for me to read. It's a small, YA book that has a simple enough story. The plot is simple. It is still a cyclical story of revenge told over many years. The characters aren't equal, but they serve the purposes of the story. The guys in the book (Ezra, Simon, and Jonathan) are some of the most-developed characters. They are also the most interesting. All of the girls exist to be wives, trouble, or siblings of more important characters. They don't have very fleshed out personalities and the ones that are supposed to be more focused on, just end up being cookie cutter generic. That being said, I really enjoyed Ezra and Jonathan's stories the best. The thing I enjoyed most about this book was the way it approached the difference in the curse passing from father to son over multiple generations. Each son reacts differently and has different opinions when it comes to their father's quests for revenge and the ruining of their lives. I enjoyed seeing the different thoughts and reactions of each son as time passed. 

Overall, this book is alright. It was a quick read and I enjoyed having a short historical fiction horror story. All the characters are not developed equally and the girls are very lackluster, but the main guys are well fleshed out. I did like the story in general and I did find enjoyment here. It is simple, but it serves its purpose of being a brief, entertaining read. I give The Secret a Lone Star rating of ✯✯✯ and a half. 

This concludes another review here at The Real World According To Sam, where I bring the books straight to your screen and even provide my own two cents about them. See you tomorrow!