Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book
Rate this book
Josh Maxwell is skeptical of his stepsister Josie's vision of their senior year, in which she saw the whole Shadyside High senior class lying in coffins

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 27, 1998

Loading interface...
Loading interface...

About the author

R.L. Stine

1,517 books17.4k followers
Robert Lawrence Stine known as R. L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences. Stine, who is often called the Stephen King of children's literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series.

R. L. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children's author in history. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. His other major series, Fear Street, has over 80 million copies sold.

Stine has received numerous awards of recognition, including several Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and Disney Adventures Kids' Choice Awards, and he has been selected by kids as one of their favorite authors in the NEA's Read Across America program. He lives in New York, NY.

http://us.macmillan.com/itsthefirstda...

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
144 (34%)
4 stars
141 (33%)
3 stars
96 (22%)
2 stars
34 (8%)
1 star
7 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
Profile Image for Brandon.
227 reviews8 followers
May 18, 2023
Allright it's time to tackle the second most expensive and rare Fear Street series.That being Fear Street Seniors. I recently acquired Spring Break from this series.Easily the most expensive.So I figured it was time to go ahead and start reading these. The first story in the series is called Let's Party Episode One.Yes that's right Episode One.The story starts off with Josh being let out of school for summer break.We are introduced to a ton of characters who are mostly horrible.But this book seems to solely focus on josh and Josie, his stepsister. Josh is dating this girl I think Debra ? There are a ton of girls in this book and I kept getting them mixed up.Anyway one day Josh sees Debra talking up close to this geeky kid that dresses like a vampire named Clark,who everyone calls Clarkula. He ends up running off Clark and then receiving weird phone calls warning him that Debra will be taken from him.We switch perspective to Josie who is really mad.She failed her trig grade and is complaining about the teacher named Mr. Tolkerson. Tolkerson is described as a pretty big guy who is unfair to his students. Not alot of people like him. Josie ends up going with her friends to a house on Fear Street that has a lot of rooms. They end up in a library and find this book about spells.Josie wants to put a spell on Tolkerson for revenge and this other girl that is spoiled and took a job from Josie she wanted. They end up reading most of the spell but the girls mom walks in. But Josie reads the rest and then something really crazy pops up and I loved it.Things begin to happen to the people that Josie put the Doom Spell on and one death is very gory, but nothing compared to the climax. The Doom Spell story is really fun and had I had a good time with it. As for the vampire storyline it was very bland and seemed to try way to hard to convince us that Clark is a vampire, like Debra with bite marks on her neck the kids sneaking into his house to discover he sleeps on dirt inside a bed. It was pretty cheesy even for the Fear Street series.It felt at times like I was reading a Bailey City book.The doom storyline it didn't leave any stones unturned. I would've much rather have the whole book be about this.This can also be said about the party scene. (The latter half anyway.) The party has this random murder mystery subplot thing that honestly felt random as heck. But when this thing pops up that Josie released I was surprised. We have heart ripping ,arm pulling and scalp removals (favorite kill) and a few more gory scenes. But here is where the rating comes in.This book did have surprising gore and a really awesome villain.But I really feel like this book didn't stay good for to long before. It got muddled down. Their was not alot of flow to this book. And gore to me is something a little extra not something that makes a horror book super scary .I give Let's Party probably a three out of five stars.
Profile Image for Annie.
1,032 reviews381 followers
April 9, 2016
I totally fucking forgot Fear Street existed. But arguably, it was a major impetus for me to start writing.

In 6th grade, I wrote horror stories, so inspired was I by Stine's masterful prose. Er, or something. Anyway, in each one, one of my friends or I died. My friends were super into it and eagerly awaited a story which featured them, and having that audience was an important factor in learning to love writing.

I found the notebook a few months ago. One was titled "Heads Will Roll." I fucking lost it.

Anyway, Fear Street is the reality TV of books, but it does what it sets out to do with such spectacular stupidity that it's gripping. That I want to reread them all speaks to it.
Profile Image for Lindsey.
242 reviews6 followers
March 31, 2024
I got some real flashbacks to Christopher Pike’s Final Friends trilogy while reading. The cast of characters at the beginning of the book is a bit staggering but you manage to keep up. I’m not sure able I feel about this dragging out to a 12 book series but I’ll plow through nonetheless!

Nice inclusion of an actual Fear family descendant. Supernatural elements included. Described gore = 7/10, which is nice for a Fear Street book because the actual series usually pulls its punches.


——
Reread 2024 with Sally and Matthew!
Profile Image for Cassie.
146 reviews11 followers
June 25, 2012
Fear Street Seniors: Let's Party (Book 1)
by R.L. Stine
3 Stars

As a teenager I used to devour the "Fear Street" books. I would go to the Muncie Mall bookstore and always turn the corner to the young adult section looking for one of these books that I hadn't previously acquired. I would devour them in no time at all and wish that I could read the next one. There are some good memories attached to these books thus I decided to purchase them again as an adult.

I never had the opportunity when I was reading the series previously to read the Senior series, so I wanted to start my trip back down Fear Street with it. One of the important things that it has been important for me to recognize is that I am not the same reader that I was when I used to read these horror books. I can spot bad writing or a bit lousy writing better than I could back then. Stine is not bad writing, but he uses a formula at the end of every chapter that gets frustrating to read. He always had to finish the chapter with some horrible thing happening only to reveal that it wasn't what you thought in the beginning of the next chapter. This takes away from the writing, but it also is what makes the Fear Street books unique. They try to keep in invested and guessing what is real and isn't.

Some of the joy of the books obviously has waned with the passing of time, which is only natural. I was shocked that I still enjoyed them as much as I did. They still hold my interest enough to get through roughly 200+ pages, but now I do so with a few eye rolls. Eye rolling is not always a bad thing in fiction writing, especially with a horror element.

This first book in the series mainly sets the stage for the upcoming books. We are introduced to numerous members of the Shadyside High Senior class. This feels appropriate and not at all confusing since there are 11 other books featuring these characters. Stine did the intelligent thing by having the characters go to a party. This feels natural for high school students and allows us to gain a lot of names at once without being too concerned about who each of them are just yet.

Stine made a solid first book in this particular series for young adults. Do I recommend this for the more adult reader? Probably not. There is better stuff out there to read, but for those that just want a short horror book this will keep you entertained. You won't gain any deep meaning about life, but you will be wondering if anyone will die. That is the ultimate question though in this series: Will the senior class make it to graduation? Welp, I guess I have to continue reading to find out for sure.
Profile Image for C..
251 reviews14 followers
March 6, 2016
The central plot (I guess): Josie Maxwell is furious that she failed trig, and also hates Marla Newman for various reasons. So while visiting Jennifer Fear she casts a Doom Spell, like you would. The trigonometry teacher is killed but Marla survives, alas, because Josie uses a second spell to turn time back by one hour, thereby preventing the mass slaughter at the party.
B or possibly A plot, who knows: Josh Maxwell, Josie's stepbrother, is having problems with his girlfriend. She's hanging around with Clark Dickson, called Count Clarkula by his classmates. Threatening phone calls inform Josh she's now the property of a vampire. Josh breaks into Clark's bedroom at one point, making me reflect on the curious lack of Fear Street slash, and finds a cape, dirt in the bed, and a lot of books about vampires. THAT PROVES IT. You know how the undead love to read about themselves. In a Stine twist Clarkula dresses up as a vampire at Trisha's party BUT Josh finds the unopened pack of plastic teeth SO THEREFORE Clark must really be a vampire. DUN DUN DUN.
Tying this all together: Trisha has a vision that the entire senior class will die, but throws a party anyway so as not to disappoint them. Then plans an elaborate murder game/hoax and temporarily has everyone convinced two people are actually dead. Good one, Trisha.
Callbacks:
1. Jennifer Fear lives across the street from the burned out Fear mansion.
2 Someone at the party is from Waynesbridge, which is the Shelbyville to Shadyside's Springfield. She's in on the trick and is one of the people pretending to have been murdered.
90s! :
1. Rich girl Trisha has a cellphone but not, like, WITH her; it's in the car her dad tool.
2. Mickey and Marla talk about Baywatch.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Eric.
244 reviews4 followers
June 29, 2022
Let's Party is the first entry in the Fear Street Seniors miniseries that ran from 1998-1999--prime YA horror years for me. It showcases R.L. Stine at his best, and worst, but the worst is also kind of the best, so it's all gold, really.

The book switches back and forth between two main characters, high-school-juniors-going-on-seniors Josh and Josie Maxwell. They're stepsiblings, if you're wondering how they can both be in the same grade. (Their similar names would lead you to believe that they are twins, but I guess it's just coincidence.) They're both pretty dull, in that neither of them really have any distinguishing characteristics and are mainly reactionary through the story.

Josh is unnerved because his girlfriend Debra has been hanging around a lot with a fellow student named Clark, a weird nerd who writes poetry and seems to be obsessed with vampires. In a typical example of how dumb the kids of these books are, Josh and his buddies actually come to believe that Clark is a vampire, based on...pretty much nothing.

Even though Josh is gullible and boring, I felt sympathy for him because of the "cheating girlfriend" angle. Stine handles teen relationship melodrama pretty well. Or else it's just such a potent subject that even the ludicrous dialogue Stine writes that wouldn't even ring true for teenagers from the 1950s can't sink it.

Josie is even more patently absurd, if you can believe that. She and her friends stumble across an ancient book of witchcraft with a "doom spell" and decide to perform it as a joke. A common trope, I suppose, but usually such spells only seem to involve chanting a Latin phrase--something that can be accomplished thoughtlessly. "I'll read this aloud, just to freak out my friend, ha ha." Here Josie has to find black candles, arrange them in a circle, light them, convince her reluctant friends to join in the spell with her, hold hands, AND chant the words. That's a lot of work to do for a "gag" that nobody will ever find funny or benefit from. Then, after the spell gets interrupted by a parent returning home, Josie still goes back to it and finishes on her own, even after a cold supernatural wind of warning blows through the enclosed room. Why is she that dedicated? Even she doesn't seem to know. She wants to cast the spell on the teacher who gave her a D (multiple students in the book act like teachers just assign grades willy-nilly and that it has nothing to do with the work they've done throughout the semester) and a snotty girl who took her summer job. But she doesn't REALLY want them to die, she says. I guess we're supposed to think she's just blowing off steam? Whatever.

The last half of the book, more or less, takes place at a party. Structurally it's not unlike Scream, which came out two years earlier. There are a lot of fake-out scares (WAS THAT A GUNSHOT oh no it was only thunder) and for at least 50 pages nothing of consequence happens. It's a Super Chiller; gotta pad that page count. But also you can read a page in 30 seconds or less so it's not that big of a deal. I don't know if it's even possible to skim an R.L. Stine book because every sentence is so stripped-down as to convey the bare minimum of necessary information. Paragraphs are rarely longer than three lines. There is something admirable about that kind of minimalism. After enough misunderstandings and pranks to fill up a French farce, you get a few pages of intense gore, and more magic that doesn't really make any sense. It's like a dream, where unconnected bits of action get strung together by nonsense logic. But it's a fun nostalgia read if you're a crusty old '90s kid like me.
Profile Image for Aurora Dimitre.
Author 33 books131 followers
March 3, 2016
So, my big 'guilty pleasure' when it comes to books is cheesy, 90's teen horror. I mean, I read and enjoy a lot of stuff that a lot of people could call a guilty pleasure, but the big one for me, the one where sometimes I sit back and say, 'yeah, I'm reading this', is cheesy 90's teen horror. R. L. Stine, Christopher Pike, et cetera - this is the stuff that I read in the years between Goosebumps and Stephen King, and it's still a ton of fun.

This isn't a good book, objectively speaking. But it's got everything that I love about these kinds of books - those dumb 'twist' endings to each chapter Stine does, almost senseless gore and violence, relatively flat characters but it doesn't matter because they're kind of supposed to be flat. And I really loved all of it. I'm pumped to keep going on this series, because I am going to read every single one.
Profile Image for Jojo Holm.
36 reviews1 follower
November 19, 2022
I was really hoping that this book would be extremely good but unfortunately I didn’t like it that much. I felt like the main antagonist wasn’t explained all too well, and there was also a plot point that I hated to see at the end of the book. Some things that the book did well was that it introduced all of the characters well. The last act of the book was also really fun. In all I thought that this book was just ok nothing that great but it did set up the rest of the books
Profile Image for Jessie.
1,542 reviews
January 10, 2016
Though R.L. Stine is not a very good writer, he has good plots.
Profile Image for Courtney Gruenholz.
Author 13 books18 followers
July 11, 2022
I've tried for awhile to find the whole Seniors series but I am now resigned to never finding two of the books. Before the Fear Street movies came out and there was a big nostalgia boom, I found the books quite easily and for a reasonable price. So here I am diving in...

Our cast of characters is the senior class of Shadyside High 1999 beginning their summer vacations and we are about to follow them up to that day.

Some get name drops for now but we will focus on them more as the series goes and other seniors take center stage and we get a little Shadyside Yearbook to give us the who's who.

Trisha Conrad is the rich girl with a heart of gold but she has a vision that someone will die at her first party of the summer. If that wasn't bad enough...how about the whole class dying?

Josh Maxwell is becoming alarmed as to why his girlfriend Debra Lake has taken an interest in Clark Dickson. Everyone jokes that Clark is a vampire but what if he truly is and his fangs are set on the lovely Debra?

Josh's stepsister Josie is not having a great start to her summer. She lost out on a job to Marla Newman and her teacher Mr. Torkleson averaged her grade in Trig out to a D so it looks like summer school might be in her future.

One of Josie's best friend happens to be...a member of the Fear family. Jennifer doesn't like to be reminded of the fact but it doesn't help when Josie and their other friend Deirdre find a library of hidden spell books in the girl's bedroom...

It seems like a normal Fear Street novel with that sense of dread and humor but there are some good scares and I can only imagine what else is in store...



Profile Image for Chelsea.
1,915 reviews57 followers
August 19, 2019
Let's Party is the first in a 12 book series about the senior class of Shadyside High. Trisha has a vision that the entire senior class is going to die, so what better way to kick off their last summer than a party and making fun of her own premonition. Josh is bummed because his girlfriend is all over the class nerd that they suspect is a vampire. Josie goes over to Jennifer Fear's house and uses her old spell books to cast a Doom Spell and it works cause some skeletal thing is stalking her, actually kills the entire senior class but walks away when Josie casts a go back in time spell. This whole premise is a little goofy but I remember enjoying this particular series when I first read it and the individual books are hard to track down. A bit bummed no one actually died in this first book and the Clark not using the fake vampire fangs was an interesting bit at the end...I do worry that there are too many seniors to keep track of, I already struggled figuring out who was related and who had connections already. But hopefully the series gets better as it goes.
Profile Image for Matthew MacIntyre.
81 reviews1 follower
February 20, 2024
So I’m doing a buddy read of the series so will slowly be reviewing each book. Good first book to this series. The book does a pretty good job of setting up all the senior class and who we have to look forward to getting to know better over the course of their senior year. First things first this is a Stine novel so cliffhanger ending on every chapter where it’s a false scare is the norm. But the book moves quickly and the action moves fast. I will say I was bummed that *spoiler*
no one from the senior class actually dies. The only death is a teacher. Also I really hope there is not much vampire storyline. I know it was a plot point and the book ends with that cliffhanger. But please no. I also hope a good bunch of the class actually dies. Like there are 20 photos in the yearbook I know there were other people mentioned not sure if they were seniors too or not. But my hope is like half die. I want gruesome deaths like some of the original fear street. Fear street holds a special place in my heart. So Stine don’t fuck it up. On to book 2.
Profile Image for Michael Quao.
2 reviews
Read
October 27, 2022
A vision is not enough, they have to see it to believe it. I came across this book because of a recommendation from my classmates. It shows me that people won't always believe what you say. What I liked about this book is that it leaves you in suspense. For example, "He stared at the two figures at the back of the store-and uttered a horrified gasp. Debra and Clark?" (Stine 65). If you are in high school and like scary things, I believe you should read this book. This book has shown me what fear does to people. What can it do for you?
Profile Image for Sreypich Van.
161 reviews
November 5, 2023
Despite it being predictable, it's still very enjoyable to read. The Murder game sequence reminded me of "Party Game" which is one of the Fear Street Relaunch book so I'm surprised by that at all. I found the ending a bit too abrupt and easy.
Profile Image for Stephanie Wubben.
118 reviews
February 3, 2024
Mijn lievelings serie van vroeger aan het herlezen heerlijke nostalgie als is het niet zo spannend en mysterieus als vroeger. Het heeft wel mijn intresse in psychologische thrillers opgewekt dus heerlijk om nu terug te lezen.
Profile Image for Justin.
65 reviews
August 7, 2011
I seriously love this novel! Everything about it was perfect from the characters to the storyline. Definitly a perfect start to an amazing series!!
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.