[Book Review] Goosebumps: Be Careful What You Wish For by R.L. Stine

Make a wish! Samantha Byrd is a klutz. An accident waiting to happen. She's the laughingstock of the girls' basketball team. And that mean, rotten Judith Bellwood is making her life miserable on and off the court. But everything's about to change. Sam's met someone who can grant her three wishes. For real. Too bad Sam wasn't careful what she wished for. Because her wishes are coming true. And they're turning her life into a living nightmare!

Review for Goosebumps: Say Cheese and Die 

1 STAR

This is definitely one of the worst Goosebumps books, and I probably should have DNFed it but it was one of those things where it's still entertaining despite it also making you want to vent. I've decided instead of grabbing two random Goosebumps books every time I finished the ones I had (my original plan) I am going to request some of the ones I have now been recommended by friends on the internet.

The characters were pretty surface level, but that's something I expect when reading Goosebumps so I don't really fault the story for it. However, I feel like you're supposed to want to root for the main character. And I super didn't, the whole time.  I didn't want to root for anyone. The main character was selfish, the bully was just a classic cliche bully you would expect, and the wish giving witch(?) was super incompetent and it was like she was a rookie or something.

I assumed that the plot was going to go a certain way, which would be: Sam is given three wishes, and she isn't clear with her wording and the wish giving witch(?) trolls her by messing up her life. But in the end she will learn some valuable lesson. I assumed that because the plot wasn't really spooky or anything we'd be teaching kids some lessons about being more compassionate or whatever. But instead the witch seems to not really know what she's doing. For example, Sam wishes for her bully to disappear, and instead the entire town completely disappears. And when Sam confronts the witch about it the witch says something like "I granted your wish the best way I could" but...how is doing the extra mile and making thousands of people disappear "the best way" when you could have just made one child disappear? It all seemed to kind of make no sense and there wasn't any explanations for it.

With Say Cheese and Die I feel like the kids learned a valuable lesson: don't break and enter into a creepy house and steal things from the house. It was also at least a little spooky, or at least I could see why a kid would find it spooky. But in the end of this one, the main character doesn't really learn a lesson, the bully ends up kind of winning, and overall in the end all the events that happened are pointless and erased. 

Overall, I probably wouldn't recommend this Goosebumps book. I have a handful I am going to see if my library has so I can read them in between the longer books on my TBR for the next month and a half that I think will be more enjoyable. I also have been informed of a more teen geared series called Fear Street which I don't think I've heard of before. I am excited to check that series out. Even if I end up reading some past October.

Thanks for reading!