Before we dig into this Fear Street Saga review, a reintroduction is in order. If you’ve been here before, you may notice some big differences, like the name Adequate Squatch Reads. The old name (Mal Has Bookworms) didn’t really seem to fit anymore (and honestly, was a little bit gross). After a lot of deliberating and weeding out of name ideas that were already taken, I settled on Adequate Squatch because it sounded cool, and because it seems accurate to how I often feel as I move and exist in the world—like I’m a bit of an oddball, but one who’s doing a pretty okay job of blending in.

If this is your first time visiting, hello! I’m Mallory, a food-motivated Gemini who lives in the Midwest and really enjoys a good book or three or seven. I’ll be posting reviews and other book-related content. Check out my Reviews page to learn about my book review standards, and feel free while you’re there to browse my archive of old posts.

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ANYWAY. On to the reason you probably came here.

A Review of The Betrayal by R.L. Stine

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

I recently came into a lot of Fear Street books.

Combing through these gems, I was incredibly psyched to get the opportunity to revisit one of my formative reading experiences: R.L. Stine’s The Fear Street Saga.

I read this trilogy out of order the first time around. I was nine years old and already a Goosebumps afficionado, with a few Fear Street books under my belt as well, when I first found a copy of The Burning (Book 3) in the little books and magazines section of the supermarket. It promised to be the origin story of the evil that plagued the citizens of Shadyside. The evil that made 99 Fear Street uninhabitable (for the living, anyway). The same evil that had possessed those cheerleaders! I HAD TO KNOOOOOOOOW!

I took that book home and devoured it. Then I immediately went back to the beginning and read it again. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It had everything I wanted in a story: a generations-spanning curse, forbidden love, fashion, betrayal, witchcraft, and people dying in all sorts of horrific ways. As soon as I could, I found the nearest willing adult to take me to the Tyrone Barnes & Noble to snag the first two books.

Upon finishing the entire trilogy, verily did I become shook. I’d never read something so haunting, violent and all-encompassingly dramatic. It was a shot of Miracle Gro to my budding horror fascination. As horror and its adjacent media genres are basically 60% of my personality today, it’s clear that I owe a lot to these books. Seriously revisiting them as an adult seems like the least I can do.

I had originally planned for this to be a single review for the whole trilogy, but it turns out I have a lot of opinions about these books. So this will be a three-part review, with one post dedicated to each book. Come along with me as I dig into the first book in this series: The Betrayal.

The Fear Street Saga (Subtitle: …where the terror began) was a young-adult horror trilogy by R.L. Stine. In it we meet Nora Goode, the last survivor of the fire that swallowed the Fear mansion. Nora knows of the horrific origins of the Fear family and the curse that has rained misery down upon its descendents. She knows about their legacy of evil and misfortune, and that it won’t stop with death. She knows the story must be told to prevent further tragedy.

The Betrayal tells the story of Susannah Goode, a young 17th century settler who has the misfortune of falling in love with Edward Fier. When Edward’s father Benjamin accuses Susannah and her mother of witchcraft, it sets in motion a chain of events that lead to a horrific curse that the Fiers can never hope to escape. Fleeing town and settling far away on a new farm can only keep the evil at bay for so long. Will Mary Fier be forced to pay the price for her family’s sins?

Note: This trilogy is not to be confused with the Fear Street Sagas, a 16-book series that Stine wrote after The Fear Street Saga. It also tells haunting tales of the Fear family and its curse, but they’re not in chronological order and there is no framing device tying them together.

Some of the tropes found in this book:
How We Got Here
Secret Relationship
Child Marriage Veto
Burn the Witch!
Artifact of Doom
Hereditary Curse
Feuding Families

Re-reading The Betrayal was like squeezing into a favorite old sweater: It’s a little small and out of fashion, but it’s so soft, it smells familiar in a really comforting way, and you remember how good you felt when you used to wear it all the time. In those first few chapters I was immediately sucked into the drama of the mansion on fire, the forbidden love between the rich Magistrate’s son and the poor farmer’s daughter, and the witch trial that seemed so maddeningly unfair.

The plot of The Betrayal is stacked with twists, turns and little cliffhangers that keep you turning the page. Then the witch trial arc ends and you realize that what seemed to be the climax of the story is only the beginning. The plot continues, following the Fiers to where they think they’re safe. You then get a front seat to the heart-pumping action as the curse comes calling. It’s just a whole lot of bloody, horrific fun.

I discovered while reading this, though, that while I love the nostalgia, atmosphere and fast-paced action of these books, like that beloved old sweater it’s just something that’s not meant for me anymore. These are 90s kids’ books and it shows. I found myself frustrated by the stiff dialogue, oversold melodrama, and plot-driven twists that made no sense for the characters—stuff that I didn’t really notice as a preteen, but which really stick out now that I’m (marginally, at least) a more mature reader. Things like the hilariously cartoonish evil of Matthew Fier and the artifically inflated drama of pretty much every scene made it tough to immerse myself in this book as much as I could when I was younger.

The handling of the female characters also bugged me. Two of the three POVs in this book are female, but the primary character trait for each of them is that they’re infatuated with a boy. They don’t have much agency of their own, and seem to primarily exist to be victims of the men’s blood-soaked schemes. As those are the actual juicy parts that move the plot forward, it leaves the women feeling like filler characters, only there to be acted upon for the sake of drama and body count.

All that being said, I truly enjoyed reading this book and there are images in it that may haunt me forever. The story of Susannah Goode as the catalyst for the curse that plagues Fear Street to this day is too good to ever forget. The mayhem that overwhelms the unsuspecting Fiers makes a worthy climax for this chilling introduction to the trilogy.

On re-read, this book earns a three-star rating from me. I understand that these are books for teens, but I also know that books for teens can be done way better than this. I would still recommend this as a really fun read for any teen or preteen who’s just starting to get into horror.

Have you read this book? Share your experience down in the comments. Then make sure you come back next week for my review of the second book in this series: The Secret.