Saturday 12 November 2016

Nightmare Hall #15 - Truth or Die

Okeh guys I'm hoping to get back into posting regularly now and to help inspire me I've chosen another Nightmare Hall that I've just purchased!


Again our main character has a stupid name (it's Parrie....) and the front cover opens up to reveal a girl shining her torch at a tree that another girl is hiding behind!
Idk which one is Parrie but they're fashion is super 90s, with both wearing a business shirt under a large grandpa jumper. Cute. So smart and casual!
Let's get into it!


Roll call! 

Parrie - nice (which means boring) and a huge sheep.

Lil - is obviously an athlete bc they all have bad manners apparently.

Mallory - parrie's doppelgänger. Except with longer hair and pierced ears.

Carol - she's referred to as "the tall dark girl" until she mentions her name. I'm assuming that means she's black. She's super tall too apparently!! And super intense!

Grace - the Asian one with super short hair. Yay for diversity!

Jean - she has icy blue eyes and icy blonde hair. One of these things is mentioned every time she is.

Ok so the book starts with a prologue and I can't deal already. It's so cheesy and great that I need to share some of it.

"And it was true. Sadly true. Frighteningly true. Deliciously true. People could be controlled. People would do whatever you told them to do. They'd rather go along with the crown then look foolish. Fit in rather than stand out and risk the possibility of embarrassment.
They'd die before they'd let someone else think they were stupid.
Which made them really stupid.
Really, really stupid.
So stupid they deserved to die."

So true about the sheep part and I love how the truth is both edible and delicious.
Seems like the moral of this story is that stupid people deserve to die, and I'm down with that! We don't know who the prologue is about tho. Waaah.

Anyway our first Proper chapter begins with an introduction to Parrie Moore, who describes her appearance as "nice" and basically drills into us that she's absolutely BORING. And also a huge sheep.
Ok so she deserves to die already apparently.
It's a few days into the school year and she's a freshman, all down on herself bc the rest of her friends went to State while she's here at Salem. And bc she has no personality she doesn't know what she's going to do bc it's going to be SOOOOOOOO hard to make new friends. She decides to head down to the quad where there's a little tea party going on for all the girls who live in the building to mingle after some consideration, bc after all "what will it do? Kill me?"
Oh Parrie. I'm sure that's where this book is headed!
There she meets the rest of the girls who don't know anyone either before this, and Parrie as well as me are shocked to find that she is able to befriend them quite easily!
After some awkward chatter, Carol (the tall, dark one!) dares Lil (the soccer player!) to switch the sugar and salt around on the table where all the tea is without getting caught.
These girls are baaaaaaaad news I can already tell!
Lil takes the dare and Parrie simply can't believe she's going to do it!
The girls watch on dramatically as Lil actually does this super dangerous dare, and she completes it without being caught!
It's super hilarious when everyone realises what's happened and the girls can't stop laughing bc it's just such a funny prank you know? Finally they stop and tall, dark Carol asks if they want to play the REAL truth or dare, which does sound kind of fun.
Basically each girl writes down their deepest darkest secret on a bit of paper, as in like full on like murder or something, writes their name on it, puts it in a box, locks it, seals the key in an envelope, and signs their name over the seal so that it will be obvious if tampered with.
Then they all write a dare and each draw one randomly. If they fail their dare the rest of the girls get to read their secret!
Sounds super fun I'm excited to see what happens!
The girls all agree to it even though Parrie thinks Carol is super weird. But what if she doesn't make any more friends?!?
I think it's obvious that it was Carol talking in the prologue, surely. But who knows I'm usually wrong about this stuff!
Anyway the girls meet the next day in Carol's room to set up and start the game, but before that Parrie heads to Grace's so they can Jess over together! We learn that Grace loves animals and wants to be a vet! You go girl! They briefly mention how weird and potentially untrustworthy Carol is before heading over, where the rest of the girls sit in a circle around a small metal coffin (for the truths) and a green vase (for the dares). Lil is dressed all in red including red Lycra tights and I couldn't be less turned on thinking about what that might look like.
After another shout out to Jean's ice blond hair and mention what the other girls are wearing, they each write their truth out and place it in the box, lock it, seal the key in the envelope, and sign it before writing out a dare each. The truths are pretty intense judging by each girls reaction as they write them but I'm sure we'll get to that later in the book!
Then they draw the dares, which I'll mention as they do them instead of slapping it all here where you'll forget. Parrie reckons this week is gonna be a killer! And I hope she dies.
It's later in the week now, and Grace, Lil and Parrie are all together as Parrie is about to complete her dare, which is to sneak into the boy's dorm and steal a pare of undies. Yum, my kind of dare!!
Grace's was to ask out the hot guy in her class, which she already did and he said yes! Yay!
There's a typo in the book bc it calls Lil Liz instead, but whatever. Her dare was to wear a formal dress for the whole day and she's glad the day is nearly over bc it's Jean's dress and it's too short she reckons! And way too pink. (You mean it's not ice blue like its owner's eyes?).
Parrie is one of the last to complete her dare, and apparently by the end of the night everyone should be done!
The boys of the dorm are all at a dorm meeting apparently so it shouldn't be too hard for Parrie to succeed in nabbing a jock strap or something.
She manages to sneak into an unlocked room and finds an underwear, but gets caught by the room's owner, Bryan who's tall and handsome and athletic. Yum.
Parrie actually says "good grief" before she tells him what she's doing and next thing you know, we cut to Lil and Grace outside who watch as Parrie strolls past them with Bryan, holding a pair of underwear. They reckon he's a baaaaaaaad boy too. Yummmmmmmmmm.
We get no mention of the others girls doing their dares so I'll just say what they are!
Mallory has to sing everything for a whole day. Jean can't talk for a whole day. And Carol has to eat garlic for every meal for a whole day without brushing her teeth.
They're all pretty lame I thought they were gonna be super intense dangerous dares or something. Oh well.
Later in the week Mallory, Grace, Parrie and Lil go to see a horror movie and afterwards discuss revenge. Walking past Nightmare Hall, Grace mentions that surely Giselle (the girl who died there in the first book!) will come back for revenge. Ghosts, cooooool. Then she gets all weird and super intense before snapping back to normal. Weirddddddd.
The next morning Parrie is awakened by a phone call from a mysterious person saying "I dare you to tell the truth... or pay the consequences." She hangs up and then Bryan calls and they make a date for the weekend, which they both have a lot of ideas for ;);););).
They're gonna make love I just know it!
Later that day the girls are all hanging out to celebrate the end of the game when Carol convinces them all the play again after a little fight with Jean.
Parrie wonders who could have made the phone call earlier, bc surely it had to be one of them as know one else knows!
Pretty sure you told Bryan, Parrie!
Parrie also does a lot of talking and moving that she doesn't realise. The book is full of things like "she heard herself say" and "she realised she was" etc. It's super annoying. But other than Parrie seeming like she's got social anxiety, I'm liking this book so far! Which is good after the last few trainwrecks I've suffered!
The next chapter opens with Parrie and Bryan's date and all he talks about is Truth or Dare, and if Parrie likes playing, does she want to play more, etc etc. He's annoying and probably the bad guy.
The next day Parrie and Grace are sitting on the steps of a building as 2 girls talk about the stink bomb that went off in one of their science classes, and Grace and Parrie realise that Carol completed her dare.
Lil has also completed hers, which was to put hair dye in someone's shampoo. It ended up being a girl from the swim team whose hair is now green due to the chlorine reacting to it!
They discuss everyone else's dares:
Parrie's is to wear nothing but a raincoat over her nightgown all day.
Mallory hast to find her way back from Bottomless Lake in the woods in the dark the next night.
Grace has to let the air out of the retired tyres of a professor's TBird, which he's in love with.
And Jean has to answer an ad from the personals column from the paper.
The next evening as Parrie has dinner in the cafeteria with Lil, Grace and Mallory, Mallory freaks out about her dare. She REAAAAALLLY doesn't want to do it. But Grace and Lil are all "then tell the truth" and Mallory storms off, mocking what Grace said earlier about fear being human nature and that it won't kill Mallory.  Basically it seems like a warning to Grace, who is suppose to do her dare tonight too.
Later that night, Grace has been gone for 3 hours when Parrie goes to visit her dorm room only to find that she's not back yet. Uh oh. She should be back by now considering the professor lives a 15 minute walk away.  She doesn't know what to do or who to talk to, remembering that Carol and Lil are taking Mallory to Bottomless Lake. Apparently they won't be back yet either??? Weren't they just leaving Mallory there and coming home?? Oh well.  And Jean is on her date from the personals so she's not around either! Che disastro!
 She goes to Jean's room anyway and is surprised to see that she is home after all!
Jean doesn't seem too bothered that Grace isn't back yet, until Parrie says she's gonna go to the professor's house and see if she can find her!
Jean doesn't want her to, but eventually decides to go with her, where they find that Grace is locked in the garage with the car running inside, and she'll probably die from Carno monoxide poisoning. Oh no!!
They manage to break a window so Grace can hand a screwdriver out, (despite Jean not really seeming that interested in saving Grace) and they break open the lock just as the lights go on inside the professor's house.
The girls quickly skedaddle out of there!
As they walk back to campus Grace tells them that she'd done 2 of the tyres when someone came in, so she'd hid. The person then turned on the car and left, locking all the car doors as well as the garage door. Grace couldn't escape!
The discuss who it could have been, since no one knew she was their except the group of girls. Grace reckons it can't have been Parrie or Jean since they came to rescue her, and Jean responds by suggesting maybe they were in on it together, or maybe one of them is using the other as a cover!
Very suss Jean!
Anyway the next day Grace is surprised to see the Professor's TBird in its usual spot completely intact!
Carol congratulates her on being a hero before telling her about another meeting that night in her room.
Oh yay another round!
Again the girls play another round. I guess their truths are too intense to allow anyone to read!
The new dares are:
Lil had to steal someone's midterm paper as they went to hand it in.
Jean had to follow an unpopular resident advisor home and scare her.
Carol had to borrow the quad's cat that lives with the RA, and lock it in the room of a girl who's afraid of cats. Brutal lol.
Mallory had to replace birthday chocolates with chocolate laxatives.
Grace had to mix up all the clothes on the busiest laundry night of the week.
And Parrie had to spend a night in Nightmare Hall!!!! Spooooky!
Parrie is super scared of this one.
Sometime later (no idea when bc this book just jumps from scene to scene without mentioning if it's the same night or 2 days later or whatever), Parrie and Grace join athlete Lil on a run around the track. As Lil speeds ahead, Grace suggests that Lil is an insane gamer, planting a seed in Parrie's head that Lil is behind all the scary things that have happened!
But really it makes me think that it's Grace, and she locked herself in the garage and hotwired the car knowing that Parrie would come looking for her.
That night Parrie also has a nightmare about Lil convincing her to come for a run again but speeding ahead, while Parrie is chased by a skinless, bloody skeleton. This scene is pretty cool and would work well in a movie I reckon!!
Anyway that night it's time for Parrie to spend the night at Nightmare Hall, which is convenient empty on account of a storm damaging the roof, so all the residents are living elsewhere temporarily.
The group of girls walk down to Nightmare Hall, with Jean being her usual icy blue eyed, ice blonde haired "queen of mean" as Parrie puts it, informing Parrie that she must stay on the top floor, and come to a certain window and flash a her flashlight every hour on the hour, while the rest of the girls take turns watching the house to see that she doesn't escape.
After exploring the house for a bit a being surprised to find that the house isn't spooky and covered in cobwebs (she thought this even though she knows people live there?????) Parrie is startled by the sound of the stairs creaking.
Someone is inside the house with her!!!!!!
But it's just our good pal Jean the Queen of Mean! Who is not even that mean really so idk why Parrie thinks she is.
Well she's dressed as a ghost (literally a white sheet) and trying to scare Parrie so I guess she is a bit mean.
Parrie ends up scaring her instead, and soon enough a real ghost shows up!! As Jean makes a run for it, Parrie passes out, convinced they're both about to die!
As day breaks, the rest of the girls arrive to find Jean and Parrie passed out, Jean's head bleeding at the back! After coming up with a fake story as to why they were inside, I'm pretty sure an ambulance is called bc next thing I know it's 10pm and Parrie is in her room on the phone to Grace! Jean is only concussed and should wake up soon (when did they realise that sleeping with a concussion is dangerous? Not in the 90s I guess?), and Grace tells Parrie that Carol wants another meeting the next night, which Parrie refuses, suspecting Carol or foul play since it's her game and her rules!
Way to go Parrie, show some back bone!
The next day she find Bryan and tells him everything, and he comforts her.
Then there's a paragraph break, and the book stops using names and refers to just a boy walking a girl back to her dorm. They confirm that they'll see eachother on the weekend, in 2 days, before she goes inside. She doesn't see him stop smiling and cross his arms, still staring after her intensely.
Bc this happens right after the Parrie and Bryan conversation, I guess it's trying to make it seems like the unnamed boy and girl is them two. But I feel like it's Bryan and someone else.... whoever is behind all this drama probably!! (Note from the future: it is Parrie and Bryan and it's to make him a red herring. Pointlesssssss).
Parrie later goes to visit Jean in the infirmary to confirm that Jean remembers the ghost, which Jean scoffs at and is all like "oh yes, I remember the ghost!" And then stops talking. So Jean knows something about who it really was I guess??
And then later still, Parrie of course goes to the meeting with the girls and is convinced to play one more game bc she doesn't want her secret getting out and Carol reckons they'll figure out who's behind all the bad things happening this round! We're nearing the end of the book so I think Carol is right!
The girls meet again the next night, each write down a location, and one is drawn from the vase. It says "Lookout Point" and this is where the last game of truth or dare will be played! So the girls head there and each write a dare and draw as usual. Lil goes first, and her dare is to tell the truth! Love that one.
So she starts telling her secret from the truth box.
Ten years ago she went to a summer camp and was part of a clique with 3 other girls. Another girl, Jennifer, tried too hard and was super annoying and wanted to be in the little club with Lil and her friends, so they made up an initiation that was way too scary for anyone to do: jumping from the high dive into the lake at midnight!
They decide that it's too much, but Lil's cabin mate hears the conversation and the next morning, Jennifer is found dead in the lake. Apparently she'd hit her head slipping off the high dive and drowned. Lil and the others got the blame, and it followed Lil around everywhere bc people heard her talking about the initiation.
And then all of a sudden Mallory lunges at Parrie and drags her to the edge of the cliff!
It turns out SHE was Lil's bunkmate who told Jennifer about the imitation and causing her death! And not only was Lil at the camp, but Carol, Grace, and Jean were too and they were all members of the club, but they excluded Mallory too who didn't seem to care that much!
They all kept in touch (except with Mallory of course) and happened to all come to Salem U by fate, and when Lil spotted Mallory she knew it was their chance to get the truth!!!
Bc it had been 10 years, all the really had to do was give different names and pretend they'd never met eachother, and Mallory didn't seem to notice! (If anyone's interested their names are really Carolyn, Sarah Grace, Jillian and Jeanetta!) After planting the seeds to unhinge Mallory into telling the truth, they thought she started to catch on but they weren't too sure, so they kept playing! Mallory had caught on, and she was behind all the accidents so she could keep her secret! Parrie was just a pawn really, brought into the group on the day to further portray that they were all strangers.
But Mallory is so unhinged now that she thinks Parrie was at the camp too!
Finally Parrie manages to knock Mallory off her, sending her over the side of the cliff! But it's ok cos Parrie grabs her, and Bryan, who had apparently followed her, comes and saves Mallory from falling!
Later that night the other girls come to see Parrie. The dean and Mallory's parents will sort her out, so that's cleared up, but they're super sorry for using Parrie like they did!
They'd each written "lookout point" on their papers and folded it a certain way so they'd know for sure it would get chosen, and I'm assuming this was bc being so high would further bring back memories for Mallory as there's no actual reason given for this.
There's kind of the parallel theme of Jennifer wanting to fit in so bad and dying bc of it and Parrie wanting to fit in so bad and being a sheep and almost dying for it, which is kind of cool I guess. The book ends with Parrie telling Grace that she'd like to be her friend, but she's not sure about the other girls, and then she gets a phone call from Bryan.
And that's the end!

So I did really like this one even though nothing really happened! It was short and sweet, the characters weren't too annoying, and Parrie had some depth to her at least!


7 bloody skeletons on a running track out of 10!

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