When I was growing up, I missed reading the Fear Street Cheerleader cycle, which is sad, since the original cover art belonged in a Grady Hendrix review.
I mean...
The trilogy, now reprinted as one volume, unfortunately loses the cool cover art in favor of this.
Not as cool.
Anyway, the story centers at first on Bobbi and Corky, two teenage girls transplanted from Missouri to Shadyside, where they audition for the Cheer Squad, against the wishes of a few of the girls. (This came out long before Bring it On, so I can't blame that for this.) They get on, which means the Freshman on the squad gets bumped to alternate. On the way to the first away game, Bobbi realizes she left the fire batons at her house, so the bus makes a run to Fear Street so they can grab them. Or attempts to, since the bush crashes into the Fear Street Cemetery, and Cheer Captain Jennifer gets thrown from the bus and lands on Sarah Fear's tombstone. Jennifer survives, but is paralyzed. Bobbi, the older sister, becomes cheer captain, sparking jealousy in Kimmy. Then Bobbi gets locked in a shower and drowned in scalding water. (This is one of the very few Fear Street novels with actual deaths of major characters. Generally, if someone dies, it's a villain or a random adult.)
This of course, makes Corky go a little nuts, but she eventually finds out who did it, and gets the bonus of finding out the responsible party was possessed by and Evil Spirit. Said spirit supposedly gets trapped again in the grave of Sarah Fear. Except, no, in book two the spirit is back, possesing another cheerleader and tormenting Corky again. We eventually find out who's hosting, get rid of the spirit, and head into book 3, wherein someone else gets possessed, we go to cheer camp, we learn how Sarah Fear got rid of the spirit, and we get a few The Exorcist homages.
So,m while I'm aware my love of the Fear Street series is mostly nostalgia, since most of the books don't quite hold up to my memories of reading them, these were not particularly good, even for nostalgia. The three installments, while continuing a story line, really have some fairly glaring continuity errors, or at least unanswered questions, like, if the possessed in book 2 doesn't remember anything that happened at the end of the book, why is she still besties with a girl she loathed in book one when she wasn't possessed in book 3? It all works best when we focus on the jealousy and envy in the squad, although when Hannah joins in book 3, Corky never acknowledges particularly that her feeling about the new recruit outshining her mirror how others felt in book one. That, and Corky and Bobbi's family are almost non entities, occoasionally popping up to give them something to worry about.
Honestly, I enjoyed it for what it was, but it really missed a lot of opportunities.
