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2025 Nostalgia Re-readathon | Fear Street Saga Trilogy #2: The Secret
Buried Evil
What is the secret of Fear Street?
Why has its horror lasted so long?
Ezra Fier wants to find out. He searches for the answer among the rotting bones in the ghostly town of Wickham. But he find only betrayal and death.
Elizabeth and Kate are in love with the same boy. How can they know that they too are caught by the evil that will haunt this family forever?
I've decided to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, so in addition to this being this week's nostalgia re-readathon, I'm also counting it towards the October 2025 #TBRChallenge, "Here There Be Monsters."
Because after all, aren't the scariest monsters us humans ourselves?
This book picks up where #1 left off - namely, with another generation skip. Erza Fier has somehow found time to mate and procreate whilst on his vengeance tour of New England. He's now dragging his wife and three kids back to Wickham to find the last remains of his mortal enemy, the Goode family. To their credit, his family thinks he's completely nuts, but they don't get in his way in this quest for so-called justice. The Fier family arrives back in Wickham in 1737, only to find the village eerily abandoned by all living creatures, though there are plenty of rotting corpses to go around instead. They trace their way to the abandoned Goode homestead and Ezra decides it's the perfect place to set up their new home, because where else would Goodes possibly return to, in this godforsaken village??
Ezra's son, 12-year-old Jonathan, is cowed by his father but has a strong sense that his father's quest is crazy and the best thing to do would be to end the feud, once and for all, preferably without any further deaths. He thinks it's incredibly creepy to move into their enemy's abandoned home, but he's only 12, so what can he do? The Fiers stay at their new home and find that they do have one or two neighbors who are still scrabbling out a living on the terrible land. Ezra tries to approach these neighbors and ask for Goode, but he's rebuffed by all. The Goode family has been blamed for the horrible state of the village by those left, but not even Ezra's likeminded hatred of the family is enough to endear him, so he decides to simply sit and wait for a Goode to come to him.
Meanwhile, 8-year-old Abigail, the apple of Ezra's eye who can do no wrong, decides that she wants to explore the creepy village and bury the remains that she stumbles across. Jonathan is tasked with watching her, which actually means he's reluctantly roped into helping her with her strange quest. As they're going around burying the dead haphazardly, Abby means another little girl named Hester, and basically demands that Hester be allowed to be her BFF, even though Hester likes to do things like play in graveyards. Ezra can't deny his precious daughter anything so he relents, but it all goes to hell pretty quickly when Hester lures Abby to a grave and kills her. That's when they all learn that Hester is a dead little Goode herself. This pushes Ezra over the edge of reason, and his wife over the edge of sanity.
Six years later, the Fier family has relocated again and prospered, at least materially. Jane, Ezra's wife and Jonathan's mother, is lost in a weird state of mourning for her eldest daughter; she calls her still-living daughter Abby and swears up and down that she sees Abby's ghost crying out for her. Ezra tells his only remaining daughter nightly bedtime stories about the Fier family curse in gruesome detail. A pretty neighbor girl, Delilah Wilson, stops by to welcome the Fiers to their new village, and Rachel, the living sister, blurts out their sordid family history to Delilah without much prompting. Jonathan is mortified, but Delilah seems intrigued and encourages him to confide in her. The Abby hauntings escalate to the point of Jane drowning herself in the family well, and then Delilah tearfully confesses that she's the cause of all their misery because she's really a Goode (dun dun dun!). Jonathan and Delilah decide that the only way to stop the family feud/curse is to unite through marriage (gee, that sounds familiar) but Delilah has a premonition that she won't make it through her own wedding - and sure enough, Ezra bursts into the church to answer that immortal question of "just cause to not be married", wielding a shotgun and crazed with the notion that he can FINALLY kill some Goodes. All hell breaks loose - Ezra and Jonathan struggle over the gun, Jonathan accidentally shoots Delilah, and Mr Wilson begs for his own life and tells them that they're not *really* Goodes, he made it up and made Delilah terrorize the family because he wanted to marry Delilah off to Jonathan because of the Fier's fortune. Ezra is completely crazy, shouting and raging and attracting a crowd to the church, but he leaves the building and is trampled by a horse, and Mr Wilson (who is the local reverend, thus able to conduct his daughter's wedding ceremony) poisons the well against Ezra Fier to the point where none of the townsfolk are willing to come within 100 feet of the dead man. Jonathan ultimately has his father cremated and decides to bury him on their land, along with the amulet his father always wore, vowing then and there that he would but a definitive end to the whole curse/feud forever. The end.
Yay Jonathan for showing some common sense, a trait that is not typical for Fier men, as Impy pointed out in her review of the previous book. You did good!
But then five generations later, another Fier unearths the amulet and decides it's a pretty piece of jewelry, and unleashes the crazy once again. Apparently the story of the curse and the feud has completely disappeared from Fier family lore, so pretty teenager Elizabeth Fier is completely unaware of the danger she's bringing back to life. Not even having a full-body hallucination of fire and a girl burning at the stake is enough to put her off - nope, this necklace is too pretty to let stay in the ground!
This generation of Fiers is apparently quite kind and affluent, ready to open their home to anyone who approaches them and offer them no-strings-attached generosity. So it happens that a drifter shows up at their door, begging for a meal in exchange for work. The Fiers demure, telling him they are happy to share their food and warm house with him for nothing, but the stranger insists. He cleans up nicely and tells the family his name is Frank. He immediately slots right in on the farm, doing his share of chores and making friends with the current teenage Fier siblings. Elizabeth fancies herself in love with Frank and dreams of marrying him, even though he isn't of their class.
Alas, its not meant to be: Frank is actually the only living Goode family member, and he's sought out the Fiers to - stop me if this sounds familiar - avenge his family. He plans to divide and conquer, killing the Fiers one by one so that they understand how terrible his life has been. The only person who is suspicious of Frank is the local "witch" of the woods, Agnes. She tries to warn the Fier siblings, to no avail. Frank keeps his cards fairly close to his vest for a long while, before putting his plan in motion: he asks Elizabeth's sister to marry him, knowing how Liz feels about him, and then lures the sister out and kills her one of Liz's knitting needles. Liz is distraught, but soothes herself with the idea that of course Kate was wrong, she was delusional, Frank loves Liz and would never! ask anyone else to marry him.
Simon, Liz's brother, finds the entire situation completely weird and wanders off to Agnes's wood, where she tells him again that Frank is his enemy, is bloodthirsty for Fier blood, and that the Fier family will forever be cursed because the letters of their surname can be re-arranged to spell "fire." She gives Simon a dagger with which to off Frank, but Simon isn't so sure of Agnes's story - until he returns to his home, finding his parents slaughtered in a bloodbath while Frank wields the ax over Elizabeth's head and spills his maniacal guts to them. Simon manages to graze Frank with the dagger and Frank collapses and dies. Elizabeth swears its the amulet that saved their lives, and she tells Simon to take it for safekeeping. He sees no issue with this, not even after putting it on and having the same hallucination of fire and burning, because he just killed the self-proclaimed last Goode, ergo, the feud and curse are also over.
The book closes with Simon determining that he has to change his last name to shutter the illusions to fire once and for all, and he settles on...FEAR, dun dun dun.
This book is better than the first book in the series, because of tighter plotting and only having two acts instead of three straining against the <200 page book length. It's also a LOT bloodier, and the final act is truly monstrous, no matter what your definition. Turning on a family that's shown you nothing but good and killing them Lizzie Borden style? Not cool, Frank, not cool. The Goodes have lost the high ground in this particular feud - though nothing beats Simon deciding to change the spelling of his last name so it's not an anagram of "fire" anymore, like that's going to do him any sort of good LOL.
Simon's story is told in the final book of this trilogy, and I believe the lore around him is resurrected in other Fear Street Saga books (no doubt Stine knows a good cash cow when he sees one). This book surprised me, pleasantly, so I'm looking forward to reading about how and why the Fears find Shadyside and decide that it's the ultimate place to haunt forever.
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Simon, my dude, I'm not sure Fier to Fear is the change the Universe wanted out of y'all. Then again, the Universe really doesn't seem to like the Fier family having anyone beyond a brother and sister (or close enough) left during these things so who knows?
Someone get Francine on the line (back in the day), since not only is the Saga thing getting swiped, but so is the blue green of the ocean for an Elizabeth's eyes.
All the gold stars for Jonathan but I will dock three from his father for the whole not checking the bloody well when looking for the missing wife thing. That should mayyyyyybe have been the first stop beyond any rooms leading directly to the closest door.
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get wrecked, Ezra, for thinking your family was somehow the only victim in all this
Ezra was seriously bananapants full of bees. I can't believe he managed to marry and spawn with all the crazy going on in his head.
Curse is broken and yet the Goodes aren't free of the curse?
Yeah, WTAF, though we are taking the word of another grade A weirdo for that. Frank was frankly horrifying, ugh!
WHY, Stine? Do we get answers or am I just supposed to be pro-Fear because that's the name of the series?
Alas, we get no answers. That would make too much earth logic sense.
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I kinda want to believe Frank on this one thing, even if I maybe don't believe they just up and died mysteriously. But also Frankie, dude, what the actual fuuuuuuuuuck? I guess dude knew the bloodthirsty kids would be reading and wanted to go all in.
All hail King Jonathan! If only all your descendants had been able to hold onto even a FRACTION of your braincells. (You, Simon, I'm looking at you.)