When I was in high school, I devoured horror books (especially vampire books), mysteries / whodunnits and thriller books. I enjoyed reading Stephen King, R. L. Stine and Christopher Pike at a time when most of my friends read teenage chick lit and other trash about dating boys. Now that I look back at it, the books that I read were still very teenage-y with a lot of references on dating, but there's still some interesting aspect in them like a monster or a killer destroying everything and love prevailing over the rest. I avoid romance novels like the plague, they're something that spinster aunts love to read. But I still get my dose of romance - in books with very unromantic covers, lol!
One night after work, I fell back into my old habit of searching for second-hand pocketbooks in the mall. I found something that made me feel nostalgic in an instant - a book by Christopher Pike. Mind you, I didn't go to high school when Christopher Pike became a bestselling author; he was popular back in the '80s and '90s, and this book, called Weekend, was published in 1986, a year after I was born. Still, I am a lover of old second-hand books; I had very little money as a student, and I always chose the thickest, cheapest novels that I could buy with my money. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I chose horror over romance - I get more pages in a book, the book gives me an adrenaline fix (and not make me sleep), and thus, I get more value for my money.
When I got back to reading Christopher Pike again, it was like the good old days when all I worry about was algebra, bringing a cute shoulder bag for all of my school stuff, and finding a good book to read. Yet it wasn't as good as I remembered it to be.
The teenage characters were all so petty to me. I kept thinking, "they would know better when they get a little older". Maybe I'm getting old, haha. Yes, maybe.In this novel, a group of high school friends spend the weekend over at their rich friends' house in Mexico. Some weird things happen, and in the end, they all confess their deepest secrets. Kerry, a character in the novel, confesses to inadvertently poisoning her friend Robin, who was very ill because of kidney failure resulting from the poison. Kerry did this to get back at Lena, Robin's sister, who stole her boyfriend. In the end, they all forgive and forget even after Lena scared them all with non-poisonous rattlesnakes and Kerry had to confess her sins to Michael, Robin's yet-undiscovered biological brother (Robin and Lena are adopted sisters), at gunpoint. I never understood why they didn't bring Kerry to the police. She's guilty of frustrated murder through reckless imprudence. Maybe because, they're teenagers.
Best thing about this book? Since it was so old and second-hand, I had the privilege of folding up the pages that I last read. I remember when I was so crazy about Christopher Pike. I still like the book (his books - which I lost most of when our house got flooded) but I've grown over them.
