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Terror Academy #8
Science Project
Desperate for help in biology, Andrea Hill asks socially awkward Clark Thompson, a science whiz who spends all his free time working on secret experiments, to tutor her, but when Andrea's friends ridicule Clark, he turns his experiments on them. Original.
- GenresYoung AdultHorrorTeen
174 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 25, 2024
Giving this one a high 3 for being one of the more memorable and amusing and creative Terror Academys I’ve read so far.
Moral of the story: NEVER piss off the school genius because he just might sic his giant rabid pet opossum on you!!!
You won’t feel bad for the initial victims bc they def deserved it (not talking about Suzy, obviously), especially the sexist sociopathic jerk who inexplicably talks like a 50s greaser teen.
I expected mutant animals, sure, but I sure as hell wasn’t expecting a MUTANT BLOODTHIRSTY PREHISTORIC MENAGERIE. Amazing.
There’s a surprising amount of gore in this one, and a very entertaining ending that had me howling to the very end. Honestly great.
Moral of the story: NEVER piss off the school genius because he just might sic his giant rabid pet opossum on you!!!
You won’t feel bad for the initial victims bc they def deserved it (not talking about Suzy, obviously), especially the sexist sociopathic jerk who inexplicably talks like a 50s greaser teen.
I expected mutant animals, sure, but I sure as hell wasn’t expecting a MUTANT BLOODTHIRSTY PREHISTORIC MENAGERIE. Amazing.
There’s a surprising amount of gore in this one, and a very entertaining ending that had me howling to the very end. Honestly great.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 12, 2024
Do you like the 'dorky dude getting his revenge'-trope? Do you like giant mutant animals who kill and do your bidding for you? Do you like a gnarly side of GORE to your YA Horror? Look no further, dude. This one was SO MUCH FUN!!
Thanks to my friend Erica for recommending this one, and it did not disappoint. Trigger alert for a few animal deaths as it's always a major bummer for me 😭
Thanks to my friend Erica for recommending this one, and it did not disappoint. Trigger alert for a few animal deaths as it's always a major bummer for me 😭
January 13, 2026
Rounded up to 3 stars from 2.5 for GR.
The back of this book is a little misleading and the inside story of this book is particularly cruel and mean spirited. There is a lot of fat shaming and a lot of slut shaming in this one and if you also have a love for animals, Science Project is a hard one to stomach.
You feel about the smallest amount of sympathy you can for each character in this book that is not an adult.
Andrea Hill wants to be a part of the popular crowd at Central Academy, and she is for a while whilst dating jock Johnny Randall. A girl named Suzy is a junior but only popular because she has her driver's license and her parents have a huge swimming pool, the rest of the time she is treated like garbage for being overweight.
Andrea doesn't have that problem...she's too good-looking for her own good. When Johnny wants to take things farther but goes a little too far, Andrea is forced to defend herself and breaks things off with Johnny. It is actually a good thing despite being a social pariah.
Andrea can now focus on her studies and maybe even become a doctor like her father, so she gets her schedule changed around. Now taking biology, she is paired up with Clark Thompson, but he is an insufferable genius and treats Andrea like she has no brain cells in her head. Their teacher, Mr. Renfro, forces Clark to tutor Andrea when their insults toward each other escalate to seeing the principal and facing suspension.
Clark shows that he can actually be a human being when he uses his smarts to outwit Johnny when he gives Andrea a hard time and almost manhandles her again. Andrea soon finds Clark to be almost charming enough to go to the homecoming dance with him and finds that he could be handsome if he got contacts, fixed up his hair and smiled more.
Johnny isn't happy with Clark, so he and his buddy Chaz decide to mess with the genius by making him take the fall for a nasty little incident. Forgetting that Clark is super smart, it is only a matter of time before he decides to use science to take revenge and dole out some gruesome justice.
Andrea actually gets some character development as the story progresses of being less snobby and more intelligent to deserve her somewhat happy ending. No one else is as lucky but that's not much of a spoiler either...you can tell halfway through Science Project it will be a downer sort of ending.
The climax is such a bad B-movie sort of twist that takes us from a teen thriller to a sci-fi horror fit for the 1950s and I'm not sure if that means it is so bad it's good or the opposite. I guess you can be the judge if you become lucky enough to find a copy of Science Project for yourself.
The back of this book is a little misleading and the inside story of this book is particularly cruel and mean spirited. There is a lot of fat shaming and a lot of slut shaming in this one and if you also have a love for animals, Science Project is a hard one to stomach.
You feel about the smallest amount of sympathy you can for each character in this book that is not an adult.
Andrea Hill wants to be a part of the popular crowd at Central Academy, and she is for a while whilst dating jock Johnny Randall. A girl named Suzy is a junior but only popular because she has her driver's license and her parents have a huge swimming pool, the rest of the time she is treated like garbage for being overweight.
Andrea doesn't have that problem...she's too good-looking for her own good. When Johnny wants to take things farther but goes a little too far, Andrea is forced to defend herself and breaks things off with Johnny. It is actually a good thing despite being a social pariah.
Andrea can now focus on her studies and maybe even become a doctor like her father, so she gets her schedule changed around. Now taking biology, she is paired up with Clark Thompson, but he is an insufferable genius and treats Andrea like she has no brain cells in her head. Their teacher, Mr. Renfro, forces Clark to tutor Andrea when their insults toward each other escalate to seeing the principal and facing suspension.
Clark shows that he can actually be a human being when he uses his smarts to outwit Johnny when he gives Andrea a hard time and almost manhandles her again. Andrea soon finds Clark to be almost charming enough to go to the homecoming dance with him and finds that he could be handsome if he got contacts, fixed up his hair and smiled more.
Johnny isn't happy with Clark, so he and his buddy Chaz decide to mess with the genius by making him take the fall for a nasty little incident. Forgetting that Clark is super smart, it is only a matter of time before he decides to use science to take revenge and dole out some gruesome justice.
Andrea actually gets some character development as the story progresses of being less snobby and more intelligent to deserve her somewhat happy ending. No one else is as lucky but that's not much of a spoiler either...you can tell halfway through Science Project it will be a downer sort of ending.
The climax is such a bad B-movie sort of twist that takes us from a teen thriller to a sci-fi horror fit for the 1950s and I'm not sure if that means it is so bad it's good or the opposite. I guess you can be the judge if you become lucky enough to find a copy of Science Project for yourself.
June 14, 2024
I really wanted to like this book, it just wasn’t that good. The book is very fat phobic which in itself is just gross. We follow Junior Andrea, who at the start of the book is part of the popular group, but her boyfriend tries to rape her at a beach party, so she breaks up with him and is now unpopular and ostracized. She decides to take on a more academic role in school that makes her parents happy which includes biology where she is partnered with the super nerdy Clark. Andrea and Clark do not get along, so the teacher, of course pairs them together. Andrea joins Clark’s science project which has to do with DNA. He basically wants to turn animals back into their original species from millions of years ago. The book really makes no sense, because Clark is able to change the animals and somehow control them but that’s never stated why he can which is so dumb. Also the “chubby character“ is killed off Andrea‘s ex who is dating her gets her pregnant and wants her to get it taken care of, but apparently she wants to get together and be married so his only choice is to murder her. Super gross and dark for a young adult book. if you like weird animals who mutate and kill you may like this book but it’s barely a three star book.
May 12, 2017
I always remember the Terror Academy books as being amazing, but this one was just weird as heck. Maybe I used to skip this one as a kid? It would explain why absolutely none of it was familiar.
April 4, 2024
Mutation murders.
Popular to pariah.
A bad senior year.
Popular to pariah.
A bad senior year.
April 8, 2023
Of all the Terror Academy books - and I’ve read a dozen of them in the last couple weeks - this is the one that aggravated me the most, because it had the potential to be really good. Weird prehistoric animals? Popular girl falling for the nerd? Ex-boyfriend murdering people? I was loving this until halfway through. But the about-face of Clark - who should have been the hero - turning into the villain really wrecked it for me.
Even then, it could have been saved if he’d been a tortured, nuanced villain, rather than the cartoonish evil guy he was written into. But they went for cartoonish. Sigh.
And Andrea’s admission at the end that she sometimes missed Johnny (Johnny, who tried to rape you and murdered your best friend!) was just…ick.
This whole series has been a mixed bag. Nothing great, but some decent tales, and a bunch of mediocre ones, and a few terrible ones (Night School, I’m looking at you) but none so aggravating as this, which had the potential to be my favourite in the series, and turned out my least favourite.
Even then, it could have been saved if he’d been a tortured, nuanced villain, rather than the cartoonish evil guy he was written into. But they went for cartoonish. Sigh.
And Andrea’s admission at the end that she sometimes missed Johnny (Johnny, who tried to rape you and murdered your best friend!) was just…ick.
This whole series has been a mixed bag. Nothing great, but some decent tales, and a bunch of mediocre ones, and a few terrible ones (Night School, I’m looking at you) but none so aggravating as this, which had the potential to be my favourite in the series, and turned out my least favourite.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 17, 2009
This story is a book in the Terror Academy series. It is about a girl who falls in with the wrong crowd. She learns that people can be perceived in many different ways. The guy she likes is a jerk at school and she is warned to stay away.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews