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Fear Street Seniors #12
Graduation Day
In the suspenseful conclusion of the twelve-part saga, the surviving members of Shadyside High's senior class try to uncover the culprit responsible for the senior-class curse, as they begin to suspect that Count Clarkula is really a vampire. Original.
145 pages, Paperback
First published May 3, 1999
3 people are currently reading
740 people want to read
About the author
R.L. Stine
1,679 books18.6k followersRobert Lawrence Stine known as R. L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences. Stine, who is often called the Stephen King of children's literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series.
R. L. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children's author in history. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. His other major series, Fear Street, has over 80 million copies sold.
Stine has received numerous awards of recognition, including several Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and Disney Adventures Kids' Choice Awards, and he has been selected by kids as one of their favorite authors in the NEA's Read Across America program. He lives in New York, NY.
http://us.macmillan.com/itsthefirstda...
R. L. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children's author in history. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. His other major series, Fear Street, has over 80 million copies sold.
Stine has received numerous awards of recognition, including several Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and Disney Adventures Kids' Choice Awards, and he has been selected by kids as one of their favorite authors in the NEA's Read Across America program. He lives in New York, NY.
http://us.macmillan.com/itsthefirstda...
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 15, 2023
Well here it is...the last book of the Fear Street Seniors.
Graduation Day.
Anyone would be ready to leave high school behind but the teens in Shadyside always have it a little more harsh than others. The Shadyside High Class of 1999 especially.
Josie Maxwell cast a spell using Jennifer Fear's small library of books on witchcraft thanks to teenage angst and ended up cursing her whole class instead!
Trisha Conrad was known for having visions and before her big party to say goodbye to junior year and ring in the last one of high school, she had the worst one yet.
All of the seniors in their caps and gowns...laid out in coffins.
Over the course of the year, one by one and sometimes even two at a time...seniors began to suffer grisly deaths at the hands of the curse.
The guilt of so much loss is getting to Josie as the big day draws near. The evil spirit brought forth by the Doom Spell is taunting her with visions of her own end and the hideous plans it has for those left.
Josie thought she stopped it before but she only bought a little bit of time but now it is starting to get ready to run out...
Oh...and is Clark Dickson really a vampire?
Yeah it sounds slightly weird when I shift from a dramatic phrasing to an out right and out of left field question...right?
Wasn't this sort of abandoned back in like Book Three and now we're going to focus on it?
We've been introduced to characters only to see them either die or be the one behind the crazy-crazy of whichever book it was. We got characters introduced who seem like they are going to be big towards the end but then just vanish...even with entries in the "yearbook" section.
Most of the more "unlikeable" seniors have already met their ends and so you are wondering if any of the nice ones are going to make it. Shadyside teens don't really learn lessons so most of them can not completely change even after facing so much terror and misery.
Everything involving the storyline of "Is Clark a vampire?" does kind of go along with the more serious "A" story of the curse and graduation in a way that I won't spoil but it is more like a goofy B-movie plot. They come crashing together with another plot element that just comes out of nowhere.
We get a climax that is sort of anti-climatic and then it leads to an ending that I did not see coming and...I'm not really sure how I feel about it. Ambiguously leaning toward a downer ending but I guess it is left for the reader to decide if they got ripped off in a satisfying conclusion or just had someone yell "PSYCH!" and slap them in the face.
Since I am missing two books my honest opinion of the whole series is a little skewed but I found most of the books enjoyable.
Are they meant to be masterpieces? No but at least we get some stability mostly focusing on the same characters.
Do any of the characters stand out from the others? Some get more focus than others and a few of them are just a waste of time getting to know. From Book 1 to Book 12, there really is no growth and you as the reader are more invested with who you hate and who has your sympathy.
If you have not read any of the books at all and you can get your hands on them, the Fear Street Seniors are worth a read.
Graduation Day.
Anyone would be ready to leave high school behind but the teens in Shadyside always have it a little more harsh than others. The Shadyside High Class of 1999 especially.
Josie Maxwell cast a spell using Jennifer Fear's small library of books on witchcraft thanks to teenage angst and ended up cursing her whole class instead!
Trisha Conrad was known for having visions and before her big party to say goodbye to junior year and ring in the last one of high school, she had the worst one yet.
All of the seniors in their caps and gowns...laid out in coffins.
Over the course of the year, one by one and sometimes even two at a time...seniors began to suffer grisly deaths at the hands of the curse.
The guilt of so much loss is getting to Josie as the big day draws near. The evil spirit brought forth by the Doom Spell is taunting her with visions of her own end and the hideous plans it has for those left.
Josie thought she stopped it before but she only bought a little bit of time but now it is starting to get ready to run out...
Oh...and is Clark Dickson really a vampire?
Yeah it sounds slightly weird when I shift from a dramatic phrasing to an out right and out of left field question...right?
Wasn't this sort of abandoned back in like Book Three and now we're going to focus on it?
We've been introduced to characters only to see them either die or be the one behind the crazy-crazy of whichever book it was. We got characters introduced who seem like they are going to be big towards the end but then just vanish...even with entries in the "yearbook" section.
Most of the more "unlikeable" seniors have already met their ends and so you are wondering if any of the nice ones are going to make it. Shadyside teens don't really learn lessons so most of them can not completely change even after facing so much terror and misery.
Everything involving the storyline of "Is Clark a vampire?" does kind of go along with the more serious "A" story of the curse and graduation in a way that I won't spoil but it is more like a goofy B-movie plot. They come crashing together with another plot element that just comes out of nowhere.
We get a climax that is sort of anti-climatic and then it leads to an ending that I did not see coming and...I'm not really sure how I feel about it. Ambiguously leaning toward a downer ending but I guess it is left for the reader to decide if they got ripped off in a satisfying conclusion or just had someone yell "PSYCH!" and slap them in the face.
Since I am missing two books my honest opinion of the whole series is a little skewed but I found most of the books enjoyable.
Are they meant to be masterpieces? No but at least we get some stability mostly focusing on the same characters.
Do any of the characters stand out from the others? Some get more focus than others and a few of them are just a waste of time getting to know. From Book 1 to Book 12, there really is no growth and you as the reader are more invested with who you hate and who has your sympathy.
If you have not read any of the books at all and you can get your hands on them, the Fear Street Seniors are worth a read.
September 28, 2025
Some fun scenes of action and horror but the story is utter nonsense and overall a disappointing conclusion to a rather mediocre series.
September 10, 2024
This one had more paranormal elements in it and I didn’t love that. Also unexplained deaths? Like tell us what happened.
November 21, 2024
I can’t believe they actually used the “Clark is a vampire” bullshit as a deux ex machina
December 21, 2021
Well, Graduation Day is an anticlimactic finish to a series I mostly enjoyed, in a nostalgic way. But it ends more or less the way you expect a work by R.L. Stine to end--without really resolving anything. So I can't claim to be surprised.
The plot is pretty thin. Josie Maxwell is looking for a way to reverse the doom spell before graduation. Clark Dickson, who may or may not be a vampire, is dating Trisha Conrad.
There was a lot of potential, but much of it was squandered by Stine's usual tendency to set a strange and inconsistent pace--the story is both meandering and underdeveloped, which is quite a feat. There are several chapters in the middle involving Josie's encounters with the evil doom-spell spirit that could have been eliminated altogether, since nothing really happens in them; they're the typical "Something really bad happened! Oh no it didn't" walkbacks that are so frustrating in these kinds of books. Clark's storyline is more interesting--his human-or-otherwise status is finally revealed, and you get to read from his POV for the first time, but it's rushed and pretty superficial.
Established characters never really get developed. Everyone is pretty much the same now as they were when we first met them eleven books ago. Jennifer Fear, probably my favorite character, barely gets a mention. Trisha Conrad ought to play a bigger role than she does, given her visions and all, but nothing she does makes any difference. Josie is a completely weak and ineffectual protagonist who has spent an entire year puttering around instead of searching for ways to reverse the doom spell she initiated back in book one; I spent the book hoping she would make some kind of meaningful sacrifice to save her classmates, but alas she does not.
Nobody else learns anything or grows, either. Mickey Meyers is still a cheating jerk. Kenny Klein is still an overachiever. Josh Maxwell is still a generic cool guy who likes to party. We don't even hear from some of the protagonists of previous books, like Mary O'Connor or Clarissa Turner. The only thing that's changed is that some characters are dead and some characters are sad about characters being dead, neither of which really qualify as arcs.
I give the book three stars because it never annoyed or bored me. It's just a real fizzle of a finale to a series that promised so much more.
Things R.L. Stine thinks will scare me but they don't:
-Skeletons
-Supernatural entities spinning really fast--spinning, spinning. Sometimes they spin together and become a tornado.
-Snakes
-Cars exploding (sorta thrilling, I guess, but not scary)
-Sour breath
The plot is pretty thin. Josie Maxwell is looking for a way to reverse the doom spell before graduation. Clark Dickson, who may or may not be a vampire, is dating Trisha Conrad.
There was a lot of potential, but much of it was squandered by Stine's usual tendency to set a strange and inconsistent pace--the story is both meandering and underdeveloped, which is quite a feat. There are several chapters in the middle involving Josie's encounters with the evil doom-spell spirit that could have been eliminated altogether, since nothing really happens in them; they're the typical "Something really bad happened! Oh no it didn't" walkbacks that are so frustrating in these kinds of books. Clark's storyline is more interesting--his human-or-otherwise status is finally revealed, and you get to read from his POV for the first time, but it's rushed and pretty superficial.
Established characters never really get developed. Everyone is pretty much the same now as they were when we first met them eleven books ago. Jennifer Fear, probably my favorite character, barely gets a mention. Trisha Conrad ought to play a bigger role than she does, given her visions and all, but nothing she does makes any difference. Josie is a completely weak and ineffectual protagonist who has spent an entire year puttering around instead of searching for ways to reverse the doom spell she initiated back in book one; I spent the book hoping she would make some kind of meaningful sacrifice to save her classmates, but alas she does not.
Nobody else learns anything or grows, either. Mickey Meyers is still a cheating jerk. Kenny Klein is still an overachiever. Josh Maxwell is still a generic cool guy who likes to party. We don't even hear from some of the protagonists of previous books, like Mary O'Connor or Clarissa Turner. The only thing that's changed is that some characters are dead and some characters are sad about characters being dead, neither of which really qualify as arcs.
I give the book three stars because it never annoyed or bored me. It's just a real fizzle of a finale to a series that promised so much more.
Things R.L. Stine thinks will scare me but they don't:
-Skeletons
-Supernatural entities spinning really fast--spinning, spinning. Sometimes they spin together and become a tornado.
-Snakes
-Cars exploding (sorta thrilling, I guess, but not scary)
-Sour breath
August 7, 2011
Great end to the series! I was hoping that more of the seniors would die especially those who werent really big in the series. I felt like it ewas left on such a cliffhanger that I want to learn more about what happens next
September 22, 2021
This is another one I thought I remembered loving, but this last book was such a let down.
April 13, 2025
Full review at: https://www.jackreacts.com.au/fear-st...
Snippet: I was hoping we’d finish the Seniors series with a bang, but this was a great big mess. It feels like Stine didn’t really have an end plan in mind while writing the whole series, and there's so much filler here to pad it out. The dead seniors marching into the auditorium, although a great scene, also seemed pointless because it went absolutely nowhere and we never found out what happened to them afterwards. Considering the whole senior class and a teacher witnessed it, you’d expect it to be a bigger plot point.
The final showdown at the end also seemed quite rushed, if you can even call it a showdown. I’m sure we were all expecting a big battle, but instead we got whatever the hell this was...
Check out my full review linked up top for an in-depth recap :)
Snippet: I was hoping we’d finish the Seniors series with a bang, but this was a great big mess. It feels like Stine didn’t really have an end plan in mind while writing the whole series, and there's so much filler here to pad it out. The dead seniors marching into the auditorium, although a great scene, also seemed pointless because it went absolutely nowhere and we never found out what happened to them afterwards. Considering the whole senior class and a teacher witnessed it, you’d expect it to be a bigger plot point.
The final showdown at the end also seemed quite rushed, if you can even call it a showdown. I’m sure we were all expecting a big battle, but instead we got whatever the hell this was...
Check out my full review linked up top for an in-depth recap :)
July 30, 2024
The senior class is doomed well kinda? Idk was this series good? Not really. For a doomed class I want blood shed I want mass deaths. Josie is again our protagonist for this book but most of the surviving class are mentioned or featured throughout. It is a real let down though. The spirit from the doom spell is back, the vampire subplot is back it just is like a bunch of random crap all thrown together. I wanted to love this book but most of it was boring. There were a few bright spots though. The graduation rehearsal where the dead students march in and they are rotting corpses nice!! One random death, spoilers Phoebe was out of the blue and for such a great character was so wasted. Like I felt like “Stine” was like we need to kill someone halfway through. But the ending was one of those cliffhanger endings I hate. The rest of the class graduate and at the end Kenny the valedictorian reveals to Josie that he is the spirit from the doom spell and is like it’s time for me to finish my work happy graduation. Fuck that we spent twelve whole books following the dull ass class where so many survive just to end on that shit. I wanted to throw the book across the room. I was let down so hard. Ugh I hated this series more than I liked it. And I’m a fear street fanatic.
At best 2.5 stars. Overall this series was a mess.
At best 2.5 stars. Overall this series was a mess.
November 6, 2019
I was a bit underwhelmed by this finale of the Seniors series. Josie thinks she's losing her mind now that it's almost Graduation Day and the Doom Spell has almost completely wiped out the seniors. Plus Clark reveals his secret in a weird way that I wasn't a fan of. The finale could have been cool if it wasn't a weird body suit reveal. It was an odd mix of not being sure if anything was real with all the fake outs and then the non-fake outs that read like goofs. All in all, I'm glad I re-read this Fear Street series, it had some fun bits and a twist end...but it's not without its duds!
January 19, 2021
Sigh. I used to think this serie was fantastic when I was 13, but 17 years later I know I’m too old for these kind of books.
The horror and love stories are cheesy, there is a lot of cheating (almost all the cheaters are dead tho) and is kind of nostalgic because of the 90s setting. It’s nice time spending when you don’t want to read anything serious.
The horror and love stories are cheesy, there is a lot of cheating (almost all the cheaters are dead tho) and is kind of nostalgic because of the 90s setting. It’s nice time spending when you don’t want to read anything serious.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 8, 2023
I was hoping for a nice closure to the serie but Mr.Stine had to throw in another cliffhanger at the end. The whole thing was an absolute mess.
Want to read
March 31, 2010I feel like because I read the rest of the series back in Elementary school, I should read this one, because this one and 10 are the only one's I never read... Who knows if I'll actually get there or not though...
April 14, 2012
I was a huge R.L. Stine fan in my early teens! I loved all the fear street books! They are what got me into reading again! :)
April 16, 2013
Nice thrilling end! I loved reading this serial...
August 8, 2013
I read all of these when I was in Junior High. I always checked the bookstore to see if the next one was out yet and I would get so excited when a new one came out. Fun books for a 13 year old!
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews