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Scream #8
The Crush
Obsessed with possessing Michael Warden, a hunk working at Covers, the hottest teen club in Burbank, a crazed young woman will stop at nothing to eliminate all of the competition.
- GenresYoung AdultHorror
224 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 9, 2023
I was feeling pretty ho-hum about this book up until the last 3/4.
It plays a lot like one of Jo Gibson's earlier titles, My Bloody Valentine, with girls competing for a prize (in this case, a boy) even after many of them get murdered. I'm sorry Jo, I just don't buy it! Why would these friends keep trying to date this guy after every girl who goes out with him gets killed? To win a contest?
But, after saying all that—the ending was fantastic. A bit spicy! And a truly wicked twist. It definitely made me want to read the sequel.
It plays a lot like one of Jo Gibson's earlier titles, My Bloody Valentine, with girls competing for a prize (in this case, a boy) even after many of them get murdered. I'm sorry Jo, I just don't buy it! Why would these friends keep trying to date this guy after every girl who goes out with him gets killed? To win a contest?
But, after saying all that—the ending was fantastic. A bit spicy! And a truly wicked twist. It definitely made me want to read the sequel.
March 16, 2022
What a bonkers ride of a book and I mean it a really good way! It's very hard to talk about a book that has a sequel and won't be full of at least some spoilers but I'll try to hold back what I can if I can so read ahead at your own curiosity...
So far I am a fan of Jo Gibson's writing with My Bloody Valentine and now The Crush. Despite the name it has nothing to do with the Alicia Silverstone movie of the same name but it has a lot of tropes you would recognize from it.
At a club called Covers, it caters to an older high school/younger college crowd where they serve no alcohol and have musical and comedy performers. The biggest star is Michael Warden, a singer armed with his acoustic guitar, good looks, charm and a sturdy head on his shoulders...except when it comes to women.
A lot of females who work at the club are admirers of Michael and no one is a bigger fan than his next door neighbor, Judy Lampert. Judy has known Michael since she was ten and been in love with him even before she blossomed past braces but he only sees her as his "little sister" and "best buddy".
It's clear that Michael is going places whether it involves a record deal or graduating UCLA or inheriting his parents' fortune and all of the girls at Covers decide to have a little contest.
Excluding Judy and another girl named Carla, they want to see who can get serious with Michael after two weeks of dating and boy do some claws come out as we get perspectives from each girl about the others and how they really feel about Michael.
We get a lot of Judy's P.O.V. as well about how in love she is with Michael and how she's an adopted child living a poor little rich girl life...all the benefits and none of the love from her well to do parents.
Most of the time we focus on the other girls right before they get killed off with a tire iron against the head and an arrow shoved into their hearts...
The body count gets bigger and some girls get spared and we go through some plausible red herrings and motives but it isn't very hard to spot who is doing away with the competition based on the title.
Spoiler and set up for the sequel (which I will be reading shortly and then reviewing): It's Judy. She's clearly unhinged and the greatest performer out of all the girls. Once we get through five bodies and Michael clearly not noticing how Judy flirts with him, he turns down her sexual advances and she goes crazy with a knife.
Michael ends up being setup by Judy to take the fall for all the murders and he gets sent away to a mental hospital. Carla and chef Andy know the truth but have no evidence to prove Judy is the real killer and right now, poor Michael is not the same person he use to be...and may never be again.
Until the reveal, I did sort of like Judy and sympathize with her unrequited love until she went completely cray-cray. Most of the actually nice characters get to survive the book and I'm not saying any of the murdered girls deserved it but only one of them was actually really nice.
I'm interested to see how The Crush II turns out. The only other book I can think of that had an ending almost as bleak and was just as mind blowingly WTF was The Best Friend in the Fear Street series so I wonder how this story is set to end...
So far I am a fan of Jo Gibson's writing with My Bloody Valentine and now The Crush. Despite the name it has nothing to do with the Alicia Silverstone movie of the same name but it has a lot of tropes you would recognize from it.
At a club called Covers, it caters to an older high school/younger college crowd where they serve no alcohol and have musical and comedy performers. The biggest star is Michael Warden, a singer armed with his acoustic guitar, good looks, charm and a sturdy head on his shoulders...except when it comes to women.
A lot of females who work at the club are admirers of Michael and no one is a bigger fan than his next door neighbor, Judy Lampert. Judy has known Michael since she was ten and been in love with him even before she blossomed past braces but he only sees her as his "little sister" and "best buddy".
It's clear that Michael is going places whether it involves a record deal or graduating UCLA or inheriting his parents' fortune and all of the girls at Covers decide to have a little contest.
Excluding Judy and another girl named Carla, they want to see who can get serious with Michael after two weeks of dating and boy do some claws come out as we get perspectives from each girl about the others and how they really feel about Michael.
We get a lot of Judy's P.O.V. as well about how in love she is with Michael and how she's an adopted child living a poor little rich girl life...all the benefits and none of the love from her well to do parents.
Most of the time we focus on the other girls right before they get killed off with a tire iron against the head and an arrow shoved into their hearts...
The body count gets bigger and some girls get spared and we go through some plausible red herrings and motives but it isn't very hard to spot who is doing away with the competition based on the title.
Spoiler and set up for the sequel (which I will be reading shortly and then reviewing): It's Judy. She's clearly unhinged and the greatest performer out of all the girls. Once we get through five bodies and Michael clearly not noticing how Judy flirts with him, he turns down her sexual advances and she goes crazy with a knife.
Michael ends up being setup by Judy to take the fall for all the murders and he gets sent away to a mental hospital. Carla and chef Andy know the truth but have no evidence to prove Judy is the real killer and right now, poor Michael is not the same person he use to be...and may never be again.
Until the reveal, I did sort of like Judy and sympathize with her unrequited love until she went completely cray-cray. Most of the actually nice characters get to survive the book and I'm not saying any of the murdered girls deserved it but only one of them was actually really nice.
I'm interested to see how The Crush II turns out. The only other book I can think of that had an ending almost as bleak and was just as mind blowingly WTF was The Best Friend in the Fear Street series so I wonder how this story is set to end...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 8, 2021
It should not have taken a month to read a YA book under 300 pages, but The Crush hurt my spirit. Instead of camp, I'm met with surreal stupidity and characters that don't behave like actual human beings. Instead of horror, I'm forced to endure a bad lifetime movie. If Slay Bells is Jo Gibson's magnum opus, then The Crush and what I can only imagine of its dragged out sequel, are her opuscule shitstorm.
February 25, 2023
Love a teen night club scene (and all the excessive LA references) but this lacked tension and suspense. Fairly predictable, and scares were few and far between aww
February 5, 2026
I really liked this book. Even though most of the characters were not the brightest and the bad guy was very obvious it was a fun read. Although I felt stuff could have been cut out that was not needed. There was a whole chapter about a character’s heritage that did nothing to move the plot forward. Also these girls fall in love quickly. Like in a week quick lol.
March 20, 2022
More Jo Gibson nonsense, where characters who are clearly aliens who haven't quite grasped Earth culture try to convince us that they too are humans who do the human things.
Oh, and at one point the protagonist angrily gnashes her teeth on a tuna salad sandwich while watching the boy she loves and his date feed each other nachos while staring soulfully into each other's eyes. You know. Romantically cramming tortilla chips dripping with cheese and sour cream into your lover's face; the thing we've all done on dates!
Read my full recap at: https://ogwnostalgia.wordpress.com/20...
Oh, and at one point the protagonist angrily gnashes her teeth on a tuna salad sandwich while watching the boy she loves and his date feed each other nachos while staring soulfully into each other's eyes. You know. Romantically cramming tortilla chips dripping with cheese and sour cream into your lover's face; the thing we've all done on dates!
Read my full recap at: https://ogwnostalgia.wordpress.com/20...
November 3, 2016
Hmmm. Could the killer be the person who has the crush? The title kind of gives it away!
Bland, repetitive, stupid and obvious! There's zero variation in the kills. Michael manages to fall in love with several different girls in the space of a month! He has the attention span of a gnat! It's the sort of book that requires its characters to behave like complete idiots at every turn just to keep the thin plot going.
Bland, repetitive, stupid and obvious! There's zero variation in the kills. Michael manages to fall in love with several different girls in the space of a month! He has the attention span of a gnat! It's the sort of book that requires its characters to behave like complete idiots at every turn just to keep the thin plot going.
June 13, 2025
The title and summary kind of give away the plot, but this was a lot of fun.
March 3, 2015
Actual page number- 200 pages.
Frankly this book feels sluggish to read from its repetitiveness.
It goes like this. One girl dates the hunk. The girl is alone and then the killer strikes her. People grieve over the death briefly, police detective interrogates the people, Judy muses about her romance with Michael, and then another girl gets Michael's attention.
This is basically what the book amounts to as this occurs several times throughout the book. I really don't get it because this book is slasher genre which means it's supposed to be fun or suspenseful but they're not here in this book because of its predictable nature.
In addiction to the book being predictable, you can guess who the killer is. How? I got it right because of the book's title so no guessing game to keep me interested.
Characters suffer from being cupboard cutouts.
Michael is the perfect guy who has the looks, money, and talent and the girls moon over him. Not unlikeable but really boring character. Also I question his morality since he seems to keep dating girls despite the fact that the girls died not so long ago.
Judy Lampert is just bleh. She's the somewhat outcast character who can be sort of nice but the strangest thing is that she's rich and beautiful. I sort of don't feel moved when it's mentioned that her parents seem to not care of her because it seems forced as I've seen this type of character occur in other past media. All she seems to do is obsessing Michael despite the fact that he seems to ignore her several times which makes her weak character but then again her behavior is justified in the end of the book. Still not my favorite character.
The female victims' perspectives are shown in some passage but the're all scheming and vain so overall, no likeable characters.
Do not read this book. The book is really boring as if you read the first few chapters, you pretty much read the whole book.
I will read the sequel because it's one of those books where the book's resolution is unresolved which is not my type of favorite endings. Hopefully, the sequel is at written better than this.
Frankly this book feels sluggish to read from its repetitiveness.
It goes like this. One girl dates the hunk. The girl is alone and then the killer strikes her. People grieve over the death briefly, police detective interrogates the people, Judy muses about her romance with Michael, and then another girl gets Michael's attention.
This is basically what the book amounts to as this occurs several times throughout the book. I really don't get it because this book is slasher genre which means it's supposed to be fun or suspenseful but they're not here in this book because of its predictable nature.
In addiction to the book being predictable, you can guess who the killer is. How? I got it right because of the book's title so no guessing game to keep me interested.
Characters suffer from being cupboard cutouts.
Michael is the perfect guy who has the looks, money, and talent and the girls moon over him. Not unlikeable but really boring character. Also I question his morality since he seems to keep dating girls despite the fact that the girls died not so long ago.
Judy Lampert is just bleh. She's the somewhat outcast character who can be sort of nice but the strangest thing is that she's rich and beautiful. I sort of don't feel moved when it's mentioned that her parents seem to not care of her because it seems forced as I've seen this type of character occur in other past media. All she seems to do is obsessing Michael despite the fact that he seems to ignore her several times which makes her weak character but then again her behavior is justified in the end of the book. Still not my favorite character.
The female victims' perspectives are shown in some passage but the're all scheming and vain so overall, no likeable characters.
Do not read this book. The book is really boring as if you read the first few chapters, you pretty much read the whole book.
I will read the sequel because it's one of those books where the book's resolution is unresolved which is not my type of favorite endings. Hopefully, the sequel is at written better than this.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews