Decided to read the final installment of the Silent Night Trilogy... how does it fare lined up with the first two...?
Well, in this one, much like 2, Reva is back to being... Reva, and there's very little to no continuity. In this entry, Reva is back from college and she brings a friend along with her... (An act of kindness?! *gasp*) ...when she learns her college roommate is trying to avoid an abusive ex-boyfriend. After they get home, Grace (Reva's friend) starts receiving threatening phone calls from her ex, telling her he's coming to get revenge for breaking up with him and all that fun stuff. Grace freaks out and tells Reva that she's in danger... (I'll mention here that Grace is very paranoid, jumping at every little sound, seems to think her EX is god-like and break into their house at any given moment and kill them both.) ...Reva starts to think she shouldn't have invited Grace with her and wishes she would go home. That's more like the Reva we all know and (some of us) love. And, I can actually agree with Reva's change of attitude toward her friend. Grace is extremely annoying and kind of idiotic... so much so I was wondering if there was something off with her character, in how she's involved with the final twist... turns out I was right, but I won't get into that because spoilers and stuff.
So, much of the suspense revolves around Grace's EX stalking her and Reva, though the extent of what happens is threatening phone calls, a tactic we've seen about 1,000,000 times now in these types of books. But then, Pam (Reva's cousin) makes a return in the story, coming to Reva with a business proposition. She and her friend have some homemade scarves they would like to sell in her store. They turn out to be really nice, really high quality scarves they can make some money on. Reva, being Reva, agrees to this, and then tells her father that she's the one that designed the scarves and of course Robert Dalby agrees to sell them in his store. What follows is a small fashion show for the new line up of scarves, but one of the models is found dead, skewered on a pole in place of a mannequin. Yikes. Who could it possibly be? Of course, there are a few different suspects in the ring with obvious red herrings. Reva then herself receives a threatening phone call, saying she deserves the same fate as the model stuck to the mannequin pole. So now we have this to worry about on top of Grace's EX running around and hunting them. Who will be next? Will they find the murderer in time?
I will say this - I actually enjoyed this one more than 2. But not by much. To create suspense and a new plot, Stine kind of pushes his luck by having character inconsistencies (Reva bringing her college friend home, then immediately regretting it), having Pam included in this book for the sole purpose of the Scarf/Fashion Show/Mannequin-murder Plot point... (Pam's character is otherwise very flat compared to the first two books and given less scene time), and of course the very unstable Grace that is terrified of her own shadow, thinking her ex-boyfriend lurks around every corner. God, I really despised her character.
Unfortunately, while this one was at least somewhat enjoyable, it kind of falls apart in the end during the denouement. I liked one of the twists, and kind of saw it coming, in regards to Grace and her ex, but the way it played out was dumb. Really dumb. And then the big reveal of who was the "mannequin killer" was also really dumb, with an even dumber final act. Basically, the last 25 or so pages of the book was just DUMB.
It left me feeling kind of cold to the book and the trilogy overall, though I still think this book is slightly better overall than Silent Night 2. This one at least focused on the central characters more (Reva; and Pam, to a degree) instead of a trio of bumbling teenaged criminals that don't know north from south. Of course, our main characters aren't as fleshed out as they were in the first installment, but, interestingly enough, Michael (Reva's little brother, who was absent in book 2), and Robert Dalby (her father) both make appearances in this book and actually have some sort of development here. Without getting too detailed (spoilers and stuff, again), Mr. Dalby actually (sorta kinda) punishes Reva for her bratty attitude later on. Say-whattttttt. And Michael returns as a totally changed kid, hell-bent on kicking someone's ass, specifically whoever breaks in the house and messes with his family. (But also kicking his older sister's ass and scaring the living crap out of her in the process. *shrugs*)
Overall, this one was just okay. It was just entertaining enough, but falls flat by the end as we get our typical eye-rolling twists and turns and a rushed ending. Better than 2, but still nowhere near the quality of 1.
Final Rating: 2.25 / 5 stars
(a quarter of a star more than S.N. 2, lol)