The Watcher

by Lael Littke

Catherine Belmont imagines herself as Cassandra Bly, the sexy star of her favorite soap opera, and eerily, her life begins to slowly resemble Cassandra's until Catherine begins to think she is losing her mind.

Genres: Horror, Young Adult, Thriller, Teen, Novels

208 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1994

About the author

Daughter of Frank George and Ada Geneva (Petersen) Jensen; married George C. Littke (a college professor), June 29, 1954; children: Lori S. Education: Utah State University, B.S., 1952; graduate study at City College (now City University of New York), 1955-59, and University of California--Los Angeles, 1968. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon). Hobbies and other interests: Travel. Memberships: Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Council on Children's Literature. Agent: Jack Byrne, 3209 South Fifty-fifth St., Milwaukee, WI 53219-4433.

CAREER:

Gates Rubber Co., Denver, CO, secretary, 1952-54; Life Insurance Association of America, New York, NY, secretary, 1954-60; worked as a medical secretary for a physician in New York, NY, 1960-63; writer, 1963--. Taught writing classes in writers' programs at Pasadena City College and University of California--Los Angeles, 1978-88.

AWARDS:

Southern California Council on Children's Literature Award for notable work of fiction, 1992, for Blue Skye; Best Books for the Teen Age, New York Public Library, 2003, for Lake of Secrets.

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most teenagers in the 90’s would have heard of the Point Horror series.
Even though I don’t recall reading this one, I certainly received a big dose of nostalgia.

Catherine Belmont is obsessed with her favourite soap opera Lost River, she even dreams of being Cassandra Bly - the main star of the series.
When events in the show soon start to mirror her own life, Catherine starts to worry that she too will be on the receiving end of a deathly prank.

This book screamed mid-90’s!
There were so many times that I’d asked a family member to tape a program for me as I was desperate not to miss it, recording an episode on the VCR was the only way to catch up with a show. I’m so glad we have Netflix now!

I liked the idea of using technology of its time, but the mystery of who was behind it didn’t really grab me.

[Alex (The Bookubus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Coral · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a ton of fun

[Courtney Gruenholz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again I think amazing is a little too strong a word but I did really like the book enough to give it five stars instead of four so maybe a 4 and 1/2 stars but still...it was a good Point Horror entry.

Catherine Belmont is obsessed with watching the soap opera, Lost River. Her afternoons revolve around watching it during I assume her free period or lunch at school or recording and watching it at home. Catherine is a huge fan of the character Cassandra Bly and even styles her own clothing after the ones she wears on the show but her life is nothing like Cassandra's with her fancy house and cool car and hot new boyfriends as often as possible.

Everyone knows how fanatical Catherine is about Cassandra and Lost River from her best friends, Kade and Liz, to her teachers and even to her rival, Britny. Even the new boy in school, Travis Cavanaugh, thinks she looks like Cassandra a little bit and it seems Catherine is blurring the line between reality and television.

However, when Cassandra's newest storyline is about someone trying to kill her...eerie connections begin to show up for real in Catherine's life. At first, Catherine thinks it is just a nasty joke because of her obsession with a TV show but when the incidents are so scarily similar...it's no longer just a soap opera.

Catherine isn't acting...she's scared for her life and everyone thinks she's finally lost it. Someone knows Catherine has always wanted to be Cassandra Bly and now they have the perfect opportunity to give her exactly what she wants...too bad it may cost Catherine her life.

There are some good suspects as to who is behind the melodramatic mayhem and we get another story woven in as well as the plotline on Lost River. Gaslighting a poor girl and making everyone thinks she's gone a little too far with some cheesy soap opera is fine but when we get an element introduced...it blew my mind.

Everything ties together and the reveal is not amazing but a good twist. The ending was what sold me since it is the kind I like and it was very close to a soap opera ending. I have watched some soaps in my time and this was a plot fit for a TV movie not just a daily dose of overacting for an hour.

If you haven't read The Watcher, I recommend it.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty standard Point Horror - a fun premise, but a good murder would have livened things up a bit!

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very silly and certainly not the best Point Horror book. The motivation of the villain was very far-fetched.

It felt cosy and nostalgic to read, though. It's very 90s, which I loved.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the better Point Horrors, actually quite scary.

[Liam Underwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of the hit Australian soap Neighbours (1985-), which might sound like a weird way to start discussing a Point Horror book, but stick with me. The Watcher, by Lael Littke, features protagonist Catherine Belmont and her love for the soap opera Lost River, and particularly a character within that soap opera named Cassandra Bly. What a coincidence those initials match. Unfortunately, Lost River doesn't sound as fun as Neighbours, and someone sinister is targeting Cassandra Bly. In the real world, someone sinister is also targeting Catherine Belmont, and the similarities don't stop there...

Honestly, the premise to this book is very silly. I would be more okay with this if Lael Littke leant into the silliness, but it's all played very straight for some reason. The only other work from this author that I've read is the short story Lucinda in 13 Tales of Horror , which also ended up being very silly. Maybe this is just how the author writes, but for me it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity here.

For a Point Horror book, I felt that the chapters were quite lengthy and slow, but not in a way that really developed atmosphere or characters or anything interesting. It all just plodded along somewhat tediously. There's a small handful of almost exciting moments, but this is undercut by Catherine Belmont being a difficult character to root for. It's not unusual for Point Horror protagonists to not be great, but it's really hard to find redeeming qualities here.

It's a shame that the soap opera in The Watcher doesn't take more cues from Neighbours. Imagine a book where the main character is finding themselves in scenarios as depicted in that soap - having barbecues, a dip in the pool, the sun always shining, guitar sing-alongs. I mean, sure, there's murder and dastardly cunning and woes and strife and whatnot, but it doesn't always have to be so drab and dour. I think the concept here allows for more levity than what was ultimately found. Am I criticising this book for not being more like Neighbours? Yes. Is that unfair of me? Also yes. If this book had been more like Neighbours would it be better? Undoubtedly. Strewth.

2/5

Point Horror Ranked
1) The Girlfriend - 4/5
2) Thirteen More Tales of Horror - 4/5
3) The Dead Game - 4/5
4) Trick or Treat - 3.5/5
5) Camp Fear - 3.5/5
6) Nightmare Hall - The Silent Scream - 3.5/5
7) Dream Date - 3.5/5
8) Fatal Secrets - 3.5/5
9) Teacher's Pet - 3.5/5
10) The Baby-Sitter II - 3.5/5
11) The Cheerleader - 3.5/5
12) The Hitchhiker - 3.5/5
13) Nightmare Hall - The Scream Team - 3.5/5
14) April Fools - 3.5/5
15) My Secret Admirer - 3.5/5
16) The Lifeguard - 3.5/5
17) Freeze Tag - 3/5
18) Thirteen Tales of Horror - 3/5
19) The Accident - 3/5
20) The Vampire's Promise - 3/5
21) Funhouse - 3/5
22) Nightmare Hall - Sorority Sister - 3/5
23) Nightmare Hall - The Nightwalker - 3/5
24) Nightmare Hall - Pretty Please - 3/5
25) The Stranger - 3/5
26) Nightmare Hall - Deadly Attraction - 3/5
27) The Window - 3/5
28) Nightmare Hall - Guilty - 3/5
29) The Invitation - 2.5/5
30) Nightmare Hall - The Wish - 2.5/5
31) Help Wanted - 2.5/5
32) The Perfume - 2.5/5
33) The Train - 2.5/5
34) The Waitress - 2.5/5
35) The Snowman - 2.5/5
36) Nightmare Hall - The Roommate - 2.5/5
37) The Yearbook - 2.5/5
38) Halloween Night II - 2.5/5
39) Silent Witness - 2.5/5
40) Halloween Night - 2.5/5
41) Beach House - 2.5/5
42) The Mall - 2.5/5
43) Nightmare Hall - The Experiment - 2.5/5
44) The Boyfriend - 2/5
45) The Fever - 2/5
46) The Cemetery - 2/5
47) Mother's Helper - 2/5
48) The Baby-Sitter III - 2/5
49) The Phantom - 2/5
50) The Watcher - 2/5
51) The Witness - 2/5
52) The Dead Girlfriend - 2/5
53) The Baby-Sitter - 1.5/5
54) Hit and Run - 1.5/5
55) The Return of the Vampire - 1/5
56) Beach Party - 1/5

[Siobhán O'Brien Holmes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am so relieved I enjoyed this! I was a humungous Point Horror fan as a kid; I still remember buying The Invitation with my two best friends, putting in £1 each and vowing to share it fairly. No idea where it's gone now. Somebody owes me a quid.

My mum bought me a Point Horror collection for Christmas and this is the first one I've finished, and it was excellent. I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I didn't see the ending coming. I mean, there were half a dozen suspects so the killer didn't come as a massive surprise, but there were several moments near the end when I thought 'Oh COME ON, this is so OBVIOUS. That's what I get for rereading children's horror as a grown-up' but then I was completely wrong.

Obviously Point Horror isn't literary fiction and it doesn't need to be, but there were a few things that tripped me up, like the overuse of fidgets and adverbs in dialogue tags, and lines that made me laugh out loud, like when Littke felt it necessary to tell us that a completely inconsequential, random character with about three lines had 'worried brown eyes'. Not every character needs a physical description!

The characters were fairly flat (although pretty realistic and relatable for a teenage reader, I think) and I didn't massively care what happened to the protagonist, but the book wasn't really about characterisation, it was about plot and tension, and it handled those really well. Overall, THUMBS UP!

First line: The hooded figure watched.

[Bea Tea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Girl is obsessed with naff daytime TV soap and for some ridiculous reason somebody starts to mess with her head over it by trying to convince her that... she's in the soap? I mean she instantly falls for the head-games at the start, so it's not like a slow gaslighting effect but rather a complete idiot jumps two feet first into some maniacs absurd antics. The reveal of the villain was lame, and really unconvincing. It was a somewhat dull read with the occasional dash of 'meh' here and there. I just didn't care about the main character, not even in the slightest.

[Bex · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a tense thriller where life imitated a TV obsession and creates some genuine scares with a good twist at the end. It was the first of my retreads to feel dated with references to VCR and running home to watch tv. A 21st century update would not lose any of the tension in this novel.

[erin buchanan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great take on a soap opera. :) Good job for a YA novel switching back and forth who you think the bad guy is.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Catherine is a soft, soft cheese.

The Watcher had the potential to be a fascinating book, on the level of something like Perfect Blue, but in execution it's a half-baked thriller. Not to say that it is completely without entertainment value.

There is something interesting about the notion that "the watcher" is a sinister term typically used in horror to describe some anonymous diabolical villain, shrouded in shadow, but here, Catherine the protagonist is also The Watcher, as voyeuristically tuned in to the lives of the characters on her soap opera as her tormentor is tuned in to Catherine, regarding her not as a human being but as a plot point, a chess piece to be moved about the board in order to satisfy this stalker's whims. There's a fascinating moment at the end where Catherine is facing off with her would-be killer in an isolated location, and the two of them wait, in tense standoff, while the TV plays in the background, both of them unable to act until they know what happens next. As if they have mutually agreed that Catherine's fate in real life must echo the fate of her analogue character on Lost River, Cassandra. As if Catherine herself might actually be willing to die to fulfill her real-life parallels to a work of fiction. As if neither of them know how to exercise their free will and can only follow the arbitrary dictations of a television show produced thousands of miles away--a show that has no real power over its viewers except the power that said viewers bestow upon it. There's something there that is thematically profound, about our almost desperate connection to storytelling and the impact it can have on our lives--positive OR negative--about the way we narratize our own existences to give them meaning, a sense of destiny, in the same way that the characters with whom we identify cannot help but enact their own predetermined destinies. Without stories, are we rudderless? Without narrative, are our lives completely empty? Is it better to die to give our own stories a satisfying ending than to live aimlessly? But this theme isn't really developed.

A big problem with the book is that it never quite figures out how hard to commit to the soap-opera angle. Some of the incredible incidents in Catherine's life are the result of her stalker faithfully recreating elements of Lost River, but others--like the reveal that love interest Travis looks identical to his dead uncle--seem to be operating on a melodramatic logic of their own. So the story occupies this weird stylistic middle space where it aspires to be a plausible approximation of our own world, as distinctly separate from the soap opera Catherine watches, while also indulging in flourishes of storytelling excess that are entirely characteristic of a soap opera. I would have been okay with this if it was Lael Littke's intention to gradually morph Catherine's "real" world into the world of Lost River, but that doesn't really seem to be the case, structurally speaking; the incredulity doesn't slowly build with inevitable progress. It's just that sometimes Catherine's world makes perfect sense, and sometimes something totally random and contrived needs to happen to facilitate the red herrings.

I like how the book keeps referring to "bloodred roses" as though that is something special and distinct from any regular red rose.

[Vicky · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another mystery book along the lines of RL Stine without creepy monsters. My daughter and I like to read these types of books aloud together. No, we are no longer teens or young adults, but like to share a short book together. Perhaps if we had read this when we were 12, we would not have noticed how ridiculous the story was and how stupid the main character, Catherine, was. It definitely had a good plot, but the author didn't take advantage of that and make a super story.
Definitely not a keeper on our shelf.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is definitely one of the better Point Horror novels, and I actually enjoyed this one quite a bit.

Also, I love that the main character rushes home from school everyday to watch her taped soap opera on the VCR. I did the same thing in middle and high school with “Days of Our Lives” and “Passions”. Ahh, memories.

[Tarina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Summary:

Catherine Belmont loves the soap opera Lost River & its top star Cassandra Bly. Catherine is gripped by Cassandra’s newest storyline which sees her being stalked & soon someone starts stalking Catherine in similar ways.

My Thoughts:

This is so unrealistic but hey, it’s some Point Horror fun.

My Rating: * *

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightfully nostalgic. Remember the days before streaming where if you didn't watch your show live or record on a VCR it was gone forever? Ahhh.

The premise of this is very fun, with an unknown trickster aping a soap that the main character is obsessed with to screw with her. I think this would have been 5 stars if only Littke had just leaned into the camp some more.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hugely camp with a great central conceit; I loved it, actually.

I read this for our podcast Teenage Scream, which dissects the best (and worst) of 90s Teen Horror.

https://soundcloud.com/teenagescream

[Sam Hirst · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually rather enjoyed this one. It does a fairly good job of blurring the lines between reality and the show our protagonist is obsessed with.

note: there is some very poor depiction and discussion of mental health issues

[Ethan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly I don’t know what it was that enamoured me so much with this one. Really felt like a classic 90s thriller with paranoia, video tapes and constant references to a fictional show it would make a great spiritual sequel to Scream. I loved it.

[Malcolm Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one did a good job blending the main character's reality and her favourite show. Unfortunately, the big twist was exactly the same as the one from Halloween Night (which I'd just read before this one) and the motive was just plain ridiculous. A shame, this could have been really good.

[Erica Leigh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quick and soapy

[Madame Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

As hokey as an actual soap opera.

[Farah · Rating 2 out of 5]

So glad we don't have to deal with VCRs anymore.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I watched soap operas growing up, so this was relatable. And you know what? It holds up, I will reread more of Lael now.

[Evelina · Rating 4 out of 5]

girl idk maybe just stop watching the fucking show🤨😊
hope this helps😋

[Renee Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book. I just reread it again as I'm reading through all of the point books and I really enjoy this one.
Lots of twists and turns I didn't see coming and that ending, epic!

[Amanda Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 to 4 stars. Soap opera drama vibes galore

[Charlie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the worst point horror but far from the best. The main character was a little annoying to me and the ending was quite predictable. Some points did have me intrigued but once the plot was unravelled it didn’t quite seem to be so impactful.

[Sati Marie Frost · Rating 3 out of 5]

One-Line Review: Don’t get so caught up in fiction that you ignore Real Life.

Full Review:

I liked the idea of this, although the actuality of it could have been improved upon.

Catherine cares about one thing only: her soap opera. Everything in life revolves around watching the soap and being like Cassandra, one of the lead characters. When a cute new boy at school mentions that he enjoys the show and thinks that she looks just like Cassandra, she's even more determined to turn into a Cassandra-clone, cutting her hair the same way and wearing the same clothes.

But Cassandra is being stalked by someone intent on terrorising her, and soon someone starts stalking Catherine in identical ways.

As I said, I liked the premise of this book, but I felt that the execution could have been improved upon. Catherine is kind of a non-entity; the only standout personality feature is her obsession with this soap opera. I'm not even sure that she HAS a personality other than that which is copied from Cassandra. The book feels choppy to me, and inconsistent with disparate elements. Catherine appears to be this shy, slightly odd girl with few friends - and then we find out she's also a cheerleader. (What?) Travis, the new guy and Catherine's love interest, seems to have a dark past that is alluded to and then basically ignored. The motivations for the villain seem to come out of nowhere. There are some interesting threads here, but they never quite weave together in any kind of regular pattern, and I feel that they should either have been developed or cut loose.

Verdict: Interesting plot, fell down a bit on the writing side.