Weekend at Poison Lake

Give Yourself Goosebumps Special Edition #8

by R.L. Stine

Set in the woods, this vacation is no picnic as aliens and odd wildlife are just a few of the things vacationers must cope with in order to survive

Genres: Horror, Gamebooks, Middle Grade, Childrens, Fiction, Supernatural, Choose Your Own Adventure

135 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1999

About the author

Robert 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.

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Reviews

[Josiah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love the creative measures R.L. Stine took in the Give Yourself Goosebumps series to reinvigorate the gamebook genre with energy and impetus. Weekend at Poison Lake is filled with creative options. At the beginning of the story you are given the choice between four entirely separate scary stories set at Poison Lake, depending on what you select as your "lucky number." Many of the decisions in the book hinge on this number, but whether it will bring good or bad luck is anybody's guess.

The four story paths offer impressive variety, though all are shorter than usual for the series. Weekend at Poison Lake falls well short of its potential, but I love the concept, and the book is worth reading. I'd give it one and a half stars.

[Alejandro Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having one of my favorite Craig White illustrations, Weekend at Poison Lake has had my interest for a long time, it being about aliens and a lake legend. So, I put it as my last read for the year—and it’s a wild one! For positives, I’ll start with the aliens (which are advertised in the blurb so it ain’t a spoiler). They were really well done here, being really goofy in their motives but also being the best arc and having high stakes that I thought added a nice looming threat and time-bomb. The idea behind the whole book, being four different unique stories centered around the lake in separate universes, was very interesting and I found it super neat. There’s a great ratio of decent endings to roughy endings, that being 2:21 (the greater number being endings I did enjoy to some degree). A few banger endings but overall good or fine endings with some meh and only two wack endings, of which were the first two I got lol. The ideas for each arc are okay, they’re all well fleshed out and non overstepping another arc’s spotlight, and all have a ‘lucky number’ mechanic that I mildly enjoyed but found odd. As for negatives, I’ll say that the first storyline—the lucky number 1 arc—was ASS. Straight up an awful storyline, and I started on that one as well. It was gross, and not in a fun, and was very bland and not worth checking out. Been there, done that type of shit. There’s also an arc that had nothing scary to it at all; there was at most one endings with a monster, but other than that, it’s a fine treasure hunt story that I kinda liked. And finally, the moss-man story was super weird. Fever dream esc, ya know? Didn’t like how it recontexulized the story in weird ass ways. Let alone it’s a bit more random than usual. Overall, 8/10. One of the better blackspines surprisingly, not that many are bad just not many are great, this being the only one scoring eight currently, highest being a nine (One Night in Payne House). Also, and I quote, “The aliens aim their weapons—and shoot a stream of creamy liquid into your mouth.” What the fudge.

[Griffin C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

With it's incredible cover art I had high hopes for this book and while I still enjoyed it, the book fell flat for me in some aspects. The first of two main gimmicks of this book is the fact that it has 4 main storylines while most GYG books have 1 or 2 main storylines with maybe a third side plot. The main issue with this is the fact that it has the same page count as most other GYG books which means that all storylines feel too short, I think that this gimmick would've worked better if each page were split into sections like Into the Jaws of Doom. The second main gimmick is the lucky numbers. At the beginning of this book you are told to choose a lucky number of 2, 3, 4, or 5 which dictates many of the decisions throughout the book. I thought that this would mean that most decisions would be random and therefore ruin the book but it was not this bad. Since the book has 4 storylines, I will rate them all.

Story A: 7/10
Your lucky number is 2 and after you go swimming in the lake, you are covered in a stench that seems to attract animals. I believe this is the best of the storylines as it feels the longest. While I wasn't intrigued by the concept at first, I was quickly proven wrong.

Story B: 5/10
Your lucky number is 3 and after going for a quick dip in the lake, you are turned a glowing green and made incredibly sick. You are then abducted by aliens who tell you that you must give them the recipe to an ice cream flavor or you will die in 2 days. The concept of this storyline is great and the main thing that holds it back is how short it is.

Story C: 6/10
Your lucky number is 4 and you are afraid to enter the lake because you have been told that it is poison but your neighbor tells you that the lake is actually not poison and it was a rumor made up by a couple because they hid stolen diamonds at the bottom and don't want anybody else to find them. This is the storyline I was the most excited about and it definitely delivered. The main issues are the fact that it is easily the least horror focused storyline and the fact that it is too short.

Story D: 1/10
Your lucky number is 5 and while near the lake, a strange man comes up to you and tries to get you into the lake. This is easily the worst storyline because it feels the shortest as well as being the easiest as this storyline only has one possible bad ending.

Overall: 7/10

[Justin Spanbauer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of all the special editions of the Give Yourself Goosebumps, this one has by far the weakest gimmick. You pick one of four "lucky numbers" and then follow a story. Occasionally one of the choices will use your lucky number, but it's never clear just how you use the lucky number so it always seems random and pretty meaningless. What it DOES allow though is for the book to essentially have four completely distinct stories rather than a common beginning that branches off into smaller sections like these books usually do. It's a subtle difference, but it goes a long way and all four stories I found to be fun and interesting with varied details, characters, etc. Very quick and enjoyable read.

[fanboyriot · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was okay, it had a good adventure but some parts were just weird af for a kids book.