Lurker

""That was awful!"" cries one of the storytellers in the wrapper to this utterly unpleasant start to the Wicked Dead series. ""There was no point! No moral! No spiritual substance."" And the girl is right: this is sub-Tales from the Crypt material aimed at the teen girl set, with any vestiges of wit and charm removed and replaced with a heaping dose of meanness. Protagonist Mandy and her friends learn that their schoolmate Nicki has been murdered; readers eventually find out that the killing involved sexual torture suitable for an adults-only title. Mandy gets IM'd by someone named Kyle, with whom she strikes up a friendship Mandy receives an ominous phone call and notices that the photo Kyle sent her of himself seems to have changed since the first time she looked at it. The foreshadowing is anything but subtle, and Mandy's conversations with Kyle take a very dark turn. The writers do manage to build a good sense of atmosphere, but there's no single surprise or genuine chill in the whole book. Ages 12-up.