Sam has a huge problem: Her little brother Arnie is out of control, pulls lousy and often embarrassing pranks, calls them “accidents” and never gets seriously punished for his deeds. When a burglar breaks into the house during Sam’s sleepover, it’s an Arnie schemes. When he tries to jump across a puddle and gets her new rain poncho muddy, he laughs it off … but it’s another scheme. When an expensive video game appears in Sam’s bag at the mall and she’s accused of shoplifting, it’s yet another one of his schemes. He’s a monster, a danger, a threat to stability, an albatross Sam has to bear because her parents don’t know how to discipline him.
When she reaches her breaking point, Sam decides to take matters into her own hands. It will involve embarrassing him in front of everyone he knows, and it will also involve batches of slime Sam and her friends learned to make on the internet. Will her plan succeed? Will Arnie back off? Or will the plan backfire letting him somehow come off smelling like a rose? R. L. Stine combines his quirky brand of suspense in a heist story that’s one part Edgar Allan Poe and one part Goosebumps in the middle grade novel, Slime Doesn’t Pay!
Siblings are the worst! If they’re older than you, they can act like jerks. If they’re younger than you, they can act like fiends. If you try to get back at them, it’s usually you who gets in trouble. They get away with it all …
At least, this is the driving idea behind R. L. Stine’s latest novel for young readers. It’s not a terribly complex idea, perhaps, but it’s one that’s loaded with opportunities for solid drama. And spun through Stine’s wicked imagination for shocks and suspense, it can attain some real heights of (age appropriate) horror.
However, there is more at play in the book that initially meets the eye. What initially seems like a cut and dried story of a girl’s rivalry with her brother is also a creature feature since there are strange monsters leaping out of closets from time to time. However, the book itself attains a deeper resonance when we dig into the text.
One of the tricks Stine uses here is the unreliable narrator. Sam is our first person perspective on all events. The prologue opens with her trying to convince us that her case is justified. She’s done something terrible, but if we only knew all the lead up to it, then we would surely agree she did the right thing. Or if not the right thing, then a justifiably bad thing. After all, in the same circumstance, we’d do the very same thing, right?
What follows is a two part book, the first one recounting all the rotten things Arnie has done, painted in as gloriously evil and inconsiderate colors as possible. The second part entails Sam’s revenge scheme. Younger readers may not realize how efficiently Sam is slanting information, but adult readers accustomed to thrillers and suspense yarns will certainly see it. Right from the get-go, we are supposed to dislike Arnie and once we see his behavior through her eyes and the unfairness of his escaping punishment, then we are going to agree with her case. This is a complex idea, one that should offer parents the chance to initiate some interesting conversations with their kids.
It’s a technique that rings loudly of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales. The author employed such narrators exceptionally well in stories like “William Wilson,” “Berenice,” or “The Tell-Tale Heart,” having a character who has been pushed to the edge recount the rationales for some poor (if not homicidal) choices. The psychology of such characters is as fascinating as the stories they have to tell. So it is here, where Sam’s experiences rub shoulders with classic psychological horror yarns and cautionary tales.
One of the least convincing elements in the book is Sam’s insistence on creatures appearing in her house or in her neighborhood. These are often beastly things, covered with quills or with clacking beaks, monsters that run on all fours that chase or bite our protagonist. They show up, disappear, are only ever witnessed by Sam. At first, they seem to be a way to spice up the narrative, an element to add a little fright to a narrative that might be too much about sibling rivalry or be dawdling too much on a sleepover. There are whole swathes of narrative without such creatures’ appearances, and then like Philip Marlowe’s man-with-a-gun they show up when things get slow to add some tension, possibly a chase. These elements culminate in the final half, building into something with the A-plot. Prior to that, however, they feel a little too artificial. A convenient way to write out of a slow spot.
Stine’s style is as readable as ever. He is a wordsmith whose sentences flow with a deceptive ease. There are few bells and whistles to the prose, this isn’t fiction delivered with complex grammar or vocabulary. Still, he can certainly make the stuff of middle grade suspense flow nicely and keep eager fingers turning the pages or tapping their eReaders.
As everything is processed through a first person narrative, there is a lovely sense of connection with Sam’s experiences and encounters. We can empathize with the character, but even better we can feel for her friends and loved ones. And although it’s easy to hiss at Arnie and wish him a taste of his own medicine, we can also develop a bit of empathy by reading between the lines and wondering what we aren’t being told. The kid has problems, all right, and ineffectual parents who condone his bad behavior at every turn.
Stine’s method to keep readers coming back for more involves liberal doses of cliffhangers. Just about every chapter ends either with a lead in to some kind of spooky action or a leading statement. The former will be resolved in the first couple of paragraphs of the next chapter, and the latter will entice a reader’s curiosity to see how it all turns out.
Both of these are techniques the author developed across the classic Goosebumps line of books back in the day, and it’s an effective means of keeping readers turning the pages. The rising action culminating with a zinger is a lot like the opening gambit building up to a jump scare in a movie. It’s the scare itself that Stine splits in half. We invariably get a reaction (often of the narrator calling for help, gasping, screaming) and want to know what caused it. The explanation follows in the subsequent chapter, along with a release of tension (sometimes humorous and sometimes not) that then leads to another build across the chapter. Stine’s history with television has given him a seemingly endless supply of these sorts of short, sharp shocks—one could almost imagine a commercial break running between the chapters.
Such a tactic may be effective, but its effects are short lived. A longer draw involves the leading statements technique, building a chapter not to some sudden explosion moment but to a “How could I know this would backfire so badly?” sort of expression. This brand of suspense gives us a bit of foreshadowing, a hint of the dark outcome on the horizon, and it allows us the time to indulge our own thoughts about what’s coming. When the answer eventually arrives, the reader can greet it with an “Ah ha!” after indulging a far longer page count of building tension. The entire second part of the book is pretty much the answer to a leading question raised in the prologue, and to get there we have to read well over half the book.
Luckily, chapters are brief, seldom overstaying their welcome. The story is clearly designed to throw a few “Gotchas!” at the middle grade target audience. Adults reading this won’t necessarily see anything that hasn’t been done before or meet characters that are completely new constructions. Still, Stine’s sense for narrative keeps us turning pages well, so we can vet the thing as essentially harmless for the younger readers in our lives. There’s nothing particularly offensive in the book. The scares contained are less about goopy, gross-out monsters chasing young prey than about the kinds of terrible things some kids can get away with and brief meditations about how revenge schemes can go terribly awry.
Slime Doesn’t Pay! is a classic cautionary tale about a young woman’s justifications for making Bad Choices and finding worse choices waiting. It is generally a fun read, fresh ideas for young minds who aren’t too versed in horror and suspense yarns and appealing to the nostalgia adult readers have for encountering this author’s popular series in younger days.
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A special thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for providing an eARC copy in exchange for an honest review.
Slime Doesn’t Pay! hit stands on September 26 in eBook, hardcover, and audiobook editions.
On Tuesday, we will take a look at Stephen King’s latest suspense yarn starring the one and only Holly Gibney. This time around, she investigates some missing people during the height of COVID-19 and discovers the truly horrific evils people are capable of doing to one another. Holly is available in eBook, paperback, hardcover, and audiobook editions.
“Worse Choices Waiting: R. L. Stine’s Slime Doesn’t Pay!” is copyright © 2023 by Daniel R. Robichaud. Cover image taken from the Blackstone Publishing eBook edition, released in 2023.
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