A Book Review - The Baby-Sitter II by R.L. Stine (Point Horror)

Jenny's back! After the tragedy of the last book, she's finally getting her life back on track. She has a good therapist and a new babysitting job. In a reversal of fortune from the last book, the house and the parents are normal, and her charge, Eli, is seriously weird. But she wants to stick with the job - until the phonecalls start again. Mr Hagen can't be back from the dead, can he? Who is terrorising Jenny, and why?

Not a bad sequel to The Baby-Sitter. It's written in much the same way, and my comments for that book stand for this one. The only thing that really bothered me was the lack of continuity when it comes to characters. Aside from Jenny, there's nothing familiar carried over from book 1. This is explained away by saying that she didn't want anything around to remind her of the past, but this rings false to me. I've been through tragedies. I work as a crisis worker for others who have. And I can see her dropping her prankster boyfriend from the last book because he couldn't be serious - but her friends? At the risk of sounding judgemental, it takes a pretty unbalanced person to feel like she has to drop all her friends - who weren't involved in the previous traumatic incident - just because they remind her of it. Most people just don't do that. Jenny lost cool points with me due to that.

Verdict: A decent sequel, which would be okay to read alone. Not the best, not the worst, but a fine way to spend an afternoon.