It's the return of the Halloween read-along!

This year's read-along with luxken27 begins with Evil Elizabeth, a book I think we've been talking about re-reading for awhile now.

Evil Elizabeth is one of the Super Chillers and that means we get some straight up supernatural shenanigans. Despite that, it's very simple to explain: Liz finds a grotesque Halloween mask and every time she puts it on, her personality changes for the worse. Over time, the mask seems to be controlling her even when she's not wearing it, and it's up to Jessica to save her from whatever mystical fuckery is afoot.

It will never not be funny that the easiest way to scare Jessica is to make Elizabeth act like Jessica. Every time, it snaps Jessica out of her own cruelty ASAP and then, to teach Jess a lesson, Liz dials it up several notches so Jessica has to take a real look at her own behavior. It never lasts, especially when done in a super special, but it is always entertaining.

Since this is a Twins book, the evil depths Liz sinks to are fairly tame til the end. She's laughably cruel to Amy (just get out of my life! Who says that? How do you not just think, wait, wha? when you hear that?), randomly decides Betsy Martin is the best thing ever and wants to hang out with her (I could not name a single SVT book with Betsy in it prior to this, even had you held a gun to my head. I still couldn't name another one), and they smash pumpkins, egg cars, and steal candy from children. Oh, and she dresses terribly. Which might've been the most offensive thing of all to Jessica, had nearly all of Liz's prior cruelty not been directed at Jessica.

I should circle back to that. When wearing the mask to dinner, Liz trips Jessica and makes her spill lasagna, lasagna that's in a pan that's still hot enough to cause Alice to warn Jessica, all over the floor. And then she laughs at Jessica. Since the book doesn't take a moment to truly consider the molten lava properties of lasagna, I mostly just felt sorry for Jessica, because Liz laughing at her is so outside the norm that you know it's just thrown her whole world off kilter. Particularly when deep down Jess knows Liz tripped her and she could've actually gotten hurt and now she's laughing at her. :/ Don't make me feel bad for Jessica, book. Don't do it. Not when she's later going to imagine Aaron wearing a tux for Halloween and talking about how much better Jessica looks than Lila in her authentic Olympic Kelly Ireland outfit.

There are some fun moments, like the seance the girls do at the sleepover, and I'm a sucker for anything magical or spooky in the Valley. I liked Steven's very obviously needed for plot reasons newfound love of the moon and the stars and that he's actually, y'know, a good student, which is something that usually gets ignored in SVT in favor of his basketball playing. Lila's weird "oh no, I might never walk again but I can totally ice skate, no problem" is both hilarious and stupid, which is frequently how Lila is written in these things. My favorite bit was Liz suggesting to the group, Ellen in particular, that maybe they should just trust one another to not cheat and Ellen's like, "does not compute." Dead accurate for the Unicorns.

Less fond of Amy and Maria's brilliant idea of dressing up as a tricycle for Halloween. If I had to hear people tear down every other costume idea that wasn't that bad, I cannot believe this, THIS was the outfit they went with. They're 12. They could've come up with anything else to justify wearing their rollerblades, ghosty. ANYTHING ELSE. So, so dumb. Like I cannot even visualize it, and I know younger me was also not into it because sometimes you re-read something and the ghost of your younger self takes over. It almost justifies Liz telling Amy to get out of her life. If that's the best idea you two can come up with, Sutton, maybe possessed!Liz has a point.

I did like that in the end we never find out whether the mask possessed Corinna or her sister, and Liz tells Jessica not to pry, because if Corinna wanted her to know, she would have said. That said, since the mask can be destroyed by fire, it seems likely that Corinna was the one possessed since the other members of her family died in the fire, and had her sister been wearing the mask, it would've been destroyed. Or maybe not since a big deal was made about it being destroyed during the eclipse. But I feel like she might've led with it being impervious to fire previously had that been the case.


Anyway, due to the psychic connection or the magic of the moon, Jessica realizes that Liz isn't going to meet them at Courage Mountain (she and Steven set a trap that I... still don't know how that plan was going to play out as we're never told, but I feel like luring her up a mountain is a bad idea) and races the moon back home in time to stop Liz from burning the house to the ground. Betsy and the other hoodlums have run off and Liz eventually breaks free of the curse because...twin powers? Love? Guilt over smashing Jessica's sad clown pumpkin? I don't know. It doesn't matter. The day is saved, the mask is burned and the ashes buried, and the ye olde Luna place does not disappear into the mist but is likely never heard from again because the Super Chillers rarely matter in canon.

Side-note: I do wonder when Betsy went off the rails. I thought it was after her mother died but I don't remember when that was. Looked it up and it was when Tricia was nine so Betsy's been running wild for awhile. Huh. And Betsy's the older sister, and Tricia's a year older than the twins, so we'll pretend Betsy was 10 when mom died. That'd make the twins 8 so... I don't know where I'm going with this but it's weird for Betsy to be hanging out with Elizabeth and technically she should be in high school, probably, but SVT's weird with the twins being 12 so whatever.

"Elizabeth is Elizabeth, period. She's always been Elizabeth, and she'll always be Elizabeth." He sighed. "Don't get me wrong. Nothing against the kid, but can you imagine just going on being Elizabeth forever?" He shuddered and glanced at his moon chart.
That is cold, Steven Wakefield.


Other thoughts: no way in hell is Lila freakin' Fowler painting her room with gold stripes or polka dots, even if they are purple. Nope, no way. Tacky.
I kinda think Mandy would be more open to Jessica's worries, even if she doesn't believe in the supernatural aspect.
Why in hell is Jessica buying carving knives for carving pumpkins when they do this every year? I'd kind of wondered if maybe Liz would threaten her with a knife but no. It's just... weird.
Not sure why Jess never tried to take the mask when Liz was in the shower as that's the obvious time to try.
Where did Courage Mountain come from and where exactly did it go? The Valley does have Miller Point and the whole cliffside that killed Sam and nearly killed Todd but uh, Courage Mountain?
I definitely laughed when Jessica tried to correct Steven and say that Beetlejuice/ Betelgeuse was a cartoon, not a star.

Mostly I think I'm content to focus on the fact that this cover is legitimately the scariest SV cover of all time and is scarier than most of the actual YA horror stuff, too. But I love, love, LOVE the step-back illustration of Elizabeth and one day I will track down one of the foreign copies without the creepy mask so I can admire the art.