The Bookworm: 'The Rich Girl'

The Rich Girl, by R.L. Stine. 132 pages. Pocket Books. April 1997.

Emma laughed bitterly. “Don’t kid yourself, Syd. A guy who is that greedy won’t share the money with anyone, not even his girlfriend. After he kills me, he’ll decide he wants all the money for himself.” (p. 54)

Coop has started reading to himself at bedtime, so while he reads his book, I read my own. Recently, I read a spring-themed Fear Street book: The Rich Girl.

When best friends Sydney and Emma find a duffel bag full of $50 bills, they bury it in the Fear Street woods and decide to wait two weeks before digging it up and splitting it. They swear not to tell anyone about it. However, Sydney tells her boyfriend, Jason. When a number of unfortunate incidents happen to Emma, Sydney begins to wonder if Jason is trying to kill her best friend for the money.

All the usual convenience aside—the normal handful of holes, loose ends, and deus ex machina apply—The Rich Girl is pretty good, one of the better books from the original series that I have read. It kept me guessing until the end. Nothing made sense, on purpose. Of course, that could be a sign of hastiness, that an impossible deadline was looming and Stine wrote a functional ending, tweaked some lines here and there to add foreshadowing, and submitted it to the publisher. At 132 pages, I think it is the shortest Fear Street book I have read, so Stine may have rushed it. If so, he rushed it well.

One thing I did not do while reading The Rich Girl is take notes. I usually jot down thoughts and note the page numbers of worthwhile lines, but not this time. It was one of those situations where I grabbed the book and started reading, but my notebook was in my room and I did not want to disturb Little Dubs after he just fell asleep. So I’m winging this post based on memory, and it’s not going very well. From now on, I’m going to keep my notebook on my shelf next to my reading queue.

This is one of the books I bought used via Amazon. It was part of the last batch I bought, which, based on my email archive, was way back in February 2020. Anyway, I always try to buy copies that are at least like new, but you never know what you’re going to get. This copy, while not bad, is a little rough around the edges. Someone named Daniel was a previous owner since his name is scrawled inside the cover. Daniel may have also been the one who marked pages with a brown marker.

(About buying on Amazon: I don’t buy anything directly from Amazon. Instead, I use Amazon to buy from other sellers. It makes me feel better about using Amazon. I have also used ThriftBooks  when buying books, though I don’t think I have used it to buy Fear Street books yet.)