Fear Street Sagas #3: Forbidden Secrets (R.L. Stine)

We start out at some date after this book takes place with an old woman in a mansion called Blackrose Manor. She talks about two sisters, Victoria and Savannah, and the troubles they faced.

It's then the 1860s in Georgia. Savannah is a beautiful woman in love with Tyler Fier, a handsome young man her brother, Zachariah, brought home. They sneak off together to look at the flowers and share some kisses. Tyler proposes to her and after she says yes, suggests telling everyone at the picnic. Savannah asks him to keep things quiet a bit because of her sister. It turns out that Victoria actually met him first, thought they had a connection, and was less than pleased when he went after her sister.

As it also turns out, Victoria was in the woods and watching them. Savannah catches her sister doing a black magic ritual and warning her that Tyler comes from an evil family and is evil himself. Big news comes in that the war is on. Tyler and Zachariah both run off to fight. Savannah begs Tyler to look after her brother, but he tells her that since he's from Massachusetts, he'll be on the north side. They have a fight, which ends with her calling off their engagement because being a southern girl is more important than following her heart. Tyler warns her that no one ever breaks a promise to him before leaving.

The war wages on and bad things happen. All the slaves leave, which means the sisters have absolutely no idea how to care for themselves. They nearly starve to death before resorting to eating worms and rotten vegetables. Victoria keeps doing black magic and warning Savannah about Tyler. Savannah then has a dream that Zachariah came to her bleeding. When she wakes, there is blood on the ground.

To make things worse, she gets a letter from Tyler that same day. He tells her how he saw her brother fall on the Gettysburg battlefield and that it made him realize love is more important than anything else. Tyler begs her to wait for him and eventually comes back for her. Despite Victoria's warnings, which include telling her that one of them will be dead within a year, Savannah packs them both up to move to Blackrose Manor in Massachusetts.

The house is...unique. Black roses grow everywhere, and the whole interior is black too. Tyler explains that his dad did it all after his wife passed away. He introduces them to Lucy, a young woman and friend of the family. After her parents passed away, his parents took her in and became her guardians. Lucy has an instant connection with Savannah. She wants to sit by her all the time, shows her the doll collection that Tyler gave her, and begs for them to become sisters.

Mrs. Moorehead, the housekeeper, makes it clear that she doesn't like these new guests and wants them gone. She even warns Savannah to leave as soon as possible. Victoria pretty much spends all of her time in her room and either doing black magic or warning her sister about evil. Savannah finds a cat and starts sleeping with it and makes friends with a servant Tyler hired for her.

One morning, Savannah feeds some of her sausage to the cat, and it passes out and nearly dies because someone poisoned it. She then wakes up in the middle of the night to her room on fire, but Tyler helps put it out. Lucy seems fascinated by the fire and wants to hear all about it. She also tries to put her hand through a candle flame and tells Savannah that her parents died in a fire.

Tyler thinks that they should move up the wedding as soon as possible, so Savannah sends her servant to town to get her a veil. The woman takes Savannah's horse, which freaks out for some unknown reason and bucks the poor girl. Savannah gets downstairs just in time to see the poor chick convulse a few times before dying as blood gushes out of her.

This all leads up to her overhearing a fight between Tyler and Victoria. When her sister attempts to kill him, Savannah rushes in and fights back. The two fight over a knife, which leads to Victoria following down and landing on the knife. She dies in her sister's arms. Savannah begins to suspect Lucy and tells her fears to Tyler. He says that Lucy actually killed her own parents and that they should get married right away.

By right away, he actually means the same flipping day that they bury her sister. After coming home, Lucy demands that she stay up and hang out with them. Tyler tells her to go to bed, which leads to her pitching a bitch fit because she loved him first and if he had married her, they would never fight. He calms her down and then gives her a fancy ruby ring that belonged to his mother, which I'm sure makes his new wife feel awesome. Lucy gives her one of those “he's mine bitch stay away looks” before flouncing off.

Savannah wakes to hear and see Lucy, which freaks her out. Instead of calling anyone, she heads downstairs, trips on the top step, and falls all the way to the bottom, which is where she finds poor dead Lucy. Savannah then has the unfortunate experience of finding the housekeeper dead and stuffed in the oven, though honestly this may have happened before Lucy.

While trying to find her husband, she actually finds him doing dark magic. As it turns out, Victoria was right all along. Tyler is totes evil. He killed everyone and planned on killing his wife last. He also has Lucy's hand out to do some ritual. Tyler also reveals that he actually died on the battlefield at Gettysburg too. Zachariah came at him with a bayonet and stabbed him, but Tyler managed to get a few hits in too. Zachariah died first, and Tyler died a little while later.

The two fight until Savannah somehow gets the upper hand. She manages to knock his table over, which interrupts his spell. This makes him start melting or something. His eyeball falls out and then his skin starts peeling back. In the end, we learn that Savannah was the old lady telling the story in the future. Oh, and the person she's telling her story to? That would be the skeleton of her dead husband!

*Moral of the story? Do not go after someone after someone else calls dibs. I'm sorry but Savannah says multiple times that her sister was in love with Tyler or had feelings for him and then winds up with him anyway. So many issues wouldn't happen if people just wouldn't screw around behind their loved ones' backs.

*Lucy's doll collection consists of dolls dressed all in black with black hair and black eyes. She shows Savannah one with its eye missing and says that “Lucy died” before pointing out that all her dolls are named Lucy. She also took one, cut its hair off, and dressed it in Tyler's old clothes. Creepy.

*Victoria is the only one who picks up on Lucy having feelings for Tyler. Savannah denies it's possible because the girl is so young, but her sister then points out that Lucy is the exact same age that Savannah was when she met Tyler. How did she never put that together?

*I kind of want to know what actually happened to Lucy's parents! She says they died in a fire, and Tyler says she killed them. It's also worth noting that she tells Savannah once they marry that Savannah will now carry the Fier curse like her family once did, which makes me wonder if they were cousins or something...

*This is a fiction book, but it's super unrealistic that no one uttered a peep about Savannah moving into Tyler's mansion before they were officially engaged.

*Savannah realizes at some point that Zachariah came to her to warn her about Tyler. She kind of makes it out like it was her brother's ghost or possibly a dream, but neither theory explains why he literally dripped blood on her floor.