Title: In Leo’s Lair
Series: Zodiac Chillers
Author: Carol Ellis
Published: Oct. 1995
Tagline: Best friends – buried alive!
Description: No one can hear their screams . . .
Nina and Jess . . . Sworn blood sisters – separated by a psycho. One girl is his prisoner. But one isn’t enough, so he lures the other to his lair.
Nina and Jess . . . Gemini twins – in the clutches of a Leo. Now he’s got them trapped together, and Leo’s roaring mad . . .
Nostalgia Time!
First off, that’s a terrible description. I feel like the Zodiac Chillers shot themselves in the foot with terrible descriptions for pretty good books. Also, yes, there’s a lot of calling people “psychos” in this book, unfortunately. That’s what dropped my Goodreads rating, which would have been a 4, down to a 3. Well, 3.5 if I’m being honest, but Goodreads still doesn’t allow half-star ratings, so that’s on them.
Anyway, hi guys! We’re back around to my birthday (God, it seems like only yesterday I decided to do back-to-back recaps of Fright Night and its remake for my birthday! What is time, anyway?), and this year I was able to grab a copy of yet another Leo-themed YA thriller! Spoiler alert, this one is far better than that other Zodiac-themed series by Jahnna N. Malcolm. Even though apparently in the Zodiac Chillers series, the character who possesses the titular astrological sign is always the villain?
I didn’t think I’d read this book before. Honestly, I didn’t. I had even told Boyfriend right before I started reading it that I hadn’t been aware of the Zodiac Chillers series back in the day. Then, as I was reading, things started feeling familiar, and I kept going, “Doesn’t this thing happen in this book? Doesn’t this other thing happen, too?” But it wasn’t until I had about 30 pages left that I suddenly put the book down, turned to Boyfriend, and exclaimed, “Okay, I have definitely read this before!” There were two or three . . . incidents? plot twists? . . . that I remembered vividly. So, I’m pretty sure I must have checked this out from the library at some point, because I don’t remember this book ever sitting on my own bookshelves. I was always checking out whatever teen thrillers/horror I could find at the library, lesser-known and the big names – Point Horror, Fear Street, etc. And Carol Ellis was one of the better Point Horror authors (we’ll just ignore my disillusionment with The Stepdaughter), so I’m not surprised this would be one of the books I picked up during a library visit.
I just have no memory of when or where I read this for the first time.
Anyway, this book (aside from some very annoying crazy = dangerous ableism) is pretty damn great. So far, the Zodiac Chillers series is not letting me down – I reach a certain point where all I can do is laugh hysterically while exclaiming “what?!” and scrambling for “Well, that escalated quickly” memes.
So. Here we go!
Continue reading “Recap #72 – Birthday Recap: Zodiac Chillers #3 – In Leo’s Lair by Carol Ellis”