Lost in Stinkeye Swamp

Give Yourself Goosebumps #24

by R.L. Stine

Readers choose from over 20 different scary endings in this latest addition to the blockbuster series. The reader's new swamp house is home to a treasure--and a ghost. Follow the clues to the treasure, but watch out for the sewer ghoul and the swamp thing lurking around the corner. 144 pp. Ages 8-12. Pub: 12/97.

Genres: Horror, Childrens, Choose Your Own Adventure, Gamebooks, Middle Grade, Fiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1997

About the author

Robert Lawrence Stine known as R. L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences. Stine, who is often called the Stephen King of children's literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series.

R. L. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children's author in history. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. His other major series, Fear Street, has over 80 million copies sold.

Stine has received numerous awards of recognition, including several Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and Disney Adventures Kids' Choice Awards, and he has been selected by kids as one of their favorite authors in the NEA's Read Across America program. He lives in New York, NY.

http://us.macmillan.com/itsthefirstda...

Reviews

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lost In Stinkeye Swamp is a book I was really excited to read.And I think it's mostly because my brain lied to me.I swore this story was about a ghost doll named Annabelle,but no.The story is about you and your family moving to a  swamp house on Stinkeye Swamp That needs a lot of work.It's called Stinkeye Swamp because of the horrible smell surrounding the house.The Swamp house has quite a few local legends surrounding it that your mom mentions.Some about a ghost named Annabelle as well as a treasure. You eventually make friends with this guy named Zeke who just kinda  pops up and he is very interested in the treasure and he wants to go search for it.So he talks you into looking for it one day and inside your basement both of you discover a trunk with two items, a telescope and a diary. I picked the diary first.In the diary it tells you about this girl named Annabelle that died by sneaking off and going to a ball. And to get to this ball she had to go underground through these tunnels that smugglers used. You and Zeke decide that The smuggler's tunnel has to have treasure in there too because that's what I was used for. The diary states that there is  secret doors in the basement that leads to the treasure but you have to pick the right one  there's a puzzle like a maze like thing that you have to solve to get to the right one. Once you finally pick the right one you run into all kinds of stuff you meet a sewer worker named Ed that is really hilarious and really creepy and one of the highlights of the storyline.You also run into mutated goldfish and a twist along the way. That's all I'm going to say about this story arc. I will say that I enjoyed the way to defeat some of these different things. They're pretty funny. The next story arc is if you take the telescope. And this is where the story kind of loses me. So each storyline has an Annabelle ,but they're different. The telescope one leads you to two different characters coming at you one is a park ranger and the other one is this weird old guy with sticks for a hat. You get to decide which character you want to follow. I picked the park ranger at first and his storyline is very short. Basically, he is after this Annabelle legend that's actually a witch that has this potion that is supposed to help people become immortal. You eventually find this witch and she gives you a choice of drinks to take and they all do different things. Only one is the correct answer and it's actually kind of cute. That's basically that storyline. The other storyline is with the old guy and this one is slightly more interesting. You and Zeke get trapped in this pit after trying to follow this old guy and he assumes that you're here to hurt the swamp, but you guys explain to him that you're just lost and you want to get home. He release you, but only if you can solve a riddle that he comes up with and this riddle actually stumped me a little bit, because I got the wrong answer which was really the right answer, but not quite. You have to read the book to figure it out what I'm talking about, but it's actually pretty fun too. Once he lets you guys out. He leads you to go get something to drink ,which is creepy.In fact this book is really riddled with stranger danger type scenarios. You guys mention that you just want to go home and get out of here and he asks why do you want to go home so soon.Zeke blurts out that he wants to find the treasure and this is where we get our third Annabelle, or are my third Annabelle. The third Annabelle is basically a ship that wrecked ,because a driver fell asleep at the wheel and crashed it and the treasure is somewhere on the boat.In this storyline you run into ghosts pirates, alligators ,scorpions and another twist involving a main character that I didn't like, because I said it before and I'll say it again. I don't like when characters are just different just for the sake of the story being a different story.There is no cannon in this book and I personally just didn't love it ,especially when I read the other story lines and new what the other person was possibly going to be. I did enjoy the word searches and the word scrambles. I literally had to get a pen and paper out to do one ,so that was fun. But I do think this is a little bit of a weaker one in the series. I give Lost In Stinkeye Swamp a three out of five stars.

[Kish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely one of the better ones. It has quite a bit of adventure and at least 3 storylines.

[Santhosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

They were trapped at the swamp house's basement. Both friends couldn't find a way out. The adventure was really cool and the ending I got was, I think the creepiest. When they got killed by Annabelle.

This was shorter that I expected, I wish it had continued for longer.

[Alejandro Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the longest time, I assumed this was the book that the plant thingamabobs from the 2015 Goosebumps film were based upon… and it was. Tons of mixed up info led me to thinking it was You’re Plant Food or another random GYG, when it was inevitably the one with the Venus flytrap on the cover lol. Oh, and the book itself is quite good… starting off with—oh shit, BOTH ARCS? As not per usual, I liked both arcs a lot. They each share an equal amount of negative qualities and I can’t say I entirely prefer one over the other. There’s also some banger endings in this book, like the toothpick joke and the aforementioned Venus flytrap scene. There’s some great moments in here such as the Carl’s appearance and a segment possibly involving a Steamboat, and there’s even some genuinely good story beats for once in a GYG. The secondary main character—Zeke—has a recurring twist that I enjoyed, and the Annabelle stuff had some great tie-ins, like (again) the Steamboat segment and potentially a ball room, which in itself is scary location that, given the context, reminds me a lot of the Oldest View. Very neat. And, the best thing I could commend this book for was the inclusion of four genuinely nice puzzles, three with pictures and one that’s just an overly complicated but simple math problem. They’re fun and brought up the enjoyment I had with this book. Okay, enough glazing—there’s some doodoo in this book… and in fact, I smell it right now in some particular endings. Some of the endings are straight ballocks, but most notably the baby ending and the manure ending. They’re awful, amongst other rough endings. There’s some rough bits in here as well, which are the weird ass sewer segment and the Park Ranger segment. Speaking of that… the “Park Ranger” is a very weakly crafted character. He’s stupid and terrible at being what he’s intended to be. For spoiler reasons, just unscramble the word her for the answer: vialiln. Overall, 8/10. This book defied my expectations since I was one a rough GYG streak for two months straight. Knocker-downer.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

book 1 of my nostalgia spree of the summer, enabled by the public library haha. i used to love checking these out from the upper primary library - i didn't like regular goosebumps books, but i loved the choose your own adventure ones. i thought that type of book was so innovative and creative. when i picked this up, i think i expected the choices to be a lot more interesting than they actually were, so in that aspect i was disappointed, because i thought that i used to enjoy these books for the choice. but when i reached my first the end, i would flip to a random page and start there instead, and keep going, and read the rest of the the ends along the way, and i realised that when i was younger and even now, the joy is seeing all the ways that rl stine spun the story and discovering all the vast possibilities within a setting. they were quite simplistic, but still, definitely still something i appreciate now still.

[Dope Ghost Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a jungle map maze page in this book that really had me excited and anxious when I was a wee lad or maybe eight or nine...looking back, I laugh at how this little choose-your-own-adventure book had me so glued and on the edge of my seat. A real page-turner!

[Pau Yañez - ChangedByBooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well it was a different thing to read because I can choose what to do next, the book has 8 different endings and I'm just going to say it... What a crappy ending I got 😅

[Aditya Buch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intreasting book with witty one liners but not very great in horror

[fanboyriot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still not loving the different covers, but this was a really fun book. The paths were really nice and it felt less scattered compared to other books in this series.

[Colton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the better GYG books I've read. The storylines are original and interesting and there's a nice mystery/adventure aspect to the story that keeps you turning the pages. A larger amount of side characters makes this a very enjoyable read. Recommended.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this! Very good!

[Ramita · Rating 5 out of 5]

very very very interesting