Of course, achieving the right amount of horror without pushing young adults further than they need to be pushed requires a tough balancing act. Even without being specifically branded as horror fiction, book series like A Series of Unfortunate Events, about children under constant threat kidnapping and harm, and the Harry Potter books, which involve all kinds of evils, succeed in striking the right creepy tone while offering memorable stories and characters. Horrific situations are presented in ways that chill and thrill but don’t require the books to come with barf bags or gift certificates for psychotherapy. To its credit, the first book in Harper Teen’s Wicked Dead series, 2 L8 4U, doesn’t even try to rely on gore or extreme perversity to support the story. The bad news is that it doesn’t rely on much of a plot either.

Framing the story, akin to the Crypt Keeper and Elvira, are four ghostly girls in a spooky abandoned orphanage (read: your garden-variety haunted house). A roll of bones, instead of dice, and the winner gets to spin a scary tale. Only the tale of a typical high-school girl, named Mandy, who becomes the target of a fiend shortly after another girl is murdered is neither scary, creepy, nor spooky. There’s a better chance of getting creeped-out by week-old leftovers in the refrigerator.

A greater sin, however, lies in the story’s relentless obedience to the horror genre formula. It’s as if Stefan Petrucha co-author Thomas Pendleton – the pen name of an apparently big name in horror writing – spat out the story in his sleep. The generic villain, whose nickname, the Witchman, suggests a monster from the bargain bin of recycled horror monsters, is an unremarkable supernatural stalker whose “secret” identity is obvious from the beginning and whose grand reveal is part of an entirely predictable plot development. Then there’s Mandy and her friends, credibly portrayed with all the text-message and American Idol trappings of today’s youth culture, but only as active in the plot as a sponge is in water.

It’s particularly strange, not to mention irksome, that the bulk of the plot actually consists of Mandy’s boyfriend trouble, with only the odd, oh-so-creepy phenomenon (e.g. text messages from nowhere) contributing to her feeling of being stalked. It’s irksome, because it’s a feeling she does nothing about. But perhaps, to go back to the passive sponge analogy, there is nothing she can do about it. The authors create no mystery for Mandy to solve, nor is the Witchman ever presented as a threat for her to tangibly work against.

2 L8 4U turns out to be a case of the voyeuristic kind of “horror” that wallows in the destruction of innocents and expects readers to be impressed. The authors even admit how pointless the story is through a bit of outrage from one of the ghostly girls. Yet, this half-hearted virtual confession only contributes to the feeling that readers are being mocked for wanting a bit more out of the plot – substance, perhaps. It also suggests that readers are dupes for expecting an exciting circus show and getting, instead, front-row seats to a lamb slaughter.

But maybe the intended age of the books readership makes a difference and a young person who has never hear of, let alone read, a horror novel will find something to be freaked out by. After all, someone who can’t predict the ending from the book cover’s promise of a deadly twist has a chance of being shocked. Or maybe the real horror is that a young person’s introduction to the horror genre could be through this shoddy, lazy piece of storytelling instead of worthier books.