50 Books in a Year: Book #42 Final Friends Book One: The Party

This is the cover of the series
when I read it.
The cover has changed several times.

OK, so when I was a kid I loved myself some Christopher Pike, I mean loved...I also loved Joan Lowery Nixon, RL Stine (before Goosebumps, I was a little too old when Goosebumps started up) and Lois Duncan (don't watch any of the books about her movies they're pure buckets of poo). I guess I just liked teenagers involved in suspenseful situations.

All this reminiscing concludes with this book series by Christopher Pike called Final Friends. I've own Books Two and Three of this series forever and it wasn't until I was with my sister as a used book store that I found Book One. After I got home, here are somethings I noticed/remembered/liked/disliked about Book One: The Party (the link is to Goodreads).

From the back
Jessica Hart and her best friends invited dozens of people to their "get to know each other" party. But some people came who weren't invited. And the evening ended in horror. Most figured it was a suicide. They figured wrong. 

Let's see...
Noticed
1] I didn't realize that the character who dies, Alice, I'm not giving anything away if I say her name, doesn't die until the end (like the last 10ish pages) of the book. The rest of the book is filled with typical teenage novel fodder...it feels like fodder now, it felt like plot when I read it back in 1988.
2] Teenagers in the 80s had sex and partied.
3] Parts of the book are a little racist.

Remembered
1] The main character Michael, he was the prototype for which I based all my future book crushes. He's dependable, smart, doesn't take no for an answer and, of course, crushing on a girl that does not deserve him.
2] Alice, she's a very memorable character. I just didn't realize how much I liked her or how much I was sad when she died.
3] How it happens, but not who killed her.

Liked
1] Michael, always have always will
2] Reading about 1988 as if I'd traveled back in time...
3] The feeling of nostalgia I got while reading...1988 was a good year, I was 12.

Disliked
1] Jessica, the girl Michael likes, when I was younger she seemed genuinely conflicted, but this time around she just seemed like a conniving cheerleader who bemoaned the fact that she was popular, well-liked and single.
2] That I couldn't remember who the flipping killer is!
3] That the book is really about relationships and school and everyday life not about a murder mystery

Book Two soon to follow...

PS. For an independent read one of my students was reading a trilogy of books called Until the End, the cover looked interesting and when I noticed it was by Christopher Pike I asked her what it was about, she said something along the lines of "It's about this girl who is friends with this guy and there's a guy in a motorcycle and they go to a party and a girl dies, I'm only on the first one..." and I looked again, sure enough they've repackaged Final Friends, I wonder if they've updated the setting?