During the ‘90s, teen horror fiction was huge. Authors like R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike already had major hits, and Scholastic’s Point Horror was thriving. Recently I’ve made it my personal mission to collect and read as many of the titles from the decade as possible. This month, for Horror Bound, I’m taking a look at Field Trip by Jeff Hammer.

Field Trip is a standalone title from Avon Flare. With the front cover tagline, “A night in an Old Colonial Village turns into a lesson in history, mystery… and bloody terror,” Field Trip makes a lot of promises. The story concerns a group of students from Tylerville Senior High who are visiting Franklin Forge Historic Village and staying at the village’s old Hogpenny Inn, where almost the entire story unfolds. The students get snowed in and lead character Tom Martin sees the opportunity as a chance to spend some alone time with his girlfriend, Lori Archer. Any romantic notions are quickly dashed when weird things begin happening. The scary things come in the form of a spooky ghost story related to the inn and classmates who disappear one by one.

So how does Field Trip live up to its tagline? Pretty good, actually. Some of the references concerning the Colonial architecture and way of life are interesting, even if appropriately cartoony, and the book is written in a way where readers (younger readers, in particular) could learn a few things without a full history lesson being shoved down their throat. Hammer makes the most out of the setting, giving the otherwise routine story a fresh spin. Along with the educational comes the eccentric… in addition to the teens from Tylerville, the cast is made up of residents who live in the village full time, dress in period appropriate clothing, and speak in an overly exaggerated Colonial dialect. All of it put together makes the Hogpenny Inn feel like a real place.

The “mystery” and “bloody terror” portion of Field Trip’s tagline go hand in hand. The first half of the book holds the biggest surprises, as the disappearances are stacked on top of each other in a unique way that avid fans of ‘90s teen horror will get a kick out of. The setup comes in the form of placing one trope on top of another of the same. The cast is full of likely suspects, and the reveal at the end is genuinely surprising and fun. Unfortunately, there are so many characters in the story that it is difficult to differentiate between them, and only a handful stand out as more than cardboard cutouts. The mystery in Field Trip is not only about who, but also how. The answer to the latter is a simple one that will likely have readers kicking themselves for not realizing it sooner. The disappearances tie-in with a ghost story—that of Bloody Bill—and the book doesn’t skimp on giving readers several scenes of red. As usual in ‘90s YA, the gore never goes too far and there is always the question of whether or not it is even real. This adds another level of mystery that readers familiar with the structure and style will devour.

The high point of Field Trip comes in the middle portion of the book, where the various story-lines are crossing paths. Here, some of the Colonial aspects are being stripped away and the modern world underneath comes to the surface. It is an intelligent way of juxtaposing the past with the present and shows the longing some people have for a different life, building on the pros and cons of both viewpoints. Hammer does a great job at handling one character’s abandonment of the Colonial dialogue midway through. The sudden change into a modern way of speaking is appropriately jarring and shows the character is straddling the line between two vastly different worlds.

All in all, I enjoyed Field Trip. The suspense holds until the final chapter, but the last few pages feel tacked on and serve little purpose other than giving a brief summary of what happened to several key characters after the main events. The antagonist’s arc is interesting, but Tom, the protagonist, suffers from a character arc that feels a little confusing and off-putting in those final moments. The finale of the book would have benefited from a few sentences that would have given a more satisfying conclusion to everything that came before. Despite the few complaints mentioned here, Field Trip is a fun ‘90s teen horror read that ultimately relies on its unique setting to keep the reader’s interest all the way to the end.