PROM DRESS by Lael Littke

PUBLISHER: Scholastic, 1989
MY RATING: 4 stars

SYNOPSIS: The pretty lace dress that Robin finds in her myterious employer's attic does not look deadly; it looks perfect for the prom. Robin cannot resist the power the dress holds over her an decides to 'borrow' it to wear to prom. But the dress has a horrifying secret and lures innocent, unsuspecting girls into an evil and terrifying nightmare.

MY THOUGHTS/POSSIBLE SPOILERS: This was pretty entertaining and suspenseful. I like how the possessed dress came to be in each person's possession. Robin is the main character. She's in high school and looks after an elderly woman named Miss Catherine. Catherine lets Robin choose between two many-decades-old dresses that she's seen in Catherine's attic but Robin wants the one she can't have, the lacy cream colored one. It's the one Catherine wore herself to her own prom way back when. Catherine has a deep secret that's revealed at the end and I liked it. I didn't see it coming. I like too that the dress goes on to be owned by another unsuspecting young woman, Natalie.

A tragic accident happens to Robin at prom. The dress punished her for wearing it. It ends up in the hands of another thief, twenty-one-year-old nurse, Felicia. I really like what the dress is doing to her. Once she takes the dress off I don't care for this part of the story as it gets real stupid and the slightest bit convoluted. The next girl, Nicole, who's either in high school or college, I was never sure which, comes by the dress via Felicia's abandonment of it. She steals it and in a tragic accident, is severely injured. That injury, like Robin's, affects the rest of her life.

This book could have been even better if it could have been more than 167 pages. I was disappointed to see that Robin's 14-year-old sister, Gabrielle, didn't get punished for stealing it....and wanting to steal Robin's boyfriend, Tyler. I first read this as a teenager around 1993.