Happy Death Day & Happy Death Day 2U by Aaron Hartzler

Blumhouse Books/Anchor Books, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-9848-9772-5

Available: paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Remember the good old days when movie tie-ins were available for almost every film out there, and good authors wrote them?  Lest we forget, Alan Dean Foster, Terry Brooks, R.A. Salvatore, and Orson Scott Card all took a shot at tie-in writing.  You read them for two reasons: they were able to add a level of detail that a film can’t convey, and they often had scenes deleted from the film, which made you feel like you were getting something new.  Tie-ins are still around, and here we have a two for one deal: both of the Happy Death Day films in one novel.  If you liked the movies, it’s worth reading these to recall the fun of a surprisingly clever horror film.  If you haven’t seen them, it’s still entertaining enough to be worth the read.

Teresa ‘Tree’ Gelbman is a shallow, insensitive college student who wakes up with a hangover in a stranger’s dorm room on her birthday.  Her character gets established quickly on her bolting from the dorm and making her way through the day.  She’s a grade-A bitch, with no redeeming qualities.  She treats her few friends and all strangers like trash, and pretends to be nice to others to maintain her social standing.  To top it off, she’s trying to screw her way to a good grade in her biology class by having an affair with a married professor.  At the end of the day, she gets murdered by an unknown assailant.  Upon dying, she… wakes up with a hangover in a stranger’s dorm room on her birthday.  That’s her fate: she’s condemned to re-live the same day over and over, getting killed by the assailant each time, until she finds a way to break the cycle.  The second book follows a similar pattern.  The main differences are Tree finds herself in an alternate timeline, and you get some explanation for why the time-loop thing happened in the first place.

As expected for a movie tie-in, both books follow the script very closely.  The level of detail added in is not very high, although there are a few minor brush strokes to flesh out some of the scenes a bit.  Tree’s feelings about her professor are one area where the additional detail makes her seem a bit human, as opposed to completely unfeeling.  The real challenge to writing a story like this is, how do you make a re-playing scene seem interesting to the reader?  The author does a good job of making the repeated areas seem new, by using different ways to explain them.  For example, instead of just writing ‘the sprinklers turned on, someone fell down, a car alarm went off’ over and over, he finds new ways to describe it.  One good example is saying ‘The day unfolded with Tree’s greatest hits: Sprinkler.   Alarm.   Person falling over.’  It’s minor, but it really does help make the story more readable, and not make the reader feel as if they are caught in a time loop of their own.  This is written well enough that you feel like you are reading an actual story, and not just a copy of the script.  The only minor drawback to the book is that if you are looking for added scenes that weren’t in the movie, you’ll be disappointed.  As noted, this follows the original premise very closely, and I couldn’t find any new scenes added in.  Whether that’s good or bad depends on the reader.

The final verdict: The Happy Death Day movies have enough originality that they translate well to book form, thanks to the author’s treatment of the script.  The book is also a quick read, with both films are fitted into only 272 pages, and it reads fast enough that most readers will be hooked enough to finish it in a sitting or two.  It’s perfect for summer beach fare, and the violence is mild enough that it’s palatable to young readers.  A good horror choice for both adults and young adult readers.

Contains:  violence

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson