Spellbound Essay, Research Paper

The book I read was Spellbound by Christopher Pike. In this book, a teenage girl named Karen Holly, was killed at the top of a nearby mountain with her skull smashed in. The only witness to this horrible murder was her boyfriend Jason Whitfield who said that a grizzly bear killed her and scratched him across the face when he tried to stop the bear by hitting it with a stick. He later goes to the police with his story and tells them where to find her corpse. When the police get to the top of the mountain they do not find her body where Jason said that it would be, but instead discovered the corpse in a nearby stream.

After a few weeks people start to think that Jason is hiding something about that terrible night, some people even think that Jason himself killed her. These conspiracies are fuel by many things such as the fact that there was flesh found underneath Karen’s fingernails or that Jason now has a new girlfriend named Cindy Jones. The town decides to have a trial because of all of the conspiracies so that they can set the record straight on what happen that night.

A couple days before the trial Jason, Cindy, Cindy’s brother Alex, Alex’s date Joni Harper, Cindy’s best friend Pam Alta, and a foreign exchange student who is staying with Pam named Bala decide to go to the top of the mountain. Jason wants to do this because he says he wants to face his fear of the mountain that he got after the night Karen was killed. At the top mountain, Jason says he wants to show them a secret cave. After walking for about ten minutes they have to go over a log to cross the stream. While walking on the log Cindy falls off and into the stream. Alex and Jason run to try to save Cindy but suddenly Bala dives off a high cliff into the water, grabs Cindy and pulls her to safety.

The next day at school, Alex and his best friend named Ray get in a fight because Alex finds out that Ray is going out on a date that night with Joni Harper. That is the last time Alex ever see’s Ray alive because that night after Ray’s date with Joni he is killed the same way that Karen was. This happened only a day before Jason’s trial.

As the plot thickens, Jason asked Cindy to appear at the trial in his defense. The morning of the trial a reporter from the local newspaper who thinks that Jason killed Karen comes to Cindy’s house and talks her into thinking that Jason is hiding something. Two hours before the trial Cindy decides to go up the mountain to see what she can find. When she gets to the place where she fell, she finds that there was oil on the log which caused her to fall. She concludes that Jason did this so that he could save her to clear his name by making people think he is a hero for saving Cindy.

The main characters in this book where Jason Whitfield, who is the only witness to the murder of Karen Holly, and Cindy Jones, the new girlfriend of Jason Whitfield. Other main characters are Bala, who is a foreign exchange student for Africa and Joni Harper, who turns out to be the one who kills Karen and Ray. Some secondary characters are Alex Jones, Pam Alta, and Karen Holly. The setting takes place in a small town in the Rocky Mountains at present day time.

My favorite part of the book is when Cindy goes up into the mountains and discovers that Jason had put oil on the log to make her fall. This was my favorite part of the book because Cindy had just discovered that Jason may have killed Karen after all. The scariest part of the book was when Bala was in the hospital because Bala was very strong and smart and it would take a lot to hurt him, but something had. My opinion of the book was that it was great. I would recommend it to anyone who likes scary books or Christopher Pike books.