I look at this house, this clearly haunted-ass house with its creepy horror-novel font and mysterious glow in the background and a random but possibly dangerous man knocking on the door who we know can’t just be the Amazon Prime delivery guy because Jeff Bezos hasn’t invented it yet, and I think, Dream house. (Though I could do without the twee gingerbread gables.)

I have particular tastes.

Published in 1989, Trick or Treat is Richie Tankersley Cusick’s second novel in her prolific Point Horror career. How prolific? Try eleven Point-branded novels in six years (not including the two adult horror books she published with Pocket during same period). Overall, before taking what seems to have been a hiatus between 1997 and 2002, Cusick published seventeen YA and adult horror novels between 1988 and 1996. On average, that’s more than two books a year.

That’s a lot.

Open Road Media has limited itself to reprinting only the Point and adult books, but adult isn’t Point, so here’s the list we’re working from:

• The Lifeguard (1988) [Part 1, Part 2]
• Trick or Treat (1989)
• Teacher’s Pet (1990)
• April Fools (1990)
• Vampire (1991)
• The Mall (1992)
• Fatal Secrets (1992)
• Silent Stalker (1993)
• Help Wanted (1993)
• The Locker (1994)
• The Drifter (1994)

When I do these introductions I try not to read even a synopsis of the current title, but rather conjure whatever I can from the depths of my memory so I might, perhaps, be surprised. Exceptions will have to be made, of course; for instance, it’s a good thing I accidentally read the first line of Trick or Treat’s synopsis, because all my memories of that book are actually April Fools in disguise. Oops.

I do remember a bit about this book, but not really what it has to do with Halloween. There’s probably a dance or something, maybe a haunted theme park–that tends to be popular with the YA crowd (and me). Mostly I remember the love interest’s name is Blake. Blake. Why do YA novel protags always have such unusual names? Blake, Neale, Kelsey, Skip–it’s like a Primrose Hill primary school roster.

Well. On the surface, Trick or Treat includes two of my favourite things–Halloween and haunted houses–and as luck would have it, I will be reading it at the beginning of October, so I think I can forgive Cusick her Improbable Names Fetish just this once.