Luke is the most superstitious kid in the school, and it doesn't help that his best friend Hannah is the luckiest. When the new year starts Luke is horrified to be given locker 13, just because it's an unlucky number. But things change drastically one day with the appearance of a toy skull, and he and Hannah's luck are reversed.
This one contains some surprisingly gruesome events, like a twelve year old with blood gushing from his ear canals. ( )

Locker 13, the second book in R.L. Stein's Nightmare Room Series is something a bit different than the first book, which I felt was genuinely chilling and frightful. Both books (and I imagine the entire series, but I'm only on book #2, after all) open with a Twilight Zone-esque introduction, which I rather like. This particular volume focuses on Luke, who happens to be quite superstitious and not all that lucky. Rather than make his own way, he relies on his lucky shirt, lucky sandwich, lucky rabbits foot...he's got a lucky item for darn near every occasion! He's also fond of rubbing his lucky shirt 7 times and squeezing his rabbits foot in multiples of three for increased luck. His best friend is the luckiest person he knows...winning things, finding money, and just plain ol' lucky on a daily basis.

The story follows Luke through the year, after the first day, when he is unlucky enough to be assigned locker 13...poor unlucky Luke...how will this unlucky start color his year? Read and find out.

Luke doesn't seem to see the world in terms of effort put out or innate skills...he sees it as having luck or not having it and if you haven't got it, he seems to think he's less than a zero. I find the whole story interesting and suspenseful, but not chilling or outright scary. This one is more of a moralistic tale...with a pretty standard moral tale ending...whereas the first book (Don't Forget Me) had a less straight forward ending (typical Twilight Zone, non-committal, open to more weirdness than solid closure for the story)...which is what I really liked about it, it introduces readers to the less than clear ending for story lines. This book is not like that, it has definite closure, though sitting here thinking about it...one could make a case for that not being entirely true, based on the penny incident at the very end. If that is the case, then the weirdness is more subtle in this second volume and that's cool too, though less sophisticated readers might not pick up on it (and clearly I almost fell into that category myself).

Overall, I liked it, though it's not as creepy as the first (for my taste), it is suspenseful and definitely an interesting story line. The main character could have been a little more developed, so we could more easily identify with him, but not bad at all! A fine addition to a budding line of creepy tales. It should be interesting to see where Stein goes with additional volumes! ( )