Weekend is a thriller novel by Christopher Pike written in 1986, about a group of students spending a weekend in Mexico, where two of their friends (rich sisters Lena and Robin) own a mansion.
But the atmosphere is not the greatest. Robin is very ill, since she has been mysteriously poisoned at one of their previous parties, and her conditions are getting worse. Someone is seeking revenge, and their vacation gradually turns into a nightmare, as the main characters start to fear for their life.
Tropes:
- Alpha Bitch: Lena is described as a gorgeous but ruthless girl who has the entire school falling at her feet. She turns out to be a Lovable Alpha Bitch at the end.
- Beauty Equals Goodness:
- Shani, the main heroine, is apparently the prettiest girl in the school, along with Lena.
- Lena, the rich, beautiful but seemingly cruel Alpha Bitch is eventually revealed to be Good All Along.
- Who is the Big Bad? Kerry, a short, overweight, frumpy girl from a poor family, who is also the frustrated loser of the group.
- Betty and Veronica:
- To Sol's Archie, Kerry is a short, plain-looking, poor girl (Betty) while Lena is a stunning, ruthless rich girl (Veronica) to Sol's Archie. Lena wins and it's one of the rare cases where the "Betty" is revealed to be much more evil than the "Veronica".
- To Park's Archie, Robin is the sweet Girl Next Door and his First Love (Betty), while Angie is a generic blonde pretty girl and his new girlfriend (Veronica). By the end, Park's relationship with Angie is over and gets back with Robin.
- Big Damn Heroes: Bert after everyone thinks he was killed in the garage explosion. He just got caught in a riptide and, once he made his way back to shore, got lost. He showed up just in time to break into the recording studio to free everyone before the snakes got to them.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Angie and Kerry who both resent the Carlton sisters a great deal. Angie tried to humiliate Robin at school because she wanted Park, while Kerry stupidly (and drunkenly) considered poisoning Lena on a moment of impulse. However, she later deliberately messed up with Robin's dialysis machine to make everyone think Lena was trying to kill Robin.
- Class Princess: Unlike Alpha Bitch Lena, her sister Robin is loved at school for being kind and selfless.
- Clingy Jealous Girl:
- Kerry utterly despises Lena because the latter is dating Kerry's ex-boyfriend Sol. Kerry also wants Sol back, even though she has no chance with him anymore. She also takes her jealousy to insane Yandere levels.
- Angie has always been jealous of Robin's Class Princess status at school and grew to hate her even more when the latter was dating Park, the guy Angie has a crush on. To the point that she tried to humiliate Robin in front of the entire school, though her plan failed.
- Easily Forgiven: Despite the horrible things Kerry did to Robin just to make her sister Lena look bad, the epilogue reveals that Lena has forgiven Kerry, and Lena and Kerry have talked on the phone without fighting.
- Faking the Dead: An unintentional example with Bert, whom everyone assumed was obliterated in the garage explosion. He simply got caught in a riptide and got lost trying to find his way back to the house.
- The Generic Girl: Angie. Outside of being blonde and dating Park, she has no definiting traits, at least initially. The narration describes her this way: "She was like a collage of her friends: a bit of Shani's charm, an ounce of Kerry's nervousness, a glimmer of Robin's sweetness, a slice of Lena's craftiness, all lumped together with no definitive result".
- Gentle Giant: Bert, a big, dumb, guy who loves everyone and is loved by everyone.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: The poisoned beer. The culprit put the poison in a glass impulsively during a moment of anger, and when she was walked in on, poured in beer to disguise the smell. Had the other someone not picked up the poisoned beer when the "culprit" had her back turned, she more than likely would have disposed of the poison safely. And the person who drank the beer wasn't even the person she'd been thinking of poisoning.
- Good All Along: Lena. She starts out seeming like a Femme Fatale and is even widely suspected of poisoning her sister it turns out she cares deeply for her sister and is wracked with guilt over not being able to do anything to help her, and the whole weekend trip was deliberately set up as a sort of Secret Test of Character to find out who really did the poisoning. Unfortunately, she and the rest end up caught in a Gambit Pileup when Flynn reveals who he really is.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Angie and Kerry are both completely jealous of the Carlton sisters and have subtly tried to hurt them both over the years, though their initial attempts only cause untold misery for everyone around them. The irony being that the two girls aren't even working together.
- Happily Adopted: The Carlton sisters know they're both adopted and come from different biological parents, but neither cares about that fact and are as close as any blood siblings.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Sol is a tough guy, rough around the edges, and has a criminal background. But he has a good heart, and even after he breaks up with Kerry, he's still nice to her.
- Lena is an Alpha Bitch, but the ending proves that she genuinely loves her sister. Even in the beginning, it's stated that Robin is a bit of an Extreme Doormat, but Lena has never tried to dominate her or take advantage of her.
- Karma Houdini: Kerry accidentally poisoned Robin and later deliberately messed up with Robin's dialysis machine while trying to frame Lena for it. She doesn't get any legal repercussion because everyone in the group has something to hide, and they decide to keep everything secret. That said, by the end of the story it's stated Kerry's a lot sicker than everyone else who suffered from Montezuma's Revenge with it being implied she may be left with permanent damage.
- Not Quite Dead: Everyone assumed Bert was killed in the garage explosion and his body had been obliterated in the fire. It turned out he wasn't even near the garage when it blew up. Bert went back into the water, got pulled into a current, and when he got back to shore he spent hours going into the wrong direction before he turned around.
- Out-Gambitted: Lena purposefully gave the wrong date on the invitations but made sure those who were at the party where Robin drank insect poison came, with the intent to discover who actually gave Robin the poison. She drugs them, locks them in a room (herself included) filled with venom-less rattlesnakes, and uses a recording of her dubbed voice to interrogate them. She hadn't expected on A: Bert turning up alive after everyone believed he was killed in the garage explosion, and B: the group bringing Flynn, who reveals himself to be Robin's biological brother Michael. He planned to figure out who poisoned Robin himself, but at the same time to determine if he felt comfortable enough to give Robin one of his kidneys for a transplant. He wasn't going to just give an organ to a complete stranger, especially a sister he never even knew existed until just recently.
- Proud Beauty: Lena is very pretty, and she knows it. In the first description we get of her, she's wearing a rather revealing outfit, and the book outright says she's a "bombshell". It then goes into detail about the attractiveness of her hair, eyes, and figure, as well as implying she's been sunbathing nude to improve her tan.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Between Rich Bitch Lena and Nice Girl Robin. The book also suggests a Cain and Abel situation, as Lena is the number one suspect for Robin's accident but it's subverted at the end, as Lena would never hurt Robin and was actually trying to protect her.
- Story Within a Story: Robin shares a folk tale about three birds and a snake, which is disturbingly reminiscent of the conflict between Robin, Lena, Flynn, and whoever poisoned Robin.
- Supporting Protagonist: Shani is the main point-of-view character, but is not directly involved in the main conflicts of the plot and the characters' backstory (the Kerry/Sol/Lena love triange, the Robin/Park/Angie love triangle, Kerry's humiliation at school, and Robin's tragic accident). She's just a friend to everyone, who is especially close to Robin and Park, has a crush on a newcomer named Flynn, and later tries to find the truth.
- What Beautiful Eyes!: Lena is described as having pretty "catlike" eyes, which is probably also meant as an invocation of the Cats Are Mean trope although she turns out to be a good guy after all.
