This is the fifth book in the Nightmare Room Series by R.L. Stein and in this volume we meet Alex Smith, student, son, friend and most importantly a boy who likes things to be exciting...and of course he likes to bet, he'll be five bucks on just about anything. The problem is that he LOVES to bet how something is going to turn out but he's rarely EVER right, in fact, he's constantly losing to Tessa Wayne (his nemesis) despite his best friends Chip and Shawn warning him to stop before he goes too far.

As we join the story, Alex bets Tessa that his diary for extra credit in English class will be more exciting than hers (and get a better grade). She's the better student and ALWAYS wins the bets...so the contest is on. He rushes home and finds that his mother has gotten him an old desk...just what he needs; even better he discovers there's an old blank diary in one of the drawers. He sets it aside...but when he comes back to it later, there is an entry! It's in HIS handwriting and it tells him the winner of the next day's basketball game and other details that he just KNOWS he can win bets with...and he does. This diary is a dream come true...or is it? Initially he rushes upstairs each night after dinner to find out what's going to happen and what he can bet on or use to his advantage...but pretty soon the diary is giving out cryptic details like him getting hit by a car and other dangerous and outrageous things...and even more frightening, they start to come true!

Will he live to read another entry? You'll have to read to find out what special terror the Nightmare Room has in store for Alex and I bet he's not going to like it! As with others in this series, there is a twist at the end which has a Twilight Zone/Outer Limits for kids feel to it that is just about perfect for this type of story! Of the five I've read so far, this is probably the best especially if the reader is able to suspend belief adequately and really imagine what it would feel like if this were happening to them. The events themselves, as written seem a bit hokey, but when taken at face value would be genuinely frightening and bewildering. The twist at the end is the kind that makes you kind of do a double take and it strikes me as the type of ending for a book where you'd like to have a bunch of your friends reading the same book so you could talk about and speculate on what the ending REALLY meant.

Overall, this book like most of Stine's writing is short on the character development...all of them are pretty much caricatures of personality types and the plot moves forward a very quick pace which sometimes leaves the reader wanting for more details than are there. In the end, they are entertaining above anything else and Dear Diary, I'm Dead leaves the reader with much to discuss if he or she is reading this with friends or for a class discussion. Additionally, like most of the other books it has a moral...it's twisted around and morbid, but it's there and gives the story an additional layer for the reader to enjoy. I give it three stars; it's entertaining, engaging and genuinely creepy but not great literature. ( )