The Camp by Nancy Bush
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Toot toot! Hot-Mess-Express rolling into the station…
Well, this wasn’t quite what I expected and by quite, I mean, not at all. I felt way too disgruntled upon finishing it to write a review and now it’s been days.
I remember practically nothing, apparently sucked out of my brain by the ‘didn’t enjoy it’-gods.
All I can say is, if you tell me you are giving me Summer Camp Horror, you better deliver me Summer Camp Horror.
The synopsis of The Camp had me frothing at the mouth. Unfortunately, it didn’t deliver any of the vibes, nor enticing plot, that I was expecting.
I’m an atmopshere-girlie first and foremost. I’ve mentioned that numerous times. One of my favorite settings is Summer Horror, particularly Summer Camp Horror. I feel like that is what I was promised here, but it’s not what I got.
There is nothing chilling about this, nor Friday the 13th about this and these are just things mentioned in the synopsis. I’m not inventing these comparisons on my own.
If I hadn’t had that in my mind, there’s a very slight chance I would have enjoyed it more, but honestly, I doubt it.
One of my biggest issues with this story was that it didn’t seem to know what type of story it was trying to be. It couldn’t figure out its own identity, so how the heck was I expected to?
There were way too many perspectives for my tastes, they just didn’t seem necessary, as well as a whole host of ridiculous subplots that I couldn’t have cared less about.
For example, you’re following camp counselors from the past, camp counselors from the present, people from a commune located near the camp, there’s a wacky surrogate subplot, a grown woman being accused of sleeping with a 15-year old boy and a cat that lives in a asylum that is giving total Doctor Sleep vibes…
I’m not sure what else to say. It’s rare I’m at a loss for words, but this is one of those occasions. It was just so hard to track and even harder to care. There were so many characters involved; too many.
It did get a little easier once they were all in one spot, the camp, but I feel like that happened way too late in the narrative. By then, I had given up. I probably should have DNFed, but I kept wanting to figure it out; like, what’s the point?
Honestly, it was pretty bad and not in a fun-Sharknado-bad sort of way…
As I always say though, and I do want to stress this, just because this book didn’t work for me, does not mean it won’t work for you. We all have different tastes and enjoy different things.
I’m not quite sure who I would recommend this to, but I would say probably not to huge Summer Camp, or Slasher Horror fans; like if Friday the 13th is your jam, this is not it.
Thank you to the publisher, Zebra Books, for providing me with a copy to read and review. Even when books don’t knock me out of the park, I still appreciate the opportunity to read and them and provide my opinion.