A review by droar
Camp Murderface by Saundra Mitchell, Josh Berk

2.0

Meh. This just did not work for me, from the generic & blank camp spooks to the blatant sequel grab (why will you give us absolutely no answers. This book is Not Short, you Chose to leave everything till the last 20 pages & not resolve anything). Basically this felt like the first of one of those early chapter book reader series (think Magic Tree House) drug out 5x longer than it needed to be with some vague gore. There is basically no suspense. Murder level creepy experiences occur in the first quarter of the book so there's not a lot of ratcheting up the creepiness can do. There's also something going on with the way things are described. Lots of the events should be legit creepy, but they just lack any punch. I think the root of this issue is that Camp Murderface doesn't know who it wants it's audience to be. It's set in the 80's & is clearly angling for a Stranger Things vibe, but it's writing is for middle schoolers & not appealing to adults (or at least This adult). I generally try to give YA books a pass on this kind of thing (I am not the intended audience, my opinions are valid but should overly color a books appeal for teens) but I legit can't think of a situation where I would pitch this books to teens of any age. The 80's are just a weird time to set your camp novel in. It's too recent to really be historical & different from now, but too old to be appealing. I dunno, maybe that's just me but it felt like a real weird choice (it also feels like a sequel gimmick thing. each chapter starts with the year date & the evil at camp happens every 20 years so the authors have built in a way to add to their prospective series. This Miiiight not be what's going on but it feels very calculated & forced instead of a quirk of the setting).

Ok. Sorry. That's a lot of grumping. The books is really not Aaaaaaaall bad, the two main characters are interesting enough & murder summer camp is always a good thing. If you are 80's bad summer camp nostalgic & like vague undefined horrors with terrible names (vampire devils? Really?) this could be the book for you! If so I implore you to read it & tell me what I'm missing, otherwise I'm quite pleased to be done with this one.