Not since Allan Sherman first sang “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” have tales of summer camp woes been quite so entertaining. While regular summer camp can be annoying—heat rashes, ant piles, wild pigs, impossible beauty standards, line dancing, and whatever nastiness lies at the bottom of the lake—these recent and upcoming novels take the summer camp setup into true nightmare territory.
The following books are evenly divided into three categories of awfulness: conversion camps, wilderness reform schools, and camps for the cancelled (the latter category is more about terrible people in nice-ish settings, rather than particularly terrible camps). I briefly considered including sanatoriums and writing retreats, but those should each be their own list, given how many standout examples have been published in the last few years.
Wilderness Reform Schools:
Matt Query and Harrison Query, Wilderness Reform
(Atria)
The Query brothers takes us into the harrowing conditions—both man-made and supernatural—of a wilderness survival camp, as tween Ben and his bunkmates try to uncover the dark secrets of their remote prison. Wilderness Reform is a social justice thriller with plenty to say about the troubled teen industry and its promises to save children even as it exploited them, and, often enough, killed them.
Ariel Delgado Dixon, Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You
(Random House Trade)
The two sisters at the center of Ariel Delgado Dixon’s debut are born survivors, first abandoned by their laissez-faire parents in a former art commune, then rounded up by authorities and sent to a wilderness reform school. Graduated into an uncaring world, the sisters work hard and hustle harder, hoping to find their way back to each other.
Conversion Camps:
Chuck Tingle, Bury Your Gays
(Tor Nightfire)
Chuck Tingle may have made his name in steamy-yet-absurdist erotica, but Bury Your Gays, along with last year’s Camp Damascus, cements Tingle’s place as one of the best new novelists around, horror or otherwise. Showrunner Misha is giving a harsh directive from his studio overlords: either kill off his queer characters, or make them straight. When he refuses to do either, monstrous beings from Misha’s previous cinematic endeavors start confronting him in the flesh, and even worse: they’re threatening his loved ones. This is quite possibly the best spoof of Hollywood since Get Shorty. And three cheers for a book with ace representation!
Gretchen Felker-Martin, Cuckoo
(Tor Nightfire)
Gretchen Felker-Martin forever won my heart with her splattterpunk horror novel Manhunt, and now she’s done it again with a queer conversion camp thriller that is truly terrifying to read. Felker-Martin writes with sensitivity and righteous fury about the many torments the teenage characters are forced to endure in the name of heteronormativity, and the stakes are ever higher as the kids begin to realize that even those who leave the camp are no longer themselves—and many will not leave at all. Felker-Martin excels at creeping out readers with her off-kilter descriptions and gory details, and I wouldn’t open this one up while eating.
Camp Cancellation:
Josh Winning, Heads Will Roll
(Putnam, July 30)
Josh Winning’s new novel follows former TV star Willow after she tweets herself into a cancellation and heads to the digital detox of Camp Castaway, full of other refugees from social media and their own behavior. Of course, the campers soon enough begin disappearing and turning up dead, in ways that follow the modus operandi of “Knock Knock Nancy”, the camp’s very own legendary ghost.
Tova Reich, Camp Jeff
(Seven Stories, October 29)
In this erudite satire, the “creme-de-la-creme” of the cancelled at a former resort in the Catskills to take part in a rehabilitation effort that promises to cure them, punish them, and restore them them to society. The retreat is sponsored by the “good” Jeffrey Epstein (a wealthy benefactor who shares the same moniker as the bad one, but insists he does not share any of the same predilections), and run by three women, his assistants and enablers, as they attempt to gain control over an unruly group of their first ten attendees. I guess it’s not really a crime novel, but hey, all the characters certainly deserve to be dead!
Traditional Summer Camps (with Murder, or at least, Missing Persons)
Sami Ellis, Dead Girls Walking
(Amulet Books)
Sapphic romance and serial killers at summer camp! Sami Ellis seems to have included every trope I have on my checklist, and they all work together seamlessly for an irrepressibly entertaining horror experience.
Liz Moore, The God of the Woods
(Riverhead)
Liz Moore’s Long Bright River was a spectacular pivot to crime for Liz Moore and her new one should cement her reputation. It’s a great summer read about missing children at a summer camp, with a tinge of “all of this has happened before” looming around the edges. Reading this felt like discovering Tana French’s In the Woods—and not just because of the “child disappeared in the woods” angle, but because it’s unputdownable and thrillingly constructed. –Drew Broussard, Podcasts Editor
