Hi, and thanks for stopping by.
Today's post is really exciting for me, because I'm taking part in my first ever blog tour! I'm so happy and grateful to be a part of the blog tour for Kim Fu's book, The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore. I want to start by saying thank you to Legend Press, and Lucy in particular, for asking me to participate, sending me the gorgeous arc and just generally giving me this cool opportunity!!
A group of young girls descend on Camp Forevermore, a sleepaway camp in the Pacific Northwest, where their days are filled with swimming lessons, friendship bracelets, and camp songs by the fire. Filled with excitement and nervous energy, they set off on an overnight kayaking trip to a nearby island. But before the night is over, they find themselves stranded, with no adults to help them survive or guide them home.
The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore traces these five girls—Nita, Kayla, Isabel, Dina, and Siobhan—through and beyond this fateful trip. We see them through successes and failures, loving relationships and heartbreaks; we see what it means to find, and define, oneself, and the ways in which the same experience is refracted through different people. In diamond-sharp prose, Kim Fu gives us a portrait of friendship and of the families we build for ourselves—and the pasts we can't escape.
RATING: 3.5-4 stars.
So this was a really well-written novel; nuanced and well-structured. Kind of a funny one to place in terms of age of readership, I think; predominantly it read as Adult fiction (possibly literary?) but there were elements that definitely felt more Young Adult. This is mainly because the chapters span over so many different times in the characters lives, sometimes from when they are 6 years old right up to in their 30s and 40s. Although it does also cover the middle-grade kind of age group (particularly in the Camp Forevermore chapters) it obviously isn't a book for that age of readership. It isn't just age groups this books spans across, though, it's also places in the world, different people's lives and a wide variety of secondary characters. I think Kim Fu does a really good job of keeping the prose simple and effective and not over-complicating things or becoming hurried/messy.
It was really interesting to see the many different ripple effects of this one terrifying, wild experience that five young girls share together. To see how it changes them and scars them and effects the rest of their lives.
I would say that there was less actual writing set during the Camp Forevermore sequence than I expected. I didn't mind this too much, because the whole "survivalist" thing isn't necessarily something I'm massively interested in, but it's something to keep in mind if you're looking for a book entered on that topic. The majority of this novel takes place in the future of each girl's life, outlining how that summer impacted on the trajectories of their lives. Overall, I really enjoyed this structure and the pacing. I think the book kept moving really well, and I'd be interested to know what made Kim Fu decide to tell the Camp Forevermore chapters mainly from Siobhan's perspective and then have her "future" told in just a few short paragraphs, as opposed to the large chapters the other girls had.
Overall I really enjoyed this reading experience. There were some really emotive moments in both the Camp Forevermore chapters and the future ones. I think the novel could have been even longer actually, but the brevity of it somehow made it more effective.
"In the darkness, listening to herself breathe, her teeth chattering and her whole body quaking, she thought again about the girls back at Camp Forevermore. Archery, bird-watching, swimming, inner-tubes, hiking, arts and crafts, friends and sisters for life."
Till next time
Katie
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