Camp Carnage by Elliot A Cross and Joshua Winning

My buddy read for August with Jonny @ Jaunts and Haunts is Camp Carnage, a homage to 1980s slasher flicks set at a gay conversion camp for teens.

Billy, a shy, nerdy teen questioning his sexuality, is sent to be straightened out at Camp Genesis. He quickly makes friends with punk chick, Jem, crushes hard on hunky jock, Neal, and runs afoul of sharp tongued Kyle.

However, there are more dangerous things at Camp Genesis than gender based activities and nasty jeers. A killer is hunting down the campers one by one, and no one is safe.

This book sounded lots of fun, and I enjoyed reading it. It kept me engaged from beginning to end, and I was eager to find out the identity of the killer.

Props to the writers for getting me to care about Kyle, who is rather unpleasant to the other characters, Billy in particular, but who is fleshed out to a realistic human being.

The book starts with lots of killings and a more generic introduction of the campers, before changing tone and concentrating on the camp and the main characters. I enjoyed getting to know the people better, but I would have preferred if there had been more development of the killer throughout this time. When the bloody, brutal finale arrives, I felt it trivialized the real life traumas of the teens, and there wasn’t enough build up around the killer to make it frightening.

Because of this, and an ending that made me feel cheated, I award Camp Carnage…

Camp Carnage is available as a free ebook and $9.99 print book on Amazon.

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Click here to read Jonny’s review of Camp Carnage.

Look out for our buddy read and rant post, coming soon!