While this book is very well written, it was not a book that appealed to me. I enjoyed it while I reading it, but then it abruptly ended and I felt cheated.
The story centers around five young women who were part of an “incident” at their summer all-girls camp. I know the story was about the young women, and not the incident, but I really needed more information about it. I needed some backstory.
Each girl had her “story,” while young, and then while older. Again, the stories were well written, but I really didn’t care for the characters.
I felt like this could have been packaged as a group of short stories, not as a novel.

The book is very readable and has a great story line. I love a books about camp!  A group of girls come to camp and go on an overnight camping trip that will change their lives forever.  The book alternates between telling about each girl and telling about the camping trip.  I was dissatisfied with the ending and felt like a lot of issues were left unresolved. I wanted the stories of the girls to come back together somehow or for an epilogue. Thank you to Netgalley for giving me an advanced copy of this book.  It comes out Feb 13th.

I finished this book the other night and I have no idea what I'm thinking so I'm just going to write things down.

I read Camp Forevermore in just a few hours, breaking only for dinner. It was my second time starting it. I picked it up in December, read a couple chapters and thought 'I like this but I think if I'm actually in the mood for it I'm going to love it' and then resolved to restart it later. So that's what I did.

I have a decent memory of what happened in those chapters and I was excited to reread them. They didn't disappoint, and like I had assumed, I enjoyed them even more on the second go. Kim Fu has a gift for creating fully-fleshed out characters in a short space of time. By the time I finished this book, I cared so deeply about these girls - especially Nita and Isabel - that not even ten minutes afterward I just started sobbing. There was so much leftover emotion, and just general sadness and a desire for them to be okay.

So I guess I should give some sort of rundown as to what actually happens? We open in a summer camp for girls aged 9-11, Camp Forevermore. On the day of a big kayak trip, five girls from different areas of the US and Canada are put in a group and then a life-altering something happens.

"Everything Siobhan was wearing was brand new: a black fleece she’d chosen for its silver heart-shaped zipper pull, her first pair of hiking boots, even her underwear. She felt a thrilling, terrifying dissolution of self. She was far from her parents, her classmates, anyone who had ever known her. She was curious to find out who she would be."

Leaving the first chapter, we don't know exactly what happens on this kayak/camping trip, and the story itself unfolds in alternating chapters. First come Camp Forevermore chapters wherein we begin to slowly piece the entire incident together, followed by chapters where we follow the girls as they become women, seeing how their lives have been impacted after the fact. Because of this setup, this isn't the most straightforward narrative, but that didn't bother me. I have a sort of weakness for well-crafted vignettes strung together loosely (see: Winesburg, Ohio and The Illustrated Man) and Kim Fu's prose enveloped me fully. As I read tragedy strike these women often again and again, I was devastated. Even clicking through pages I bookmarked just now made me tear up again!

As always happens with books I loved (yes, it's been decided now, I'm glad my thoughts have come together since I started writing this), I can't talk about this properly. I'm simply not able to translate the raw, emotional journey I went on with these girls into words. I hope others are able to review this more coherently, to convince others to pick it up. All I can say now is I think these women's lives are some that will stay with me for a while.

tw: rape, instances of abuse

Set against the idyllic backdrop of a summer camp outing, "The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore" is an interesting riff on the coming-of-age story, with 5 young girls forced into maturity following a tragic incident during an overnight camp out. Selected at random for the group, the girls form uneasy alliances as events unfold; events that will leave them all emotionally scarred for life.
Alternating between the eventful night and their current lives, the past slowly unfurls, almost in the background of the girls' present lives. Fu creates vivid characters, who will instantly resonate - the super-popular seemingly Little Miss Perfect, the quiet girl, the nerdy girl, the outsider, the bullied victim, etc. with the girls shifting roles as the story progresses.
There are shades of "Lord of the Flies" here as knee-jerk reactions take over the girls when things start to go awry, and tensions bubble up in a claustrophobic environment ruled by fear. However, it's nowhere near as extreme as Golding's classic. What it is, is a great read, nicely paced, well constructed and with vivid characters throughout.

This story took me a while to get through and there was a bit of a struggle. Sometimes I would come back to the book and get confused and lost as to what I had read prior.

This was my first venture into the "New Adult" genre, and I'm so glad that I decided to give it a try. I suppose that New Adult explores themes that Young Adult books will shy away from, although I have to admit that I've read some YA that leaned quite heavily into mature subject matter. In The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, we read about five young girls go through a traumatizing event during a summer camp, interspersed with snippets about their adolescent and grown-up lives. Most of these girls carried issues with them throughout adulthood, and it was interesting to see how one event could be experienced so differently by all of them.

It's definitely more psychological than a YA novel would be. There's very little of the novel that explores what happened at Camp Forevermore -- the bulk of the book is reserved for these character stories. Still, it's honestly a page-turner, and Kim Fu doesn't paint these girls through rose-coloured glasses. It almost, at times, reads like a memoir of these characters, and I really enjoyed it.

I have only two complaints about this book. The first complaint would have to be about the ending. It was rushed, and I believe that there could have been a full chapter more, at the very least. The entire story just feels like a big buildup with little satisfaction at the end. My second complaint is about the choice of one specific "present-day" stories - one chapter explores the life of the sister of one of the girls who went to Camp Forevermore, which means that we only got a little bit of insight on how the camp sister's life went after the event. However, the rest of the book is so well crafted that those two complaints don't really change my overall perception of the book.

I'd like to thank Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, as well as Netgalley, for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I really enjoyed it, and I encourage you to pick up a copy when it'll hit the shelves next month!

*Note to Netgalley reviewers: this is e-pub format only and thus will not load on your Kindle.

This was a rather strange book, but I liked it. The writing style took some getting used to with the jumping around in time and characters and going from the camp setting to totally different stories. I expected there to be something to tie them all together at the end but the book was more like short stories showing the individual girls' lives as adults and we could surmise how the camp experience influenced their adult lives.

I can't say that I particularly liked any of the girls though Isobel was probably the most appealing of the bunch. I went to camp once when I was ten years old and I hated it; but I'm certainly glad I didn't have any traumatic experience even approaching the 'Lord of the Flies" type situation here!

It's an interesting book and one that I'll be thinking about for awhile.

This wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be, based on the description, but I was pleasantly surprised! I don’t really see how the camp storyline had much to do with the future storylines of the girls but I enjoyed the writing and I liked the individual stories. This read more like a collection of short stories than a novel but I think it worked. My students will enjoy this one!

Thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the ARC!

It's my first book Kim Fu, so I honestly didn't know what to expect. I know we shouldn't judge books by their covers, but this one is absolutely beautiful and I instantly fell in love with it. The story wasn't quite how I expected, but I liked it. The first chapters are a bit too slow, because we're still getting to know the characters and they have such different backgrounds. I needed a minute to actually understand them. But anyway... It gets better. Nice read.

I have never read anything by Kim Fu before but I will be reading lots more. This is one of the best written novels I have read in a long time. She is an excellent storyteller, weaving each of the five girls' stories into the narrative of what happened on that one disastrous camping trip. I loved seeing how the event affected each of the girls so differently as the novel tracks their lives on into adulthood. Her descriptions are vivid and placed me at each scene effortlessly. The ONLY reason I've given 4 stars instead of 5 is that I was brought up short by the rather abrupt ending.

This book has been getting a TON of buzz and let me tell you, it lives up to the hype. It’s centered on a group of young girls at a summer camp in Vancouver, and a kayaking trip that goes awry, flashing back and forth between that event and the girls' young adulthoods. It’s compelling and evocative stuff. Just really outstanding. A.

FYI: for reviewers who prefer Kindle format, this title is in ePub ONLY. NOT available in Kindle.

Please note star rating is not truly a rating. Only include because required by site.

This book reminded me of my years working at a camp for disabled children. I loved this book. This book was very intriguing

I was a little bored with the story in the beginning... but I’m so glad I pressed on! This book really captured how events in our childhood can shape us, and shape our decision making skills later on. I enjoyed getting to know and like all of the girls. I also really liked the writing, descriptive but not annoyingly so. This is a very good read.