This book captures the "pull" of summer camp. The ability of that special time to really impact a life. Just add a mystery and some murder and this book gets even better.

Jessica Goodman can do no wrong in my opinion. I loved her first two books, and her newest was one of my most anticipated books of 2022 — especially since it takes place at a summer camp!

THE COUNSELORS is about an elite summer camp where three best friends met. Now Goldie, Imogen, and Ava are back as counselors. Goldie has been desperate to be back at camp with her friends, and is hoping she can keep her dark secret hidden. But then Heller, the boy who shattered Goldie’s heart ends up dead in the lake at camp, and Goldie will not stop until she has answers.

I completely devoured this one. The story reminded me of so many things I loved about camp, while also having a ✨killer✨ plot. It’s fast paced with short chapters, and it alternates between past and present. It’s a fun element that the camp is elite — Goldie is the only camper/counselor from the area, while everyone else comes from rich families and goes to prep schools. While they are from different worlds, the three girls have a bond that can’t be broken. Each of them have something to hide, and the secrets kept me on the edge of my seat. I truly couldn’t put it down!

4.5/5

Okay! So! I LOVED this book.

The summer camp thriller is something I didn't know I truly needed until this book, because OH MY GOSH it's like Friday the Thirteenth but add thriller and mystery and subtract the horror. The mystery was intriguing and something I desperately was waiting to find out if I was right--and I LOVE when the mystery is played out really well, which it is here.

Another thing I loved is the casual Jewish rep. This book is FULL of it and FILLED with Jewish characters, which I loved. I also got the impression that the summer camp was based off of Jewish sleepaway camps, and I love that because it really, really was the vibe here.

This book is the perfect summer YA thriller and I can't wait for everyone else to get their hands on it.

Thank you so much to Razorbill for sending me an arc!

This book was amazing for two reasons.

1) The story and plot twist. I love a good thriller and murder mystery. I know I am gullible but I didn’t guess whodunnit and I was engaged the whole time.

2) It is clear the author went to sleep away because oh the nostalgia!!! All the details about summer camp from color war to living for those summer months to be with those friends turned family. It brought back serious memories.

This was very much a 5 star read for me and I will recommend it to all and be getting a physical copy when it publishes!

Honestly, I feel like this book will only really be enjoyed by people who have summer camp nostalgia. It does have that summery air, but from someone who never went to a camp, everything was just blah.

The mystery was decent but I wasn’t a fan of the main character.

Jessica Goodman has been a little hit and miss for me- I felt middling about her debut and then loved They'll Never Catch Us. The Counselors was another one I liked fine, but didn't love.

That said, it is a very summery YA mystery and might appeal more to readers who have actually spent time at this kind of sleepaway summer camp and have nostalgia for it. (I'm only familiar with them from movies and the closest I got was youth group church retreats, which is an entirely different can of worms.) Thematically what I found interesting was the emphasis on friendship and class differences. There are some great depictions of complicated female friendships throughout the book and while the camp is a very privileged place, we see it through the perspective of someone who is a bit of an outsider because her parents are camp staff.

The mystery elements were okay- the main character did a lot of making assumptions based on little information and didn't actually solve anything. Though she did dig around enough to make people uncomfortable and inadvertently brought the truth to the surface. I also couldn't relate to her inability to tell her friends the truth about her life because she feels inadequate or why she would let someone ruin her life without saying anything. Given how dogged she is in trying to dig up dirt it feels inconsistent in terms of character and those were probably the weakest elements.

So if you're looking for summer camp nostalgia with a side of murder and privilege thrown in, this isn't a bad option, just don't necessarily go in with sky high expectations. I received an advance copy of this book via netgalley, all opinions are my own.

Jessica Goodman's writing just gets better with time, I swear. Here we have a slow burn thriller where everyone (and no one) is a suspect, told in alternating timelines. What makes it feel unique is the sleepaway camp for the elite setting, where Goldie is the only townie. I made several guesses throughout of who the culprit would be (and regretably switched my pick at 80%), but I thought it was wonderful. The ending got a little rushed, but I ultimately loved the murder plot enough to ignore it. This is the perfect YA thriller for summer, especially if you're camping!

*Thank you to Razorbill and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review*

Jessica Goodman has nailed yet another YA thriller and I am already wondering when her fourth book will be out. Goldie and her best friends Ava and Imogen have reunited for another summer at Camp Alpine Lake. The young women look forward to camp every year and say fondly 10 for 2 a joyful camp expression. This is their first summer as counselors and the first summer that after years of friendship they aren't being completely honest with each other. When a dead body turns up in the lake, a dead body that Goldie knows very well Goldie quickly learns she may not be the only person at camp with secrets. The pacing of this novel was great and the friendship of the girls is so authentic to the ebbs and flows of teenage relationships. I've never been to summer camp and this book left me wanting to pack my bags and googling adult summer camps.

Book Review: The Counselors by Jessica Goodman
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The Counselors is a perfect summer read for any person that wants nostalgia for those summer nights as kids, with nothing but having time to spend with your friends and what cute boy you should kiss on your mind. But what makes this book even better, is Goodman delivers all of that with the twist of a mystery layered on top. I loved how well Goodman hits on all the points of summer friendships and the feeling that camp can give you, she absolutely nailed those moments for the reader and I also love the POVs that Goodman uses. She jumps from past to present, only giving pieces of the full picture for the reader as the story goes along, which left me guessing until the very end of the whodunit? It's definitely a fun book to pick up and reads quickly. It could be a great book to spice up your TBR and keep you out of a reading slump.

We follow Goldie Easton as she goes back to the place that means the most to her, Camp Alpine Lake, to be a counselor with her two best friends, Ava Cantor and Imogen Wexley. Years before, the girls met their as campers and now spend their last summers together as counselors at a place where everything always made sense and it was a safe hideaway from real life, until this summer when things at Camp Alpine Lake were not quiet as they seemed. It seems like everyone is hiding their own secrets. Goldie is trying desperately to hold on to the normal that was Camp Alpine Lake and to keep her best friends from knowing her biggest secret. But when the boy that Goldie loved shows up dead at her beloved camp, all of the dark secrets start to spill out and leave Goldie with betrayal and in danger.

What a fun mystery! I loved the small-town background, the sinister camp vibes, and the overall feeling of summer days with your friends. I thought I knew who was behind everything, but I was only partly right, and I loved that! There were so many twists and turns throughout, and I was racing to get to the end. Definitely very Fear Street 1978 meets The Stepping Off Place. Highly recommend for that perfect summer read!

I am a die-hard Jessica Goodman fan, for me no one does relatable YA suspense like she writes and THE COUNSELOR was absolutely perfect.

I never got to go to camp for the summer, but did do week long camps and this one immediately caught my attention, I would have LOVED to have grown up attending camp each summer. I was lucky enough to host a chat with Jessica about her last book, They’ll Never Catch Us for loveARCtually and she had given us a little sneak peek at this synopsis that had me SO impatient for it’s release!

Thanks to Penguin Teen I received an eARC and as soon as it hit my inbox I moved it to the top of my TBR, and it was as amazing as expected.

Goodman just has a writing style that keeps me guessing and dying to know the whole story. I loved how this one flashed from past to present view points and the portrayal of these three best friends who met at such an important place in their lives. The balance between being who you are at home versus the person you WANT to be seen as in your favorite place, and how woven into Goldie’s life Camp Alpine Lake really is.

I devoured the book — I just couldn’t imagine going to bed before knowing what would happen, and stayed up late to read it. The secrets the girls kept from one another, Goldie’s struggles and how we were given insight into her life as a townie, her love for camp and how complicated life has gotten since last summer was done so well, I really loved this one!

The Counselors, by Jessica Goodman, comes out in just over one month and is full of summer camp killer vibes, interesting characters that you can’t quite pin down, and a twisted mystery that will keep you guessing.

The Counselors follows junior camp counselor, Goldie, an eighteen-year-old who has been affiliated with Camp Alpine Lake for nearly her whole life. Both her parents work there, she’s been attending since she was a kid, and now she’s taking the reins as a counselor herself—something she has always dreamed of doing with her two besties, Ava and Imogen. The three girls met at camp years ago, growing up together in long distance friendships and joyfully reuniting at Alpine Lake each summer.

Goldie is a little different than the other campers. Though it’s located in a small, rural town, Alpine Lake caters to the wealthy. The upper echelons. The privileged. None of which describe Goldie. Goldie attends the expensive camp for free due to her parents’ employment there, and as she has gotten older, she has become acutely aware that she doesn’t quite fit in, and even though they’ve always accepted her and never made her feel “less than”, her life is very different from Ava and Imogen’s. But she also doesn’t quite fit in in town, either, since her classmates and other people in town associate her with the fancy summer camp, and accuse her of thinking she is better than them or thinking she looks down on them, which lead to her peers excluding and often downright bullying her. (People can be so mean, but not fitting in in your small town and getting relentlessly bullied is definitely an aspect of Goldie’s story I can easily relate to.)

Right before camp starts, tragedy strikes when the head lifeguard heads down to the lake one morning only to find a dead body floating in the water. But the body isn’t just anyone—it’s Goldie’s ex-boyfriend. And as the story unfolds, we find out there’s a lot of skeletons in the closet, and the story of what happened between the two of them is darker and sadder than her friends could have guessed.

Goldie is determined to figure out what exactly happened to Heller, and the story ekes out information slowly because it flashes back and forth between the present, as Goldie balances her camp counselor duties with investigating what could have happened to Heller—and if someone at her beloved camp could be responsible for his death—and the past, where we see Goldie and Heller’s relationship blossom and then meet with the tragedy that tore Goldie’s life as she knew it apart.

The format of the book, flashing back and forth between past and present, really turns this into a slow burn as we try to piece together what happened in the past with what is happening now, and place each person in the story line. There are lots of twists and turns as we follow along with Goldie and try to figure out which leads are legitimate and which are taking her down the wrong path, and one point, as far as I was concerned, everyone was a suspect.

We all know I love a good summer camp setting for some reason, so a summer camp based murder mystery/thriller was really a lot of fun. Nothing like a little stabbing mixed in with your s’mores, right? But aside from the setting and the mystery, The Counselors has a lot of other interesting elements. Goodman herself writes that it is, in part, a commentary on privilege, and what some people get away with vs. others based on wealth, privilege, or simply who they know—things they take for granted—and that’s extremely relatable, too. (The type of thing where if it doesn’t get you fired up, you’re probably not paying attention.) Another aspect I loved was the emphasis on found family, or your friends being like family to you. I always love a good found family theme in a book, especially YA, and Goodman writes it well here, taking three girls who don’t necessarily have much in common and bringing them together as their own version of family based simply on the love they have for one another. I found it really beautiful.

So if you’re looking for a twisty, slow burn thriller with a fun summer camp setting, some cutting commentary on privilege, and a great found family aspect, you will absolutely adore The Counselors. I really enjoyed reading this and thank you again so much to Penguin Teen for my ARC copy

I have never been to sleep away camp. It never seemed like something I would enjoy, but somehow Goodman has made me nostalgic for a place that I never got to experience. Granted, the main focus of this book is supposed to be on the murder and the secrets that everyone was hiding, but I was more intrigued with how much love and affection Goodman instilled in Goldie and therefore in me. I don’t think I’ve ever had a place that meant so much to me; a place that had the chance to alter the events of my own life.

As for this book being a mystery thriller, I wish there had been more urgency to the storyline. It wasn’t that this book dragged on, it just never really made me desperate to turn the page to find out what was going to happen next. It seemed like the stakes were too low, and Goldie just kind of stumbled across the clues instead of actively investigating.

All in all, this was a great book that showcased how important relationships are, but it was not the best thriller I have ever read.

3.5 stars