Dad Camp by Evan Porter is a heartwarming and humorous novel about a father’s desperate attempt to reconnect with his preteen daughter before the distance between them grows irreparable. John, a self-proclaimed “super dad,” has always been Avery’s biggest supporter, sacrificing his own dreams to be the best father he could be. However, as Avery approaches adolescence, their once-close bond begins to fray, and John fears he’s losing her to the complexities of teenage life.

Determined to salvage their relationship, John takes Avery to a father-daughter retreat, hoping to rekindle their connection. Unfortunately, the camp is not the idyllic getaway he imagined, and his efforts to bond are met with resistance, awkward situations, and a group of toxic dads that only make things worse. As John navigates the challenges of the camp and confronts his own insecurities as a father, he discovers that the real path to reconnecting with Avery might not be through forced activities, but through understanding and trust.

Porter’s novel expertly blends humor with heart, capturing the universal struggle between parents and children as they face the inevitable changes of growing up. Dad Camp is a touching exploration of love, growth, and the lengths a parent will go to in order to protect their bond with their child. A perfect read for anyone who’s ever faced the ups and downs of parenthood.

Genre: Domestic Fiction, Contemporary Fiction
Rating: 4⭐
Diversity: no

SUMMARY:
This debut novel by Porter is heartwarming and humorous about a father desperately trying to reconnect with his pre-teen daughter before she enters middle school. John decides to book a remote father-daughter summer camp for a week in hopes of rekindling their strong bond.

WHAT I LIKED & DISLIKED ABOUT IT:
I loved that we got to see different perspectives and struggles of dads. I find we often get a one-note version of how dads are perceived. In this book, we get to see the different types of dads (stay-at-home, unavailable because he's always working, hyper-masculine ideals, etc.) and see why they are the way they are (or feel they need to be) and see these men be able to get vulnerable and challenge stereotyping.

RECOMMENDATION:
This book is for anyone who's looking for a sweet and funny story about girl dads.

Thank you to NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Dutton for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This was a sweet story. Love the father daughter vibes. I feel like this isn’t done often. The story was a little lack luster and more sentimental than I was expecting. Still a good read though. Thank you netgalley for the ARC !

Liked this book a lot more than I realized I would! It's such a good reminder that we are all just doing the best we can as parents, and no one gets it perfect. Made my feel like I needed to talk to my own dad and just say "I get it!". Not just for dads, moms will love this book too. I feel like I read this at the exact right moment in my life as a mom, and its hitting home with the ways I want my son to grow, but i also want to hold him close. The reading was really enjoyable, and I found a new author I like!

Dad Camp attempts to blend humor and heartfelt moments as it explores fatherhood and the challenges of parenting, but it often falls short of delivering a cohesive narrative. While the premise of dads bonding and learning through camp activities is charming, the execution feels disjointed and lacks depth, leaving characters feeling one-dimensional. The jokes sometimes miss the mark, and the emotional moments can feel forced rather than genuine. Overall, Dad Camp has potential but struggles to find its footing, making it a somewhat underwhelming read for those hoping for a more impactful exploration of its themes.

I felt more comfort from this book because of the title and the subject at hand. A dad and his daughter. I feel as though this would pull at my heart strings because books that involve parent child relationships usually do. This one got to me in ways I don’t think I can explain. I think I enjoyed this one. I would reread it just to see if I can find that feeling it gave me again. We’re all just trying. I like that it felt real yet unrealistic all together. It was sappy and sweet and I felt like I needed that at the time. It just felt like a really good wholesome book and sometimes you need that cleanser.

cool book, very fun vibes. the guncle is def a good comparison to this, same vibes, same mood, same all that. nice book 4.5

I am a Stay at Home Mom to 3 girls and watching my girls go through all of the stages with their Dad has been an absolute pleasure. I picked up this book because I thought it sounded cute and I was right. It was very a very sweet look into the life of a doting Dad and his tween daughter.
John is a very hands on Dad to his 11 year old daughter, Avery. They do everything together from sports teams to camping and just hanging out, but John notices as Avery is getting older she is pulling away from him and he wants to try to recapture the relationship they once had. He books a week at a Daddy/Daughter Camp for the last week of summer and tells Avery about it the night before they are meant to leave. He’s hoping the week will bring him and Avery closer again so when the opposite starts to happen he starts tailspinning. With the help of the other Dads and the very pushy camp director John starts to figure out what kind of Dad Avery needs now.
As I stated before, this book is very cute. It’s well written and has very well rounded characters. I especially loved the small glimpses into the lives of the other Dads since we see so much of them in the periphery of John’s POV.
You can see how much of himself Evan Porter has put into these pages. In the note he put on Goodreads he stated that he wrote this during the shutdown period when he had to find a way of getting away without actually leaving. It’s so close to real life with how tweens treat their parents and how parents feel watching their kids grow up and pull away that any parent will relate.
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group- Dutton for an advice copy of this. I’m sorry it took me so long to get to it. Dad Camp hit the shelves on June 11th.

Thank you for the ARC of this book.

I enjoyed this book and father daughter story line. Quick easy read.

Hmm...where to begin with this one. I found it mostly enjoyable, but I didn't feel a lot of connection to the main character. I enjoyed getting to know some of the other dads at Dad Camp and could appreciate the desire to make connections with their kids. The main character, John, spent lots of time telling us that he was a better dad than everyone else and that Avery was the best athlete, the smartest student, etc. It felt a lot like hanging out with (or avoiding) the parents that are constantly comparing milestones, test scores, and behaviors. It's exhausting. There were some sweet moments of connection and growth for each of the characters and I did enjoy watching the campers eventually bond. It was kind of a mixed bag for me, but I think it was worth reading.

This was a cute read about a dad trying to understand his teenage daughter and trying to bond with her by taking her to this dad/daughter camp. As a daughter it was interesting to follow this book through the dad’s perspective. I liked the other dads and the overall journey that the group went on!

This was such a heartwarming tale about a father and daughters relationship. I flew through this book it was fun fast paced and so heartwarming. The writing was easy and engaging and fast paced and I look forward to reading more from this author in the future. I would like to thank NetGalley and the publishers for a chance to read this book for an honest opinion.

I'm not sure I'm the audience for this sweet, humorous look at father-daughter relationships--and one specific father who is trying to cling to precious moments with his girl before she heads into 6th grade. Gentle wackiness ensues at Camp Triumph, where a cohort of dads and their daughters try to bond over archery, s'mores, and camp songs.

Is this dad comedies a genre? I feel like this has the energy of a Kevin James ensemble movie, maybe with Adam Sandler. Anyway, if this is your jam, or if you are dad about to send your daughter off to middle school, you will probably enjoy this.

<i>I received an advance reader copy from Netgalley for an honest review.</i>

I'm one of the first ones to admit that I don't give dad's near enough credit, especially in fiction. They get cast so easily as the villain, or even forgotten.

In Dad Camp, John has noticed a gap growing between him and his daughter Avery. They used to do everything together, he's always been her buddy and there for her, but as she gets ready to enter middle school, he feels like he's being pushed farther and farther away. So he signs them up for a summer camp - and also manages to get her away from the try outs for the traveling soccer team that he can't follow her to.

John's expectations of the camp are that there will be plenty of activities for him and Avery to bond over. To have time away where they can spend quality time, and remind her of how well they work together. Instead, other than one group activity a day with the girls, John finds himself pushed into activities with his worst nightmare - the other dads.

A look into different relationships that can develop between dads and daughters. The different ways they can let them down. The saving grace, the realization that it's not too late and things can change. The ways dads can be there for their daughters.

Like I said, it's so easy to overlook the time and role dad's can have in their children's life, especially their daughters. Parents give so much when their children are born, and they don't always understand the needs that come with different ages as their child grows up. This was such a sweet book, with such an earnest dad.

Thank you to Penguin Group for the ARC through NetGalley! I would have missed this one if you hadn't recommended it for me, and I would have been sad to miss out on this gem!

Dad camp is as the title suggests, campy. It’s a story about a dad trying to hang on to his fun filled adventurous relationship with his preteen daughter. As a last ditch effort to strengthen this bond he enrolls them in a week long retreat that turns out to be a lot more soul searching than he bargained for. John and the other fathers are forced to confront their own views of fatherhood and reckon with how they relate to other men as much as to their daughters.

This was a cute book and I think the descriptions encapsulated a lot of the meat of the story. I could tell the author was a man (and a dad) pretty quickly and it seemed like he was almost writing his own story, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I felt like John, the main dad was just floating by and not always fully in the story at times. I would have liked the book more if you actually had different perspectives from the other dads, beyond just their letters home. Overall, it was a cute read and enjoyable.

This was so sweet ❤️
I adored John and Avery’s relationship, and I found both of them really relatable and realistic.

I listened to the audiobook and thought the narrator was great. It felt like he really was John.

I wish I had more to say about Dad Camp. I enjoyed it, just don’t have a lot to mention specifically since it’s not the romance books I normally read lol.

This was a very sweet book examining father daughter relationships. I really enjoyed this one. I thought the author did a good job of developing his characters, even the side characters of the other dads at the camp. It gave perfect summer camp vibes, and I felt like I was right in the cabin with John and Avery. It was heart warming, showing the struggles that fathers can have relating to their daughters and it was touching at the end how each of the dads in John's group seemed to grow because of the camp. It was a bit cheesy at time, but overall I found it to be quite charming and I appreciated this book. I would recommend for anybody who loves books with a summer camp vibe, young parents, and who appreciate developing strong father daughter relationships

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for an advanced reading copy of this book. All opinions within this review are my own.

Dad Camp is a unique twist on the standard coming-of-age story in that instead of the pre-teen discovering themselves, in this case the focus is on the dad, John and his struggle to find his identity after his eleven-year-old daughter Avery suddenly doesn't want to spend all her time with him. In a last-ditch effort to save his relationship, he books a weeklong stay at a Daddy/Daughter summer camp.

Although this book is saccharine sweet and delves deep into the emotional bonds that dads have or in the case of some of the side characters, don't have, with their daughters during the tween years, I felt that not only Avery acted a bit too old for her tender age of 11 and would have been better aged up by a year to 12, but I also felt John was the most vanilla of vanilla dads and husbands. I found his humor to be extremely juvenile and his observations to the world around him were without substance. I was expecting a lot more humor and funny scenes, but instead got a lot of feel-good situations that felt a bit too neatly wrapped up with a bow.

I'm not quite sure who the audience this one is writen for. Dads are unlikely to read it as it is a family drama and moms aren't going to be able to relate to the dads so much as the moms on the sidelines putting up with their idiot husbands. It was an enjoyable read, however and as a mom of 2 teenagers, there are many insights that prove to be very true with wanting to hold on to your babies for as long as possible, but also wanting them to be independent. I would recommend this book for fans of Fredrik Backman if you like a feel good book, but don't expect to laugh out loud.

Thank you to NetGalley, Dutton, and Evan S. Porter for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

I started out fairly frustrated with the predictability of this book but, I stuck with it and it got better. When you start rooting for "Dad" to stop making stupid decisions you are hooked. A little bit sappy in places but it gives you all the feels. Nice afternoon read.

I thought this was a really fun story about a father, John, who in an effort to reconnect with his daughter, Avery, signs them up for a father-daughter summer camp.
I personally didn’t find John’s character very likable, but he did redeem himself somewhat towards the end.
Overall, I thought this was a heartwarming story, with a simple plot that was well written.