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A few weeks ago, I finished…

Welcome to Camp Nightmare (1993) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ by R. L. Stine.

I was obsessed with Goosebumps when I was a kid. I couldn’t get enough of them, and every time I went to the bookstore, I had to have another one. I read and reread the ones I owned over and over. My favorites were Vampire Breath and The Cuckoo Clock of Doom. I also enjoyed reading the Slappy series.

Welcome to Camp Nightmare, the ninth in the original Goosebumps series from the 90s, is the first in the series that I read as an adult. My copy is the kindle version. It was assigned as book club reading, and I was excited to start; I couldn’t wait to see if Stine’s writing held up.

I wasn’t disappointed! It’s easy to see why R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps series was so popular. With his vivid descriptions, you feel as if you’re actually there and can put yourself in the main character’s shoes for a little while.

Welcome to Camp Nightmare is a nice summer read that transports you back to those far-off days where there were no cell phones and you were sent off to summer camp to play your little heart out unsupervised in the great outdoors. You smell the unmistakable scent of sunblock, row inexpertly on the sparkling lake while your canoe-mates glare and scold you, and swat away Mother Nature’s favorite vampiric insect, the dreaded mosquito.

The book is written in first person, which puts you directly into the mind of the main character, Billy. He says goodbye to mom and dad, and goes off on a bus ride to the strange camp called Camp NightMoon. The action starts pretty quickly, and mystery is in the air, as weird things begin to happen all over the place. The driver scares the kids with a mask, they are dropped off seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and the bus speeds away. They’re almost attacked by pack animals, and Uncle Al saves them. That’s what they call the director of this whole thing, Uncle Al. To be clear, this is short for Alfred, not Artificial Intelligence. I say this because, though I knew they weren’t saying the letters A and I, I couldn’t unsee it in this current future-world of AI becoming a thing so quickly in today’s society.

Anyway, once they get to the bunk and settled in, kids in Billy’s cabin keep disappearing. What’s worse, the counsellors keep acting like the kids who disappeared have never existed. They are no help at all!

All along the way, I couldn’t help but try to predict the next thing that was going to happen, that’s how enjoyable the writing is. I first thought that Colin was going to be a monster or something, because of the mysterious way he was described in the beginning. I thought Larry the counselor was the monster Sabre, and I thought the kids that were disappearing were going to end up as next year’s counselors. All my predictions were wrong. Nothing could have prepared me for the ending.

The twist ending was pretty weird! We find out that this whole thing was a secret operation orchestrated by the government to find out if the kids were strong enough to go on missions with their parents who are government agents. All this time we assume that Billy is from our world, and we now find out that he is from another planet, and is going to go with his parents to visit a strange new planet called Earth.

I get the feeling that most of his endings in the Goosebumps series are silly, though I can only confirm this as time goes on and I read more of his books.

One observation I had while reading the book: No bullies! It almost seems expected in scenarios where there are a large group of children that there might be a band of kids to be the antagonist, but this book, refreshingly, doesn’t rely on that at all as a trope.

There are a lot of questions left unanswered, but you can’t expect that much from a series that churned out one book a month for 5 years. I’m going to give this one 4 stars because I had so much fun reading it, and for the warm feeling of nostalgia it gave.

I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more of R. L. Stine’s series of Goosebumps and Fear Street!

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Donnie
Donnie
1 year ago

I’m not familiar with these stories, but sounds like tantalizing reading! Thanks for he review.

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