| Title | : | The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 |
| Publication | : | First published February 13, 2018 |
| Awards | : | Washington State Book Award Fiction (2019), OLA Evergreen Award (2019) |
The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore traces these five girls—Nita, Kayla, Isabel, Dina, and Siobhan—through and beyond this fateful trip. We see them through successes and failures, loving relationships and heartbreaks; we see what it means to find, and define, oneself, and the ways in which the same experience is refracted through different people. In diamond-sharp prose, Kim Fu gives us a portrait of friendship and of the families we build for ourselves—and the pasts we can't escape.
The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore Reviews
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Okay, y'all. Brace yourselves, this might sting.
First, raise the flag; I made it through.
I feel so accomplished. The willpower it took to power through this one; I'm exhausted.
I am glad this was so short, otherwise I would have had to DNF it and I HATE doing that.
Clearly, The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore was a struggle for me.
It was so all over the place, just not my style at all. It was nothing like what I expected, nor am I sure what the author was trying to get across.
I expected this to be a modern, gender-flipped version of Lord of Flies, but was completely off base.
The writing itself was smart, but altogether lackluster, leaving me so that I did not care AT ALL about any of the characters.
I would have preferred a more linear narrative to this disjointed, completely chaotic story. I understand that is a personal preference and it is just my opinion.
You may read this and love it. I mean, I know many readers will enjoy this, sadly, it just was not the book for me.
On to the next! -
This book didn’t work for me at all, mainly due to structural issues that took an interesting premise and turned it into an unnecessary (and ultimately unsatisfying) mystery for this reader. Keeping many of the details from the reader until the end, not providing near enough details, and weaving stories in between select pieces of information about what happened on the island caused the backstory to feel like a separate, unrelated story. That is the opposite of what was intended. The book attempts to show the lifelong effects of a shared trauma but the girls never seem especially connected at the camp, let alone later in life.
This was very well written, but it was too focused on the “after” with limited information or connection to the “before.” I wish it was told as a cohesive story because it could have been tremendously compelling with such a talented writer. 2.5 stars -
THE LOST GIRLS OF CAMP FOREVERMORE is a sensitive, evocative exploration of how the past threads itself through our lives, reemerging in unexpected ways. Kim Fu skillfully measures how long and loudly one formative moment can reverberate.
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I can’t resist a book with an ensemble cast, especially if the characters are thrown together into an unusual or high-stakes situation. I love trying to get into each character’s head and analyzing the group dynamics, the allying and backstabbing. And my favorite part, picking which character I relate to the most and rooting for them (and maybe actively pulling against the characters I don’t like). The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore is thus, of course, right up my alley. Five tweens at sleepaway camp paddle out on an overnight kayak trip with an elderly camp counselor who turns out not to be in as good shape physically as she lets on. Plans change, disaster strikes, and a quiet mayhem ensues. I say quiet because the action doesn’t rise to Lord of the Flies levels of anarchy and violence, but the growing desperation of the campers and their pragmatism (or maybe the word is callousness? Depends on your interpretation) in the face of obstacles create a creeping dread that just sucked me in.
A note on the structure: this book is as much about the incident at camp as it is about the rest of the girls’ lives afterwards. The camp sections are woven between short story-like chapters detailing each of the girls’ adult lives in turn. Some readers might be more interested in the headline-grabbing story of five girls stranded in the woods and find the adult sections superfluous. For me, though, it was a way to get to know each of the characters really well, which is exactly what I wanted. It was striking to me how some of the girls were drastically changed as adults, barely recognizable except in fleeting moments as the kids they used to be, while others seemed stuck in some kind of permanent preadolescence, unable to move on or grow up.
A fascinating character study framed by a heart-pounding, life or death trek through the unknown. I was riveted. (Also, Team Siobhan all the way.)
More book recommendations by me at
www.readingwithhippos.com -
At its most positive, this novel reminded me of the TV show Lost. The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore follows five girls who get stranded during a summer camp trip and must fend for their own safety. Kim Fu intersperses this in-the-present suspenseful fight for survival with flashbackwards and flashforwards into each of these girls’ lives.
I thought that two of the five girls’ stories (i.e., Dina’s and Siobhan’s) were interesting and compelling. In these stories, Fu did a nice job of showing the effects of trauma on how these girls’ development throughout life, how it affected their self-esteem, career choices, intimate relationships, and more. Unfortunately, for the most part though I felt that these snapshots into the girls’ lives were lacking in depth. Similarly, I thought that the portion about their time on the island felt stilted. I think if the writing had bit tighter in both sections they may have blended well into a more compelling overall novel. I could see what Fu was going for though and I appreciate that she tried a narrative structure that’s different from other stories. -
3.5 stars
See me discuss this briefly in my March wrap up:
https://youtu.be/4yQLSgVJtSo?t=4m32s -
The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore is structured so that we have The Incident at camp, alternated by snippets of the lives the girls have led since their time at Camp Forevermore.
You would think that this Incident would play a huge role in the future point of views of these girls. I was really expecting it to be intensely amplified, for Kim Fu to go heavy with her strokes and consequently alter the lives of her characters based on the one shared but very individual experience. What we get is a slight nod to that Incident here and a passing mention there in these POVs, and a very subtle underlying theme of loss and being lost.
Do I feel cheated by what I thought I'd get from this book? Yes. Do I feel like this novel was any lesser? No, actually. The very different and unique perspectives make this book a standout for me. Sure, The Incident ended up becoming a little more gimmicky than it needed to be, but even those chapters were highly engrossing and set the tone for who these girls are and how their young selves could have gone down the path that they ended up in. And that makes for a very lively discussion on what the links are and how The Incident might have, could have, should have left a bigger scar on the girls beyond the printed lines.
Because of how quiet and not heavy-handed The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore has been put together in a narrative form, I have definitely been left thinking of the book a lot more, perhaps forevermore. -
Review soon.
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3☆ A Short Read.
When I read the blurb for The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore I was really excited, it sounded like it was going to be a creepy enthralling read.
But Unfortunately this wasn't the case.
I found the whole story to be rather disjointed and at times confusing.
The start of the story was about Camp Forevermore, but it felt way too rushed and lots of characters were introduced I had no clue who they was or how they fitted into the story.
It was a shame as i feel, if there was more build up about the camp, had been given then it would of really set the scene nicely.
The story then goes on to follow each of the five girls after the Camp Forevermore, however each of their stories felt like short seperate stories and not connecting as a whole to the plot.
Which made it difficult to connect with the characters. I was expecting to delve into the girls lives and get a look into how tragedy effected them and their relationships with each other. But that wasn't the case.
I do think this book has potential but it needed more.
It did feel rushed in places and i felt Camp Forevermore should of got more storyline.
I would of also liked to of seen the girls stories connect to each other and have more reference to the main plot.
Overall an interesting read, but would of liked more storyline.
Thank you to Legend Press for this copy which I reviewed honestly and voluntarily. -
Camp Forevermore has been a summer tradition for girls, aged 9-11, for generations. Some have retained fond enough memories of their young summers to return as counsellors and helpers during their adult years. But whether they can return is a lot different to whether they should.
This story is split in both time and perspective. One portion follows a group of girls on an overnight kayaking trip that will end in disaster and alter the trajectory of their lives. The second portion delivers a rundown of the major events of the lives of each of the girls marked by that fateful trip.
I enjoyed the style of story-telling throughout but I did find the camp section and those that came afterwards to feel like two distinct stories. Of the two, I vastly preferred the camp sections. These was infused with tension, drama, suspense, and horror. Having adult perspectives spoiled any tense feelings around the situation, as it was made obvious who survived.
The camp sections have been 5 star reads! The intersecting portions, detailing the girl's lives afterwards, didn't gel nearly so well with me and seemed a tad pointless. I wish they had been truncated or omitted entirely so the camp drama could unfold in more detail and with added horror of the unknown. -
I never went to summer camp as a camper—I waited until I was 15 or 16 and went as a camp worker. Kitchen work, mostly, setting out plates & cutlery, setting out food, and washing up afterwards. This book makes me think that I made the right choice.
So often people say that children are so resilient, that they can survive bad events much easier than adults can. I think Kim Fu is telling us that this assumption is wildly optimistic. She seems to prefer the old saying, “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.” Like all authors do, Fu torments her characters to the edge of their ability to bear. I was particularly intrigued by how she envisioned their lives progressing in the aftermath of their disastrous camp experience. All the girls have interesting trajectories, but I must say that I was most entertained by Dina's lack of comprehension of her situation. Her mother's scorn seems to keep her locked into defiance and an adolescent mindset.
The girls belong to wildly different kinds of families and the reader can't help but compare how these very divergent children cope with both the camp situation and subsequent young adulthood. I found myself speculating about what I would have done as a child in the same situation, coming to no firm conclusions. I've survived many challenges, but always got through them by putting one foot in front of the other. Much easier to do as an adult!
This is an engrossing book that gives the reader plenty of issues to think about. If you are looking for a reason to avoid camping, this is your book! -
It's been a while since I DNF'd a book. I hate doing that because I keep thinking, "what if it had gotten better?"
But I just couldn't read this one anymore. The story starts with these four girls who are in a camp together. And then the next chapter goes on to tell the future of one of those girls. Then another 'in the camp' chapter followed by another girl's story.
I read half of the book before finally giving up. I just couldn't see the point of reading all of it. The past and the future, there were no connections. And it was getting quite boring. So, after a long struggle, I gave up.
The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore was, quite unfortunately, just not for me. -
What starts off as ghost stories and marshmallows by the campfire quickly goes downhill and takes a turn for the worse, much like this book did for me. The story had SO much potential to be one hell of an awesome thriller but the author chose to go a whole other direction and I’m still not quite sure what she was going for. The storytelling was disjointed and chaotic, jumping from one timeline to another with no pattern whatsoever. I just wanted to hear about what happened at camp and the story seemed to go everywhere BUT there. The brief, all too short glimpses of the events at camp are what kept me going but sadly those were few and far between and everything else was a drag to read!
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Kim Fu's novel has a somewhat unusual structure, weaving back and forth from the past to the future life of one of the characters, then back to the past, then on to another girl.
In the past, a small group of girls at Camp Forevermore experience something traumatic, which is revealed partway through the novel; though the incident, I found, was of less import than the ways the girls coped immediately afterwards. Because we know each of them survived the incident, this removes a little of the tension from the past, though it doesn't remove from one's concern for the girls. Or for what they did and said during this period. The future story strands following each girl through her post-Forevermore time shows how this past period set the mold for the girls' lives, with the pain, confusion and fear during their time in the isolation of their camp and eventual rescue having longterm, deleterious effects on them. The writing is accomplished, though I did wonder at Fu's choice to focus one one of the girl's young sister's experiences and perception of her, rather than the girl herself. -
Some pre-teen girls have a bad camping trip then go on to live fairly normal lives. That’s the gist of this book. It would have made more sense to me if their lives had been impacted more significantly by the camping experience or if the girls had interacted as adults. I was pretty disappointed with the ending too.
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Kayla understood this as a fundamental difference between men and women: men could leave, women had to stay.
This is shelved as a YA book on Goodreads -- I suspect because of its short length at just 256 pages, and how the protagonists are pre-teens during one of the story threads; but I actually feel like this just vibes better as literary fiction? The prose is so lovely, soft and meditative and meandering, to the extent that it actually managed to crack open a reading lull that I was stuck in, and I happily inhaled this. 4.5 stars.
I went fairly blind into the book, and I think that served me well because I see from unfavourable reviews that a lot of people's grievances settle on 'it's not what I expected from the blurb'. So, I would say don't approach it like a mystery or a thriller or even Lord of the Flies: it's more of a character study, the traumatic event more a framework for the more domestic, slice-of-life tales later, which I found oddly riveting.
I really loved the back-and-forth structure, myself: one narrative thread in the past, centering on what happened to these girls on that fateful weekend at Camp Forevermore, when they were stranded in the wilderness and had to survive. The rest is alternating glimpses into their futures, the women they grew up to become, the lives that unfurled, the ripples and effects that that event had on them -- or didn't. It's more about the small things made horrifying, like a family dog, or motherhood, or the expectations piled on girls from a young age onwards.
In my Kindle Highlights, I'm actually going to mark most of my quotes as a spoiler, because I consider the characterisation details as the real 'spoiler': finding out who they became, what they did with their lives, how small childhood tics blossom into adult traits & damage. Kim Fu isn't afraid, either, of making her characters unlikeable or vicious. The women go through rough circumstances later in life, too, but it's never tragedy porn, it never milks their suffering. It's just... life, in all its touching quiet happiness and sadness.
I'm hard-pressed to choose a favourite character/thread. I think Andee's chapter got me most, with the sisterly relationship between her and Kayla (and it was an interesting choice to frame it from Kayla's POV instead, so that we only ever see Andee from the sidelines, from a remove -- which I see that some people disliked, but again, I loved as an experiment, I love exploring how a character might be seen from the outside). I also loved, loved Isabel and Dina's separate-but-intersecting stories, two different portraits of the Asian-American experience in the Pacific Northwest (which setting is also close to my heart, since I lived in Vancouver for half a decade). Mother-daughter relationships, in all their different permutations and varieties, also feature prominently.
Anyway, I suppose YMMV, but if you like well-written character studies and vignettes, I am all about this.
Read for my reading bingo square:
Pick one of 46 books by WOC. -
(2.5) I read the first 66 pages, skimmed to p. 86 of 190, and gave up. Camp Forevermore is a Pacific Northwest getaway for nine- to eleven-year-old American and Canadian girls. We get a brief introduction to a set of campers from the early nineties on an isolated overnight adventure – they’re pretty hard to keep straight – before diving deep into one’s life for the next 20+ years. First up is Nita: her love for her childhood German shepherd, her medical training and sudden career-ending accident, her husband and sons, her beekeeping hobby. But this long interlude means Fu doesn’t sustain the suspense about whatever the bad thing was that happened when the girls were campers. After another short section back on the island with the girls, next up is Andee, whose story is far too similar to that told in
The Lauras. It also seems like something of a cheat to focus on her sister Kayla’s Christian conversion when Andee was the camper. A disappointment after Fu’s
For Today I Am a Boy. -
I totally thought that The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore by Kim Fu was a five star read and I can’t believe I hadn’t heard anything about it before I randomly found it perusing new audiobooks at my library. This book tells the story of a group of girls who get super fucking lost in the predator-filled woods when their camp counsellor just up and dies after taking them off course on a kayaking trip, and as that story unfolds, also visits each girl in their earlier and later lives. Lookit. This book was so damn good. Fu did it all exactly right. She captured personalities and experiences so well I kept on finding myself being like “she must be a doctor”, “she must feel that way about kids”, “she must have grown up like that”, but in fact, I think she was just a master at understanding the things that shape people and how people see themselves in the world. She did families right. She did feelings right. She did the lord of the flies dynamics in the woods right. She did it all right. It was really just such an engaging and excellent book from beginning to end, there isn’t much else to say. It’s a great audiobook, it’s a great book. Read it.
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4 stars--I really liked it. What a surprising, gripping read.
I expected cannibalism and Lord of the Flies, but instead this is a quieter novel about character, and about how trauma from the past can change lives. I loved all four women's stories. -
4 ⭐️
・🏕・🐻・🍃・🥪・🛶・
This book reminded me of the kinds of stories I read when I was in writing workshops for my English degree; that is to say, I felt extremely aware of the craft of writing... and just how wonderful Kim Fu is at craft.
The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore reminded me of an anthology in the sense that there were many vignettes of the girls, their lives, and the lives of their loved ones mixed alongside the story of the girls' survival. Some of these character studies were absolutely enthralling while a few just didn't grab me quite as much, and I found myself anticipating being back in the woods with the girls. The Camp Forevermore sections were by far my favorite, and of all the girls, Nita's story was the strongest one for me followed by Andee. -
This was ok. I didn't dislike it but I also didn't feel involved at all.
I think I expected more survival, more of something pivotal that completely changed the girls' lives. The girls' adult lives are the focus of this tale but the correlations between their disastrous camping trip and where they end up years later are tenuous at best.
Sure, you could make the argument that it's worth noting that death seems to follow the one who faced death head on and the one who got busted for panic eating wound up with an eating disorder and the one who felt she held the group together never feels like she knows what she's doing, etc. But I wasn't convinced their lives weren't a result of their core personalities and the decisions they would have made regardless of their two nights lost in the woods.
Of course, a huge part of my inability to be sucked into this novel was due to my life. My environment is populated with bears and mountain lions...and giant raccoons and pushy, rude deer and wild turkeys (the bird not the beverage) and coyotes and tons of nature. My imagination wouldn't let me latch onto the fear these kids felt because I didn't understand what they were afraid of. I also didn't understand why they were that afraid after having been at camp for a week. Isn't that where you learn to not be afraid of wildlife and you learn to build fires and stuff? I never went to a camp so I don't really know what happens there.
The tense, suspenseful survival story I had hoped for was not there for me and the aftermath of the girls' lives didn't really seem to tie in to their childhood trauma. I enjoyed listening to it because it's well-written and well-narrated but it's not a story that's going to stick with me. -
In The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, five girls set out with their camp leader on a kayaking and camping excursion. Their leader decides to push the girls even harder, rowing for a farther, more secluded island for camping. No one from camp knows where they went, and no one from camp knows that these girls are stranded and alone. There is a pivotal point in these characters’ lives that changes the course of their adulthoods.
The novel is told in vignettes, back and forth in time from the adolescent girls at Camp Forevermore and then their later adult lives. Each girl’s story is told in turn. Not all the girls’ adult stories seem relevant to the camp incident, but perhaps that’s the point the author is subtly implying: some girls overcome, and some never recover. I appreciated that the characters were not cardboard stereotypes. The girls have different personalities and come from different backgrounds, and that adds to their experience and also to their suffering on the island.
I enjoyed this novel. The writing is intelligent and contemplative. The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore is a story of basest natures coming to the surface when faced with adversity with the follow up of how one trauma can infect people’s minds for the rest of their lives. I look forward to reading more from this author.
Many thanks to Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review. -
I’ve seen mixed reviews for this book, but I enjoyed it! It explores the way in which a traumatic experience at Camp Forevermore impacts and shapes the lives of five young girls. I found some of their stories more interesting than others, but overall, I thought it was well written and engaging.
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A huge thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the free review copy!
After finishing this book it took me a while to decompress and gather my thoughts about this book. It tells the story of five girls who go to summer camp together and how their lives go on after their summer together. The girls are left to fend for themselves on a kayaking trip which leads to many of their life choices later in life.
While I did enjoy the book I sometimes found it confusing as it would jump from the summer at camp to one girls present day life/how they got where they were today. I really did enjoy learning about all the girls and their lives though! -
This book was intriguing and immersive. Multiple storylines and perspectives are sometimes done poorly, but in this case they were well balanced and complimentary. Structurally, it alternates between quick snippets of the disastrous summer camp trip, and longer novella like stories about the girls lives, mostly after their fateful summer. I actually preferred the self contained stories of the girls lives.
The "lost" from the title refers as much to the adult women trying to find their way in today's world as it does to the summer camp incident. The girls are very different, and lead very different lives. Some are more likable than others, but all the stories are compelling. There are interesting themes throughout. Fu explores many of the issues facing women in today's world, including , sexualization, exploitation, entitlement, low self esteem, the pressure to have a family, and the balance between work and motherhood. She studies these issues unflinchingly, and her characters are all deeply flawed. I didn't love the camp story, but I thought the ending was satisfying. I really did enjoy this.
*I received an advanced reader copy of this book from Indigo Books and Music Inc./the publisher in exchange for an honest review. -
I'm not exactly sure what exactly
The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore is about. I understand the plot, but it is cobbled together in chapters (arguably this is a short story collection with linking sections that take place in the same chronology) that are very void of any thematic heft. I have an issue with the cover of the book (not
Kim Fu's fault) and the title (
Kim Fu's fault), which make this seem like a YA novel. But I think the author was going for something more mature than that with this book. The dust jacket blurb claims that the book is "an ambitious and dynamic portrayal of the harm humans—even young girls—can do." I guess that's what this is about, but it is a really lukewarm treatment of such a subject.
Overall, a good handful of stories about girls growing up based on a single traumatic experience ("oh, that's interesting that that's where that lead them"), but sadly underwhelming. -
I really liked this book about 5 young girls who get stranded in the woods and how their experience during that harrowing time affects them throughout the rest of their lives. The book is set up as basically short stories about each girl, with the camp story from their childhoods interweaving between their personal stories. Themes of paralysis and dissatisfaction and invisibility and silence and abandonment all sprinkle through the girls' stories and you have to read til the end to really find out why some of them choose the things they choose or act the way they do.
I really liked how achy and sad it was and how beautifully it was written. I liked the diversity of the girls, not just in their racial and class makeup, but in the way they thought and perceived the world.
p.s. I like the nod to Peter Pan in the title and how the lost girls have to grow up faster than normal rather than stay young forever like their Peter Pan counterparts. Or even worse, that they're still somehow stuck forever as those little lost girls, unable to finish their normal childhoods and enter stable adulthood. -
From reading other reviews, I feel it's important to adjust your expectations if you want to pick this up. This book is most definitely meant for an adult audience, and while the traumatic experience at camp is in the book, it only really serves the purpose of establishing their personalities as children. Most of the book follows the same women as adults (except for one, in which we follow the perspective of her sister, which was odd), living their lives in perfectly believable and depressing ways, their relationships to their parents and religion. Their shared experience doesn't seem to have had much impact on them as adults, with the one exception at the end of the book that felt as an afterthought. Only two of the characters interact as adults, and only tangentially.
I like Fu's writing, but this one didn't do it for me. However, I did love her short story collection
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, published earlier this year. I recommend picking that one up instead. -
The only thing lost was the accolades of this book.
NEXT!
