A group of young girls descend on Camp Forevermore, a sleepaway camp in the Pacific Northwest, where their days are filled with swimming lessons, friendship bracelets, and camp songs by the fire. Filled with excitement and nervous energy, they set off on an overnight kayaking trip to a nearby island. But before the night is over, they find themselves stranded, with no adults to help them survive or guide them home.
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.
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[THE GIRLS STOOD on the dock and sang the camp song, 'Camp Forevermore'.]***
(Legend Press, 15 February 2019, first published 13 February 2018, 238 pages, ebook, copy via @Legend_Press and voluntarily reviewed, blog tour 13 March)
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Oh, boy did this incredible book knock the stuffing out of me. I loved the way the novel is structured. There are long sections which tell the story of each girl who survived Camp Forevermore, before and the years after the event. These are woven with slightly shorter sections set during that summer and the traumatic events that shaped and changed them. I read the first few chapters over a number of days and binge-read the rest in one sitting because I couldn't put the book down. I had high hopes for this book and they were exceeded on every front. This is one of the best books I've read in ages. I loved, loved, fricking loved it! It broke my heart a lot.
