Review: Camp Shady Crook by Lee Gjertsen Malone
SYNOPSIS: 
It’s Ocean’s Eleven set in a summer camp as two kids try to one-up each other in a con competition at a camp that isn’t quite what it seems…
For Archie, the start of summer means another stint at Camp Shady Brook, where there is a lot more to the camp than meets the eye—just like Archie and his now blended family. But thanks to a con Archie developed last year, he’s finally somebody…and he’s not going to lose that status to the new girl, Vivian.
For Vivian, thanks to an incident That Shall Not Be Named or Spoken Of, her summer of exotic travels with Mom and Dad has turned into traveling to a dump of a summer camp in the middle of nowhere.
But thanks to perfect timing, Vivian soon finds herself in a ring of kids trying to out-con each other—and discovers Camp Shady Brook is more like Camp Shady Crook. And when one final, massive con could cost Vivian the first friends she’s had in a while, can she and Archie figure out a way to make things right?
REVIEW:
*Book Received in Exchange for Honest Opinion/Review*
I am kind of ashamed to admit how long it took me to read this book but alas I started it 10 days ago! I just finished this afternoon and let me just start off by saying the first two-thirds of the book is slow. I can’t quite put my finger on it but the pacing of the story is off. I felt like the synopsis set me up for a summer of prank wars and cons but that didn’t exactly resonate in the story.
We are given a lot of details, the world building took forever when it is simply a summer camp. What should have been a fun competition between Archie and Vivian turned into maybe 3-4 cons total. The build up to these cons is anti-climatic and while I understand these are middle-schoolers/high-schoolers…describing this as Ocean’s Eleven is extremely misleading because it will never live up to such a momentous, devious movie.
Some drama and a fall out occurs but in the fall out, Archie and Vivian realize they need to unite for the greater good. Which segways me into the last third of the novel, giving off a completely different vibe. The plot line picks up, things become fun and playful. But at this point, it almost feels like too little, too late. The ending was sweet, and endearing but I desperately wanted this scheming and working together to last longer. This is what I was missing in the beginning of the story.
The characters have epiphanies and grow but the problem was, it took too long to get there. If the whole story read like the ending of the book, this would truly have the Ocean’s Eleven vibe. As is, if you can push through a stagnant story line till the real fun happens, it’s an okay read.
LINKS:
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
