These horror books were so popular that multiple publishing houses jumped in to create their own series of horror books for teens.
Ultimately these books were riding on the popularity of the slasher genre at the time. Many of the themes, story lines, and ideas were lifted directly from popular slasher films. The main difference was that the novels toned down the violence and killing and instead created books that played out in a similar fashion to a thriller or mystery.
Many teens were seeing slasher films and pre-teens--who may not have been allowed to see the gory R-rated films--instead read the watered down horror novels that garnered many ideas from the genre of the time.
Potentially the most popular series--if we don't include R.L. Stein's Fear Streets books--was the Point Horror book series. Point Horror was a series of books by multiple authors who came together and wrote a plethora of different horror thrillers for teens. One very popular book from the series is Camp Fear by Carol Ellis.
Rachel is excited to have this job and excited to make some new friends--despite being a little shy. Rachel soon finds out that a number of the counselors are actually former campers from seven years prior.
Rachel thinks this is cool and when she is assigned to do the camp's display board in honor of the 20th anniversary, she decides to try and dig up pictures of the former campers to put on the board.
Unfortunately, there seems to be some high tensions among the group of former campers. And when strange accidents, dangerous accidents, begin to occur Rachel begins to wonder if there is more to this camp's history then first let on.
Rachel soon believes that the accidents are purposeful, and that her follow counselors may be hiding something sinister, something that they hoped to forget from camp seven years ago.
When I first jumped into Camp Fear I could almost swear I was reading a sequel to Friday the 13th. The atmosphere and mood was identical to the the early Friday the 13th films. And as the plot grew more sinister I almost expected Jason or his mother to step out of the woods and start slaughtering the counselors.
But, of course, this book has nothing to do with Friday the 13th. So the antagonist causing all the accidents is, of course, someone in the group of counselors. This makes the book more into a mystery.
The book itself feels a little slow, and potentially a little too convoluted, in the beginning. It seemed as if the author was purposefully dragging out the moments in order to build suspense. Unfortunately, it just makes the story drag.
Additionally, I was surprised at the sheer number of typos present in this printing. I know that there will always be occasional typos in books--especially from small press, independent, self published works--and I usually don't knock a book for it. However, For a book from the largest children's and young adult publisher in America--Scholastic Press--I would expect a little bit better attention to detail.
The good part about this book is that Rachel and the other characters are interesting and well developed enough to keep you reading. The clues and nuances of character keep the mystery a secret until the end.
And while no one actually dies in Camp Fear it still manages to evoke an atmosphere of dread. I found myself getting the shivers during multiple sections of the book. I am frequently happy to see that writing without gore, sex, or other explicit content can still be effective in our modern literature. I believe it takes a truly talented author to write in this manner.
Summing it Up
Deaths: 1
Language: 1
Gore Factor: 1
Sex Factor: 0
Scare Factor: 2
Fun Factor: 3
Overall Rating: 3