Title: Camp Damascus

Author: Chuck Tingle

Published: 2023

Summary: Rose is a normal, Christian high school senior who begins seeing demons. That’s about all I can tell you without giving anything away. This is popular erotica author Chuck Tingle’s first foray into horror, as well as traditional publishing, and it packs a punch. Trigger warning for gay conversion camps and bugs.

What I Liked:

• Rose is neurodivergent, probably autistic, and that was honestly my favorite aspect of the book. Much is made of her curiosity and how it is a guiding light in her life, and it’s what propels the book forward. She’s brave, yes, and stubborn, but she won’t rest until she understands what is happening to her. Seeing curiosity touted as a virtue, in a way that was so consistent throughout the book, was very important to me and cemented this as a 5-star read.
• The ending was absolutely stellar. Very cathartic and definitely on the spectrum of happily ever after. You are rooting for the characters through the whole novel and, in the end, they find out what they can accomplish both separately and together.

What I Didn’t Like:

• I felt that the pacing was off. Though the book takes place over the course of weeks, readers have no time to recover from one action-packed sequence before they are thrust into another one. Rose even spends some time in the hospital and yet we, as readers, are not given a pause in the excitement.

Rating: 5/5. The breakneck pacing did not dampen my enjoyment of this novel, which covered many subjects that are dear to my heart in a way that was as kick-ass as Chuck Tingle could make it.