a murder most camp? more like a murder most ugh! as if!

the thing with camp is that it's looking over the top and gouache in the eye. camp is trixie mattel's season finale dress. camp is john waters (a prominent gay director that's somehow never fucking mentioned in this book??). camp is not that one met gala, which this book is accurate in pointing out. however, pointing that out doesn't make your excuse for bad camp any more legitimate.

i didn't realize how sanitized this book would be going on. at first, in the first third-ish of the book, i thought i was going to be in for over the top gay camp slasher schitt's creek style of camp. instead, i feel like i just read a millennial's disney channel original novelization.

the references are repetitive, dated, and from a very small pool of pretty straight movies and music and shows. wdym you're some over the top nepo baby homo and you don't even wanna try to be an obnoxious film bro about To Wong Foo or The Birdcage or even fucking Hairspray.

mikey does not go through growth that i find believable or interesting. i don't care about his fortune being withheld from him, i don't care about him being dragged around by some other demon twink, and i don't believe that jackson would have any reason to feel an actual connection to mikey. mikey has the spine and mind of something soft and limp.

i was having fun, but after awhile i just kept going "wow this guy sucks" and "oh my god shut up" … and it just never got fucking better.

kudos to those who had fun the whole time, i just get really pissed when twinks wanna act like they know camp ball when even the john waters interview on las culturistas would be too much for them 🫪

ughhhfhhfuughhhhfuhfhhhhhhggh. ugh. this could’ve been so GOOD. i’m not at all against modern language in historical fiction, so long as the modern language is at least… interesting, and serving some sort of thematic purpose idk. here, the modern language is just boring and reads as honestly i hate to say it but lazy. it is completely devoid of subtlety or subtext. it is obviously a fanfic to a degree, but it reads like bad fanfic - the characters it borrows and tries to reimagine from their classical origins are flattened, made into girlbosses and evil villains, characters that have been studied for generations bc of their complexity are here rendered one dimensional and somehow boring?? the romance could’ve been so lovely, and i wanted to enjoy it i really did (i love lesbians! and classics!) but i just… idk i was bored by them!!! it was too easy, and idk something abt their romance felt way too contemporary! i was waiting for them to start calling themselves lesbians and wearing pride pins!! idk guys i’m sorry it wasn’t for me

I love this concept so much, and the adaptations of the fairytales were super interesting, so I wish I liked this more than I did. I liked how certain aspects were adapted into areas of social commentary into a wider piece of commentary, even if it felt a little heavy-handed and unsubtle.

however, I think the concept of a trauma group means some of the stories and relationships feel quite sudden as they're being told, like Bernice's which made it feel less believable. Ashlee and Ruby, the least likeable characters, come across as exaggerated at times in their meanness, and it's hard to take Ashlee seriously at times with the way she talks; she's clearly supposed to satirise reality TV contestants, but it doesn't really work. there's a lot of interesting and meaningful points Adelmann tries to make, but I don't know if having so much revolve around reality TV via Ashlee's snark is the most effective approach here – though I will say that there's plenty of points made about reality TV that I agree with. it feels a lot like a trauma competition than a group with the frequent clashes that disrupt each woman's narrative, and I think makes the whole thing feel a bit clunky when these analyses are spoonfed to us throughout.

in terms of the plot, the epilogue felt too short to be a satisfying ending, and I have mixed feelings about the reveal at the end. I think this is a book to sit with for a while to unpack, and whether I like it more or less as I process all the nuances remains to be seen.

T. Kingfisher is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. Despite the relatively short length of this book, they somehow created a vast world I could easily picture in my mind, with a story that was equal parts mysterious and riveting until the full picture unfurled in such a satisfying way. Such excellent execution of a fun story.

I can read 100 of these books. RJB, plese never stop writing Ana and Din mysteries.

Ugh, I read this for a challenge and I could feel myself losing brain cells as I read it. Between the incessant pop culture references (including Gilmore Girls, Clueless, Taylor Swift, Gone Girl, and so much more), the indolent billionaire main character 29-year-old with no real personality other than being sarcastic, entitled, and having a passion for film (but also having a ~deep side, of course), and the fact that this book could not stop bringing up tacky stereotypes of gay men that were tired in like...the 2000s, I was about ready to melt into the couch by the time it was over.

Maybe I'm just too cynical for campy shit.

tl;dr Mikey Hartford has never had to work for anything in his life thanks to his family's nationwide very successful grocery food chain. However, when his father interrupts his life of partying, sex, and alcohol by forcing him to work at a rustic and rural summer camp (and make a "positive influence" on the world) lest he lose his trust fund, he is horrified. But not as horrified as when he realizes that a murder happened at this camp 10 years ago...and the murderer may still be around.

I understand that the author was trying to write a satire of a rich nepo baby, but it was very difficult to like, sympathize, or even care about Mikey throughout the book. He just read as super out of touch and entitled, which, yes, is supposed to be his character, but given the damage that entitled billionaires are literally doing in the real world to society and the environment, I literally have zero interest reading about in their "problems." While the narrative tries to justify his decisions and personality with the fact that he uses it as a front to hide from the pain of his mom's early death from cancer, it also lowkey undermines itself whenever Mikey says that his mother "wanted" him to have a trust fund and never face any type of difficulty or obstacle in his life because she grew up poor. It really just read as super out of touch with...well, everything. As he deals with what happens at the camp and tries to solve the murder, Mikey sort of starts to realize that he needs to lower his guard and start living more authentically—but it never feels fully realized tbh.

The narrative also really tried to lean into how Mikey has a huge passion for film-making (mostly by having him quote obsessively from various movies—and also if I had to hear the word "passion" in relation to his film interest one more time, I would have set the book on fire). However, this man apparently quit a position as an assistant producer or something after at most three years because...they didn't take his movie ideas seriously? Like, did he expect to sweep into Hollywood right after graduating and take it by storm without working his way up? Because of this, he had lost his passion and started partying and sexing his way through life. This is "passion"? And after rediscovering his passion at the camp (initially by starting to work on a "documentary" about the murder and later I guess just by realizing he can genuinely care about people), he takes his trust fund and decides to just start a production/film company, which is honestly equally privileged and feels almost like he has learned nothing. How does he think he has the slightest idea how to run a production company when he does not seem to have any sense of work ethic, ability to tolerate frustration, or filter (or, for that matter, work experience in the last five years)?

Also—and really, this is a small point compared to everything else—it started really frustrating me every time Mikey would essentially say something that he didn't mean to say and then mention that he "winces as he says them" or knows that he shouldn't have said it or whatever, because it happened multiple times. Truly, if the book had ended with the murderer killing him to shut him up, I would have preferred it because he was fucking annoying.

Sadly, Mikey was not the only victim of the terrible writing. None of the other characters in this book had any character or development. The main side characters were Mikey's love interest, Jackson, and the group of kids at the camp that he was in charge of, especially his 12-year-old aunt, Annabelle (her mother, who is close to Mikey's age, married Mikey's grandfather because of course). The only thing I could tell you about Jackson is that he is built like a "Greek god," is in med school (and has worked as a lifeguard at the camp for 10 years), and is a golden retriever. Also, did you know that he's hot? That's mentioned a billion times in case you've forgotten. Meanwhile, Annabelle is an outcast at school and hates her parents' age gap, feels out of place, love true crime, and reads thrillers in her spare time. That's it. That's all we know about these side characters.

We know even less about the other kids in the group. They were all essentially interchangeable and...I truly don't have anything to say about them because there was nothing to say. The only one that sort of stood out was Annabelle's roommate, Miranda, and not in a good way. It's because she kept calling Mikey and other people "boo" at the end of almost every sentence. What child does this? Is this a Gen Alpha thing? Is this a rich people thing? JFC.

Although the plot was pretty straightforward and predictable, that wasn't even my main issue with this book given the terrible writing and characters. It was nothing to write home about, though the reliance on information dumping via found diary entries was honestly unrealistic since it literally just spelled everything else for the most part. Tons of telling and not enough (or really, any showing) throughout the book. Jackson and Mikey getting together felt rushed with not enough development on either end, so it was just an insta-love plot and y'all know how much I love those. 🙄

The plot aside, the writing was pretty awful. I already mentioned the author's over-dependence on pop culture references earlier; he truly just throw as many different movie quotes and other references into this book as possible, and it was jarring Every. Single. Time. He also really liked to reuse the same words and phrases throughout the book, such as "passion" as I stated previously, or saying that Mikey had "spent all of his life shield from" XYZ. Finally, and to be honest, the most egregious issue: This book was full of stereotypes of gay men—not just described, but literally spelled out and stated by the characters themselves. For example:

"He’s got none of the qualities that normally cause Mikey’s gaydar to perk up: Sardonic wit, inexplicable defensiveness, a tendency to speak exclusively in abbreviations and/or references. The usual Fire Island personality cocktail.”

Or:

"I thought gays loved karaoke!"

"You're thinking of an entirely different breed of gay," Mikey explains. "Musical theatre gays and/or drag queens. I'm a film school gay with chronically tired gay tendencies—huge difference."

I think this is the author trying to lean into the campy aspect of this book, but it really came across as cringey 2000s offensive humor more than anything else, especially since this book was written and takes place in 2026. At one point, character described himself as being bullied in school because he had an "uncontrollable gay voice." WTF does that mean?! It was so heavy-handed that the characters all came across as gay caricatures rather than real people, which is never good when portraying minorities of any type. @popcornbat commented while I was reading this that if this author wasn't queer himself, it would feel almost like the book was homophobic, which put into words exactly how I felt about it.

So uh, to sum up this 1k-word review, I would recommend it to...people who like reading about billionaire millennials and their problems? Or more seriously, people who don't mind leaning into the camp aspect of this book and can ignore problematic gay stereotypes, cardboard characters, and insta-love romance with zero development. c: