Review: The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore

Kim Fu’s novel The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, digital galley) alternates between the stories of five young women who experienced a traumatic event at camp while girls. Unfortunately it reads as a disparate collection of unrelated stories, with the camp experience being the only thing connecting the women.

While each of the women’s future lives is interesting, it’s not clear what impact that camp event has had on the women, the drama is simply too subdued. Any one of the life stories would have been more compelling if flushed out as a full novel. But by combining the stories, all continuity is lost and just as we’re getting to know each of the characters their story is cut short for a flashback to camp.

Fu is clearly a talented writer and has a lot to say about relationships and how individuals deal with loss. The potential of this novel, however, feels unfulfilled.