Okay so I 100% saw this one and jumped all over it. I have been known to read a Tingler from time to time, so a horror novel was just like, welp okay I’m doing it.
So thanks to the author as well as Tor for the review copy!
They’ll scare you straight to hell.
Welcome to Neverton, Montana: home to a God-fearing community with a heart of gold.
Nestled high up in the mountains is Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective” gay conversion camp in the country. Here, a life free from sin awaits. But the secret behind that success is anything but holy.
Camp Damascus is the story of Rose Darling. Rose is a 20 year old girl living in the extremely religious town of Neverton, Montana. The sect, more or less, that inhabits Neverton is strict, but not outlandishly so. They run a gay conversion camp called Camp Damascus, which boasts that they have a 100% success rate. But at what price?
Weird things start happening to Rose over the course of the novel, and they only keep getting weirder. I read this one in just two sittings because I was quite immersed in it, and I really enjoyed how the story unraveled the mystery of Camp Damascus. When it was unveiled, it was actually kind of a woooow moment for me, because while it wasn’t a huge mystery who did the bad, how they did the bad was just brilliantly thought out.
As Rose (and Neverton in general) are in fact very religious, there is of course a lot of religious symbology and the like in the book, so it might not appeal to all people. However, the religious aspects of the novel are used as a setting, so very non-religious me had no problem getting into it.
All told, I really quite enjoyed my time with Camp Damascus, and I would recommend it to fans of horror with interesting plot twists and LGBT themes. I honestly might give the audiobook a try too, as it’s narrated by Mara Wilson, and now that I’m imagining that, it sounds kind of perfect? 4/5 stars!
superstardrifter 
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