The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore is a stark portrait of what humans are capable of, of what they will do when faced with the prospect of death or survival. In an even larger way, this is a story that proves how one incident, something simple and shockingly short in comparison to a lifetime, can shape a life indefinitely. Anyone who enjoys literary or psychological fiction won’t be able to put this whip smart novel down.
Fu’s writing is beautiful and surprising, with images that leave a mark ... Forevermore is the first truly great novel I’ve read in 2018 ... Like the best fiction, Forevermore makes readers wonder what we would do in a similar situation, and it doesn’t provide any comforting answers.
The problem with Camp Forevermore is a fatal one — the action is too tame, the consequences too attenuated, the Mean Girls trope too predictable, for the set-up to pay off in any satisfyingly dramatic way. It's not Lord of the Flies, more like Girls Gone Mild ... The unhappy campers stay unhappy — quoth the raven — forevermore. Early trauma makes a satisfying life an impossibility — a fair point, though the trauma here seems too slight to carry so much weight.
