“The Counselors” has its heart in the right place as a murder mystery set in summer camp with some coming of age/grief/friendship aspects that were well done as the teens work through a number of issues. She also realizes that revealing such might reveal her connection to him and reveal a possible motive for her to want him gone. (And the reader is quickly looped into knowing there’s more to the story than that.) Goldie’s determined to figure out the truth over what happened, though it means she’ll have to let go of some of the damaging secrets she’s been holding onto in order to get to that. In terms of the official explanation, it seems to be an accident, but Goldie – among others – feel otherwise. That is, until the boy who broke her heart, Heller, dies on the campgrounds. As the only one of her friends who is local to the elite town and well-to-do camp retreat, Goldie sees her friends’ return and the escape from the incident she was involved with as a welcome reprieve. Goldie hopes that camp will be an escape with the people who support and care for her. Plus her being the outsider in the elite, well-to-do crowd. She’s afraid that her friends – Ava and Imogen – among the others in the elite camp, will judge her and suffers from the anxiety and depression of all the events that transpired. However, not only is she ostracized for one huge secret, which has layers to the actual truth of events, but she deliberately avoids talking about the fact that her college acceptance was rescinded because of the aforementioned secret.
When we start the novel, Goldie’s starting her final summer before college with her friends as a counselor at the Camp. It trades between the past and the present from the viewpoint of Goldie, following her experiences with her best friends Ava and Imogen being camp counselors at Camp Alpine Lake. “The Counselor” fit all of those things for me to follow for the most part. Many of you know that I’m weak for summer stories, and even better if there’s a murder mystery afoot that the main characters have to unpack. More of a whodunit story with focus on the characters themselves unpacking a lot of lies and deceptions. Some moments are thrilling, but this is relatively light for on-page thrills. If you’re expecting a teen slasher/thriller title…you might want to temper your expectations – it’s not that. Jessica Goodman’s “The Counselors” revolves around a cast of teen characters with a lot of secrets convening and being uncovered within the realm of a summer camp. Quick review for a quick-ish read – this was an overall decent murder mystery, though at the same time I was a little let down by the way that it ended and had moments where I could feel the weight of the overall pacing of the novel.
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