Goldie can’t wait to see her best friends. She is waiting at Camp Alpine Lake for them to arrive. They met years before when they were only eight years old and were campers at this prestige summer camp.

Ava and Imogen are children of wealthy parents, passing the strict tests and paying the five figure sums to attend. Goldie is a local, attending only because her parents work at Camp Alpine Lake. The money gap means nothing at camp though, and it has become home for Goldie and her favourite place and time of her entire year.

This year they are counselors and they enjoy the week preparing the camp for the children soon to attend. But things have changed over the past year and since they saw each other last. Ava is even angrier at her father (who left her and her mum and now has another family) and the fact that her twin 9 year old step sisters will be coming to camp. Ava, like Goldie sees it as her own haven and special place and the thought of her step brats coming is a very unwelcome invasion.

Despite the pact and vow between them when they were younger, that they would tell each other everything, some things are just too big and too raw to share.

Goldie fell in love since the last camp, with a boy from the local town of Roxwood. She has not only kept him a secret but the terrible thing that happened on New Year’s Eve. It tore them apart and ripped her life to shreds. Goldie is hoping she can forget it for the next eight weeks they have together at camp.

It is not to be. Not only is a body found on the edge of the lake only days after her friends arrive, Goldie knows him and knows his death was definitely not an accident. How can she keep it together while hiding her secret, suspecting one of her friends of murder and doing her own investigating?

One thing Goldie does know – this year at camp is going to be like no other.

The setting of US summer camps is a popular one – in horrors, love stories and murder mysteries like this one. The Counselors show three girls who have been inseparable, but are now fracturing round the edges. They all have secrets and have broken their solemn vow to tell each other everything. That might be easy at 8 years old, but not so much nearly 10 years later.

The clues will send you back and forth between possible suspects and throw you a couple of curve balls too before the culprit/s are exposed.

Main character Goldie not only learns things about her friends but many of the adults very close to her too. All is not as it seems at the elite Camp Alpine Lake.

An entertaining read for 16+

Author – Jessica Goodman

Age – 16+

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(2022, Penguin, US, Summer Camp, Elite, Rich, Wealthy, Greed, Murder, Mystery, Best Friends, Love, Betrayal, Small town, Lies, Secrets, Accident, Step siblings, Crime, Intrigue, Family)