The Best of Wattpad

o6: Camp Runaway by leigh_

Title: Camp Runaway

Author: Leigh_

Description: Seb and Ellie have three things in common: (1) They've both been forced into spending their summer as counselors at Camp Raukawee, Manitoba. (2) Approximately twenty-three hours of their days are spent listening to screaming children. (3) Given the right moment, they'd both agree to a far-fetched plan involving a midnight getaway and a crazy road trip to New York.

Genres: teen fiction

Tags: n/a

Status: completed

‣ ‣ ‣

I devoured Camp Runaway in two hours, the second work of Leigh's that I've read. She has a brilliant style: technically accurate and perfectly suited to the characters she writes, one of the few instances I've really enjoyed reading first person novels on Wattpad. Her narration always has a clear voice, unique to the character she's writing rather than the character being a disguise for her own words.

The 21-chapter-plus-genius-epilogue follows Ellie, a nineteen-year-old Canadian who is sent to work at a summer camp against her will, with her only relief coming from her best friend of six years also working at the same camp. Having just finished a summer working at a camp, I instantly related to Ellie with her struggles in the first couple of chapters, which Leigh wrote so accurately based on her own camp experience. It just goes to show - you really can tell when a writer knows what they're writing about, because every camp scene was flawless.

I'm not spoiling anything to say that a month into working at the camp, and still miserable, Ellie and Seb - her aforementioned best friend - decide to make a break for it. While I don't condone their reckless behaviour, leaving without a note, Leigh writes it so well that it's almost forgivable [though if Ellie had been my co-counsellor, I never would have forgiven her]. The friendship between Ellie and Seb is so infectious that each time I reached the end of a chapter, I found myself saying ". . . just one more," and I'm sure you will too. The story is so readable, with the perfect pace and balance of high and low relief.

I'm ordinarily a huge cynic when it comes to reading teen fiction, mostly because I write it myself and find myself predicting what's going to happen, but Leigh managed to pack a punch that I didn't see coming and had me sending her all sorts of expletive messages. By the time you reach the end, you'll feel like you've been on the exhausting but exhilarating adventure with Seb and Ellie, and if you're anything like me, you'll be itching to travel.