I met Chuck Tingle at Comic Con and honestly that probably gave me some bias here but he was lovely and asked me if I wanted to take a photo with him I guess because I couldn't stop gushing about the first 70 pages of this I'd read before I got there and his energy was great. He's great! I'm officially a buckaroo now! 

Oh, the book.

Camp Damascus is a story about an autistic teen in an evangelical cult that starts to have some absolutely weird shit happen to her. I was surprised at just how fast paced this was; I read it in 2 sittings because the horror started almost immediately, and as things progressed and got creepier, the story kept building and building and I needed answers, dammit. I guessed at some things at the start, but those guesses were revealed half way through the book and from there it was a wild joyride of horror, grief, catharsis, friendship, love, and some PRETTY FUCKING ABSOLUTELY GNARLY BODY HORROR LIKE WTF CHUCK??

This is a pretty straightforward book in terms of the plot and narrative, but I don't think the point is to shock you with twists and turns. I think Chuck had a very specific thing he wanted to say about religious trauma being wrapped up with queer identity, and he was very successful. 

LOVE IS REAL