Rereading Shadow Falls Camp 1
I've recently talked about old book series like HoN and SFC with my best friend and although we both agreed that they are kind of cringey, I really did want to reread them just to relive the drama that captivated my adolescent years and also since especially with these books I couldn't recall much of what happened.
So far I've read chapter one to four and we meet Kylie Galen, a 16 year old girl whose life now turned to shit because her parents are getting a divorce, she still hasn't processed the death of her grandma and her boyfriend Trey recently broke up with her.
The book starts with Kylie witnessing yet another argument between her mom and her dad. Her mom is introduced as an emotionless ice queen who's grilling her dad's underwear on the grill. Her dad is packing up his stuff to leave but Kylie obviously doesn't want him though. She wants to come with him and even asks him to not leave her but he only responds that he's only a phone call away. I'm definitely interested in how this dynamic with her mom will turn out since so far, Kylie doesn't seem close to her mother. Multiple times Kylie thinks about her mom as the ice queen who's emotionless and not caring. (Side Note: teenage me and my mom did not have the best relationship either, we do now but back then there wasn't a day where we wouldn't scream at each other so that is another reason why I'm interested in why her mom is the way she is and how Kylie will grow up to maybe see through her mom's trauma which wouldn't explain why her mom is so distant since she is still a parent but yeah, we'll see how this will turn out hopefully). We learn quickly that Kylie is in therapy because of her stalker that no one else seems to see except her, an man in army clothes. (SPOILER WARNING: I do think to recall that this is her actual father and her powers are seeing dead people but that's about it, like I do not remember what she is.)
Her grandmother recently died and she's hasn't fully comprehended that, seemingly forgetting it here and there. We don't know much about her grandmother yet. Kylie does recall her own mother not holding her at the funeral of her own mother. Ever the ice queen.
At a house party we meet her best friend Sara, who doesn't seem to notice or care about Kylie's feelings. She's an outgoing girl who follows trends and recently lost her virginity being dumped by her then boy and since then has had sex numerous times. Originally they both wanted to keep their virginity and losing it be something special. Kylie gets even more pissed about her life when she sees her ex boyfriend Trey walk in with a new girl. We don't know why he broke up with Kylie but as she stated that after drinking beer he is getting touchy and she never gave in, because she wants her first time to be special and not have a boy reek of beer, Trey maybe broke things off to get off. We don't know much about him too, it's probably not even important for us to know more about him since there obviously will be other boys Kylie's going to think about. The party ends abruptly once the cops show up, which always confused me as a European girlie but since the legal drinking age in the US (Kylie lives in Houston) is 21 years old, they're all getting arrested. Kylie did not have a sip of alcohol but her mom's still pissed off and after an argument, she agrees with Dr. Day who's Kylies therapist to send her to a summer camp for troubled kids.
So Kylie is sent off to this summer camp which she knows nothing about besides that troubled kids go there to not be troubled anymore. She gets onto the bus that will drive her to it and we meet a lot of new characters and I have to say that this chapter was the best one yet because Kylie is just so goddamn judgemental and I never noticed that before. She judges the appearances of the other teens, calling one girl "gothic girl" because she's only wearing black. She freaks out when she meets a boy whose eye colors are constantly changing. We meet Miranda, a girl with three different hair colors on her head and I don't get why that is so unnatural for Kylie to see but of course she again judges Miranda. During the bus ride she texts Sara, who does not respond to Kylie's message at all but rather tells Kylie that she's probably pregnant. Kylie is inclusive though since she doesn't stop at judging people she doesn't know but she also judges her best friend about the maybe pregnancy. Thinking that, at least she knows who the father is since she had sex with only three boys.
So all in all I have to say that it was pretty cringey to re read SFC and I've only read the first four chapters. The target audience is very obviously teenage girls and Kylie as I said is a very one dimensional character now. I never noticed before how judgy she is. I know that she's young and going through a lot but I really hope she becomes a better person because right now I'm not her biggest fan. I'm 26 years old now and this book came out in 2011 so over 12 years ago. I don't expect much but I hope I can enjoy it and relive what younger me liked about these books. It's also nice to revisit it with an adult brain. So to anyone who's still reading I hope you enjoyed, I never really did something like this before. This is a project I want to mainly do for myself and I'm not sure if I want to continue writing my thoughts or not.
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