A review by alifromkc1907
Boot Camp by Todd Strasser
4.0
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Gut Instinct Rating - 5
Story Line - 5
Writing Style - 4
Characters - 4
Excitement Factor - 4
Believability for type and topics - 5
Similarity to other books - 3
Cover art - 3
Title Relevance - 3
When Garrett's parents think he's out of control, they hire transporters to pick him up in the middle of the night and take him to Camp Lake Harmony. Lake Harmony is basically boot camp for "troubled teens." Lake Harmony is hell. And because Garrett is only sixteen, he'll either have to figure out how to please the masters for early release, wait until he's 18, or... try to escape a top-security prison for teens.
You may like this book if you like the following sub-genres:
Mental Abuse
Physical Abuse
Reform Camps
Coming of Age
HOLY SHIT seems to be the best phrase to describe my experience with this book. I said it numerous times, and wrote it once at the very end following the reading of the afterword. (Insert: HOLY SHIT! here.) I would've loved to have given this book a 5-star, but I had some issues, mostly minor... but the title really wasn't pleasing. We don't really get the idea that this is boot camp (which is why I didn't categorize it as a boot camp, but a reform camp) until close to the end. I would've much rather the title been Lake Harmony: Reform Camp or something other than Boot Camp. It sounds more like a military story as opposed to a reform camp, which is what Lake Harmony is. The cover art didn't really flatter me either since majority of the book, the apparel requirement for Garrett, is flip flops. Having a military-grade boot there is only applicable to a small part of the book, so I wasn't real pleased with that either. Two three's for art and title brought the book down from a 4.29 to a 4 (not that it's a horrible rating, but it was enough to drop the score from 4-stars to 4.5 stars).
The characters were really concrete, but they were almost too concrete. I felt like there wasn't a lot of variance in the characters. And maybe that's the reform camp setting talking to me, where everyone is expected to act a certain way, but had it not been for Mr. Sparks, Sarah, and Pauly, this would've gone down to a 3. Everyone was so similar, so it could become tiresome if you're someone who needs lots of color in their books. But, with the addition of these three characters, I think we saw the three levels of staff members and outside acceptance, as well as the three levels of level-one-campers. (That will hopefully make more sense once you've read the book.) There was a lot of changes for Garrett, which likely saved this from being a 3, or less. We saw a lot of personalities come out of Garrett, including the way he thinks, which I thought was the most valuable component to this story.
This book was so believable, it was unbelievable. And I can't/won't/don't want to say anything else, but... this definitely makes sense when you're reading.
This book, sadly, is similar to other books. I think I've read 2-3 books this year that have a very similar plot line. It doesn't make it a bad book, but the less unique something is, the more we are tied down to re-reading the same story with a few different characters. I think the aspects of this book were probably more deliberate. The author seems to really research his characters before he fully unveils them, which I think is fantastic (it lead to me not even being able to read Give a Boy a Gun by him, but this book was happily more catered to my reading needs). So in the case of this book, the characters made this book different from the others I've read. Sure, there's a hero, and a bully, and the "loser," and the girl (or the guy... in this case, it's a girl). All these things are applicable, but the way in which they were discovered, discussed, and displayed were different from the rest.
The writing style was fine. I wasn't overly impressed with anything here or there. It would've probably been given a 5 if there weren't paragraph-breaks to break up the story within the chapters, but that's not the end of the world. It wasn't a challenging read, and at times, I felt like it become too repetitive. I maybe would've been more interested in a diary perspective in place of some of the things that were routine in the story line. But again, it didn't break the book. The book was still powerful and exciting (most of the time, again... given the repetitive nature, sometimes you could doze out of a few pages).
Gut Instinct Rating - 5
Story Line - 5
Writing Style - 4
Characters - 4
Excitement Factor - 4
Believability for type and topics - 5
Similarity to other books - 3
Cover art - 3
Title Relevance - 3
When Garrett's parents think he's out of control, they hire transporters to pick him up in the middle of the night and take him to Camp Lake Harmony. Lake Harmony is basically boot camp for "troubled teens." Lake Harmony is hell. And because Garrett is only sixteen, he'll either have to figure out how to please the masters for early release, wait until he's 18, or... try to escape a top-security prison for teens.
You may like this book if you like the following sub-genres:
Mental Abuse
Physical Abuse
Reform Camps
Coming of Age
HOLY SHIT seems to be the best phrase to describe my experience with this book. I said it numerous times, and wrote it once at the very end following the reading of the afterword. (Insert: HOLY SHIT! here.) I would've loved to have given this book a 5-star, but I had some issues, mostly minor... but the title really wasn't pleasing. We don't really get the idea that this is boot camp (which is why I didn't categorize it as a boot camp, but a reform camp) until close to the end. I would've much rather the title been Lake Harmony: Reform Camp or something other than Boot Camp. It sounds more like a military story as opposed to a reform camp, which is what Lake Harmony is. The cover art didn't really flatter me either since majority of the book, the apparel requirement for Garrett, is flip flops. Having a military-grade boot there is only applicable to a small part of the book, so I wasn't real pleased with that either. Two three's for art and title brought the book down from a 4.29 to a 4 (not that it's a horrible rating, but it was enough to drop the score from 4-stars to 4.5 stars).
The characters were really concrete, but they were almost too concrete. I felt like there wasn't a lot of variance in the characters. And maybe that's the reform camp setting talking to me, where everyone is expected to act a certain way, but had it not been for Mr. Sparks, Sarah, and Pauly, this would've gone down to a 3. Everyone was so similar, so it could become tiresome if you're someone who needs lots of color in their books. But, with the addition of these three characters, I think we saw the three levels of staff members and outside acceptance, as well as the three levels of level-one-campers. (That will hopefully make more sense once you've read the book.) There was a lot of changes for Garrett, which likely saved this from being a 3, or less. We saw a lot of personalities come out of Garrett, including the way he thinks, which I thought was the most valuable component to this story.
This book was so believable, it was unbelievable. And I can't/won't/don't want to say anything else, but... this definitely makes sense when you're reading.
This book, sadly, is similar to other books. I think I've read 2-3 books this year that have a very similar plot line. It doesn't make it a bad book, but the less unique something is, the more we are tied down to re-reading the same story with a few different characters. I think the aspects of this book were probably more deliberate. The author seems to really research his characters before he fully unveils them, which I think is fantastic (it lead to me not even being able to read Give a Boy a Gun by him, but this book was happily more catered to my reading needs). So in the case of this book, the characters made this book different from the others I've read. Sure, there's a hero, and a bully, and the "loser," and the girl (or the guy... in this case, it's a girl). All these things are applicable, but the way in which they were discovered, discussed, and displayed were different from the rest.
The writing style was fine. I wasn't overly impressed with anything here or there. It would've probably been given a 5 if there weren't paragraph-breaks to break up the story within the chapters, but that's not the end of the world. It wasn't a challenging read, and at times, I felt like it become too repetitive. I maybe would've been more interested in a diary perspective in place of some of the things that were routine in the story line. But again, it didn't break the book. The book was still powerful and exciting (most of the time, again... given the repetitive nature, sometimes you could doze out of a few pages).