Chuck Tingle’s long been known to the romance crowd for writing, well, very interesting stories called Tinglers. Part-satire, part… I don’t even know what, they’re fun if somewhat bewildering. Underlying everything, though, has been the author’s unwavering “LOVE IS REAL” devotion to acceptance and love in all its forms. When I heard he was coming out with a horror novel? Yeah, I could totally see that – and I also knew I had to get my hands on it as soon as possible. While I was expecting to be thoroughly creeped out and amused by some dark satire, I had not expected the kick in the feels that ultimately brought the book together for me.

Rose Darling has been raised as a faithful follower of the Kingdom of the Pine church, known mostly for Camp Damascus, a gay conversion camp with a 100% success rate. With the end of high school approaching, Rose is troubled by new feelings for her best friend and her lack of feelings for the guy who wants to be her boyfriend. Plus, she keeps catching glimpses of a strange ghastly woman. But one crack reveals even more issues within the church and secrets that everyone has been keeping from Rose.

“I love Jesus, I really do, but Jesus would want me to be cool.”


It’s hard to understand Rose without first understanding her faith. The Kingdom of the Pine is a Christian pretty-much-a-cult sect founded during the Industrial Revolution by their prophet who lost his hand machinery accident, then “pulled himself up by his bootstraps.” It’s Jesus but with capitalism, complete with church-sanctioned MLMs. It’s both the funniest and most true skewering of American Evangelical culture I’ve seen. It shows how every moment of Rose’s life is tied to the church, from frequent biblical quotes to how long she goes to school to family structure. Bonding with her mother means going for walks and coming up with imaginary sins for the houses they pass, while Rose suggests the biblical passages to “save” them. In other words, all the law and none of the compassion.

“I was taught the importance of perseverance by Kingdom of the Pine, so I suppose they brought this upon themselves.
I was also educated on vengeance.”


And then we have Rose. Rose has tried so hard to be the perfect daughter her parents want her to be. But Rose is something that is antithetical to their faith – curious. She’s also neurodivergent, so once she gets a path of research into her head, she can’t let it go. I don’t think it’s too spoilery to say that Rose is forced to separate from her faith community. The tangle of emotions she feels – betrayal, relief, painful – is well described. But most of all? Rose is angry. Coming from a culture where women aren’t allowed to be angry, where “niceness” is valued over justice, it was so refreshing to see Rose come into her own.

Rose’s last name is Darling and there’s no missing the Peter Pan references. In the first chapter, a side character – and Rose’s crush – points out that Rose has no shadow, just like Peter Pan. In Peter Pan, and in this book, the shadow can be viewed as an absence of light, as a loss of memories, as a lack of grounding. There’s several other references to the play – including a point where Rose climbs throw a window, one that’s basically been dismantled by her friends to fool a security system – but most are too spoilery. Suffice it to say that it’s another added layer of meaning to the book.

There’s a lot to unpack about the various ways (real and imagined) LGTBQ+ people are persecuted and how they respond. The author carefully handles two extremely divergent reactions to religious abuse – atheism and seeking out a more accepting religious sect – and shows how friendship and acceptance can bridge that divide. Rose is also somewhere on the autism spectrum, and her family scolds her for her single-minded focus on subjects and her stimming. To Rose and to her friends? She’s just curious, a trait that’s to be admired. Simply put, I was not expecting this much sweetness in the middle of this horror book but rather than break me out of the book it only made me care about the characters more.

Of course, the book’s not perfect. While it quickly jumps into the action and the tempo remains mostly brisk, there’s some pacing issues in the middle that bog it down. But on the whole, the characters redeem that.

“We haven’t been blessed by some incredible superpower from the great beyond, we’re just curious.
Sometimes that’s all it takes.”


Overall, ok, wow, Chuck Tingle can really write horror, too – and without losing some of his trademark vibe. Highly recommended to any fan of LGBTQ+ horror!

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Camp Damascus is a fight for queer love wrapped up in a very good horror novel. I'm not trying to elevator pitch it, but while I was reading I was getting Goosebumps vibes (in the pretty much anything can happen in a Goosebumps book), I was getting Hellraiser vibes (early Hellraiser). It's just a good, unsettling horror book that shows that queer love is important and right and I'm very glad this book exists.

This may well be the most difficult review I’ve ever tried to write.

If *Camp Damascus* were written by any other author, I’d probably give it 3.5 stars. It’s got a great premise for a horror novel: a conversion therapy camp that boasts of a 100% success rate, but achieves this through the use of literal demons. But the execution wasn’t great. Not terrible, but not great. The protagonist’s character growth was faster and more complete than the story could support; the bad guys felt very flat. But the story picked up at the end, and overall I was satisfied with it.

But here’s where this review gets challenging. By every objective measure, *Camp Damascus* is a FAR better written book than the rest of Dr. Tingle’s extensive bibliography. And saying something like “Chuck Tingle should stick to what he’s good at: being intentionally and ironically bad” makes no sense at all.

Here’s the thing. Even though this book isn’t *trying* to be cheesy and terrible, I still could tell it was a Tingler. Part of this is in the criticisms I mentioned above; it felt like Dr. Tingle has spent so long in his usual groove that he wasn’t able to shake it off quite as much as he could have; hence we get flat villains talking about Jesus and sin that don’t have the depth of the protagonist.

But I could *also* tell it was a Tingler because of the depth and empathy that always lies behind the Bigfoots and biker unicorn bad boys and velociraptors and well-endowed abstract concepts. Everything Dr. Tingle writes has a message of acceptance of people as they, and an intolerance for bigotry and hatred, and that shone through here. It would have been so easy for the protagonist to end up hostile to religion; she isn’t. One of the good guys, at the ultimate climax of the book when it seems certain they’re all about to die, starts praying. Despite going through Camp Damascus, this character remains a devout Christian. And the protagonist accepts and respects his faith, even if she no longer has hers.

So, Buckaroos, here’s my final takeaway. This isn’t a *great* book, but the person who wrote it is a great *person*, and I hope they write more.

Creepy and weird and moving and affirming. Full of body horror along with the horror that can be wrought in the name of faith and religion.

So while I've heard of Chuck Tingle many times in the past (and had loads of giggles from his inventive titles and book concepts), I've never read any of his books. I've been meaning to give one a try, but just never got around to it. However, when I saw his post on Twitter about this book and read the synopsis, I figured this was as good a time as any to give him a try. Obviously this book is different from a lot of his other tinglers, but not in a bad way. In fact, I now want to try out some of his other books more than before, just because his writing style is super interesting and engaging.

Okay, now on to Camp Damascus itself. So I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Even though I'd read the synopsis and had a general idea of what the book was about (a Christian conversion camp with even more sinister intentions than usual), the beginning of the book really threw me for a loop. The creepy figure watching as Rose was out having fun with her friends, enjoying the last moments of her high school life, helped set the mood. But the extra creepy body horror during dinner with her parents, oof, I'm glad I wasn't actually eating while reading that. And it all seemed to happen so suddenly that I went back and reread it to make sure I hadn't accidentally skipped some pages (I hadn't, and it was still amazingly gross the second read). And the creeps just kept on coming, getting progressively weirder and creepier until the big inciting event that changed Rose's point of view (sorry I'm being vague but I don't want to give away what happened because it made my jaw drop and I want other people to get that experience, too).
While some plot points were sorta easy to suss out (partly due to knowing about the conversion camp from the synopsis while Rose is slowly learning about it and partly due to having grown up in evangelical culture and being able to see some of the machinations and manipulations going on), I thoroughly enjoyed being along for the ride and finding out how Chuck was going to put all this together. I loved Rose finding out more about herself, finding new friends and family, and finding her own sense of power that they had tried to take from her. I liked that, though Rose was somewhat stumbling into discoveries thanks to her manipulated memories, through sheer determination and grit she was able to persevere and even win against forces so much bigger than herself. Rose refused to give up, on herself as well as the people she cared about.
There are some definite hard topics in this book, especially from any LGBTQ+ readers who might have grown up in evangelical circles, but seeing Rose and her friends defeat and overcome the forces arrayed against them was nicely cathartic for me (also seeing the final fate of some of the perpetrators of the camp's evil was...well horrifying but also vindicating).

All this to say that Camp Damascus is a creepy, weird, moving, affirming, wonderful book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading at the beginning of Pride month and I really hope Chuck writes more horror like this (seriously his grasp of body horror was top notch in my book. I mean, I'm sort of a baby when it comes to horror so if you're a reader who loves the super crazy, visceral, terrifying body horror, this might be a bit tame for you, but for a baby horror fan like me it was just creepy and gross enough). Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me access to an e-Arc copy to read and review.

This is my first time reading Chuck Tingle, so I honestly went into it with zero expectations. I was impressed and hooked into the story the first moment things seem to feel off for our main character.

Camp Damascus follows strict religion following young woman Rose, as she realizes something is off with both herself and those close to her. She starts seeing an unsettling figure, starts doubting her own feelings, second guesses the motives of her parents , and starts digging for answer to things she can't remember. What she uncovers is a conspiracy that stems from the gay conversion camp that she grew up around. Can she believe in a God when those around her are uses his word to destroy a part of who she is and will she stand by while others suffer as she has or put a stop to it.

This is definitely a lot different from what I have been reading, but I was captivated by the story nonetheless. It's a Queer small town horror story filled with conspiracies, religious trauma, cults, demons, and a satisfying ending for our heroine.

‘Camp Damascus’ is the horror debut for eccentric erotica author Chuck Tingle. A religious, queer, sci-fi horror set in Montana, the story took off from page one and didn’t stop. The visuals in this book were horrific and terrifying, but at times lent itself to a bit of dark humor; and blended with the main characters logical, yet sometimes innocent, inner turmoil of her own beliefs and sexuality made for such a great read. I hope we see more horror from Tingle!

With Camp Damascus Chuck Tingle has created a horror story that is equal parts horrifying and real. While the horror elements are slow to begin, once they do they will grab your attention and make you see the fear in the very real world that Chuck Tingle has created. The monsters are terrifying because we know these monsters. They are the ones around gay teens all the time and Chuck Tingle does a fantastic job of showing the very real terror in our real world. 

I also like the character that he creates with Rose, especially with her being autistic. Those elements and her voice come through clearly and he is extremely respectful to those elements, treating Rose and her voice with love and truthfulness. The one oddity is that Rose seems younger, especially at the beginning of the novel and it did throw me out of the story until I saw that there was a purpose to presenting her as a teenager. It is crucial so allow time for the author’s reasons to shine through. It enhances the story and the horror elements. 

I love that the monsters are not what you expect or maybe they are…..?  If you’ve lived in the real world, you’ll know there are scarier things than demons. But Camp Damascus has all of those fears and monsters, each well written and will cause your flesh to crawl, just a bit. The ending is just fantastic and well worth the slow build of the novel at the beginning. The novel is horrifying and real which makes it even scarier.

Five stars, no notes. Mr. Tingle, you are amazing and I want to be like you when I grow up. A delightful, twisty tale that kept me up all night reading.

I feel like Camp Damascus was different than I was expecting, but I can't put my finger on why? Either way, it wasn't a bad thing! I really enjoyed the story, and it had a lot to offer. I will say, and I have seen this mentioned before, that it did feel a bit more like young adult at times? That isn't a bad thing at all, because I quite like young adult, but just a FYI.

We are introduced to Rose, who has been living an incredibly sheltered life in a town that is best known for its conversion camp. Which is gross from the start, as you can imagine. Rose is part of the Creepy Church™ that runs the camp, and as such, she must see a "therapist", who is totally licensed and not at all a fraud. Just kidding, he is just some random leader of Creepy Church™ and his whole existence is to push these awful beliefs on people but instead of church, he calls it counseling. This is not a spoiler, it's mentioned pretty early, and also, you just know because this guy is trash. As are Rose's parents, frankly, especially the dad. My point is, you are going to hate a lot of characters, real quick.

Rose is also on the autism spectrum, which I had inklings of while I was reading, and was so glad that it was confirmed, because I think the author did a wonderful job with the representation. It wasn't her whole personality or anything, but it fit with a lot of her thoughts and behaviors, and I really appreciated that. Anyway, can't say too much about the actual plot, because that would be rude. It gets a little... out there at times, but I appreciated the message nonetheless. I also really liked the way the author handled the religion aspect: he clearly addressed how messed up religion can be and is in many cases, but didn't totally vilify all religion.

The book clearly has a ton of heart, and I adored the characters. Rose, definitely, but also the people she meets along the way, whom I cannot really discuss because spoilers. But I think it brought the aspect of found family into play, and I really loved that Rose had the opportunity to find people who cared for her.

Bottom Line: This was such an incredibly soul-filled story, and clearly close to the author's heart. Loved the characters, loved the message.

Brilliant camp horror by an iconic writer. This is worlds away from Chuck Tingle's erotica, but the sense of razor-sharp commentary and wit is still present. While I don't think this book will be for everyone, it will be deeply healing for anyone -- especially queer readers -- who have suffered religious trauma of any degree. It's an angry, frustrated scream of a novel that manages to also take faith seriously. A solid recommendation for anyone, but a must-read for any previously religious queer.

A magnificent novel, much more than just a horror story or a queer coming of age, which blends true and real evil with demons and lore. A compulsively readable story that shines the light on how far people will go in the name of religion and God without realizing, or caring about, the very real hurt and pain they cause. Using certain fantastical elements to represent and portray the terror caused by these ideas, this is not a book you’ll soon forget.

There’s so much to love about this one. The writing style is delightful. The characters feel so real and poignant. And the story just gripped me the whole way. If you like gay horror and/or religious horror, you’re in for a treat. Because this one takes you for an incredibly smart, fun, heart-wrenching ride.

While this book wasn’t exactly what I expected, I enjoyed it regardless. CAMP DAMASCUS takes the somewhat cliche concept of a conversion camp story, and instead of taking the reader through the experience, plays with the aftermath and the truly hellish consequences. As someone who’s grown up in Christianity (like went to Christian camp for 5+ years), I didn’t actually find the text of the book as scary as I thought, though the concept (and the bugs) are definitely pretty horrifying. That said, if you’re a horror fan or looking to exorcise some religious trauma, this is the book for you!

In some ways, I think that this is a book best gone into with almost zero knowledge of what happens. Camp Damascus is the so-called most effective conversion program in the country, nestled among the fairly idyllic Christian community of Neverton, Montana. CAMP DAMASCUS itself is not about the camp, or some fictional story of kids suffering through conversion therapy that doesn’t do anything but make the reader feel bad, but instead takes a horrific twist and looks at just how far love and hate in a religious scenario will go.

I found the book itself to be pretty readable, although it took me a little bit to fully get what was going on. The concept itself was so fascinating, I almost just wish we’d gotten more in-world development than there actually is. The characters themselves were pretty decent, and I really appreciate how Tingle uses various perspectives to display a variety of responses to the trauma that they experience. There are admittedly some times near the end where things get a little bit preachy, and moments that felt like they could have been fleshed out more, but nothing that had any sort of major detraction on my reading experience.

As someone who hasn’t read much adult horror, I thought this was a great foray into it. It has twists and turns, along with some classic queer horror moments (seriously, bugs), and ultimately goes straight for the ugly heart of a so-called idyllic anti-gay community. Definitely worth the read.

Camp Damascus is the story of Rose Darling. Rose is a 20 year old girl living in the extremely religious town of Neverton, Montana. The sect, more or less, that inhabits Neverton is strict, but not outlandishly so. They run a gay conversion camp called Camp Damascus, which boasts that they have a 100% success rate. But at what price?

Weird things start happening to Rose over the course of the novel, and they only keep getting weirder. I read this one in just two sittings because I was quite immersed in it, and I really enjoyed how the story unraveled the mystery of Camp Damascus. When it was unveiled, it was actually kind of a woooow moment for me, because while it wasn’t a huge mystery who did the bad, how they did the bad was just brilliantly thought out.

As Rose (and Neverton in general) are in fact very religious, there is of course a lot of religious symbology and the like in the book, so it might not appeal to all people. However, the religious aspects of the novel are used as a setting, so very non-religious me had no problem getting into it.

All told, I really quite enjoyed my time with Camp Damascus, and I would recommend it to fans of horror with interesting plot twists and LGBT themes. I honestly might give the audiobook a try too, as it’s narrated by Mara Wilson, and now that I’m imagining that, it sounds kind of perfect?

Thanks to Netgalley and Tor Nightfire for gifting me an early copy of this book. Below you'll find my honest review.

The internet knows Chuck Tingle as the writer of very strange, very specific erotic fiction... until now. This short novel will make everyone realize that he's not just a weirdo (which he is), but he's also much, much deeper.

This book revolves around the lengths religion will go to in order to change people it sees as "bad" even at the cost of stepping outside ethical or moral bounds or being hypocrites themselves. And as a gay man raised in the Bible Belt, I could completely identify with this situation.

My biggest gripe with this one is that, in the end, I needed just a bit more. I needed some more closure. I needed to understand how things were going to be moving forward in this world, and I didn't get that. But the rest of the book? Yeah, it was a masterful fictionalization and hyperbolic/fantastical revelation of what many of live on a daily basis because of the actions of "Christians" who "love us." (Please notice I put quotation marks for a reason.)

All in all, a powerful book that will put Chuck Tingle on the "normal" side of the literary map. But for the world's sake, I hope he continues writing both the "normal" and the "weird." The world needs more people pushing boundaries in good ways.

Highly recommended.

I absolutely did not expect to enjoy this as much as I did. Chuck Tingle is truly versatile and unexpected!

This was a good horror mystery to keep me entertained on a summer evening. I liked getting to see how Rose slowly came to her realizations about what had happened the previous summer, and I thought the twist was pretty unique.

I love a novella, but I feel like this book needed a lot more details to flesh everything out. Everything past the first "scarier" scene is sort of at breakneck speed and it's easy to get kind of lost in the pace. I wanted more details about how Rose and Willow met, and how they were even discovered. I just have a hard time reconciling the Rose at the beginning of the book and the end of the book with who Willow must've met, and how that person developed in the environment she was raised in. I guess it would've had a lot more of a hit if we were able to see more of the "before" aside from a few memories.

I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, but I'm curious how the problem that is resolved for Rose, Willow, and Saul will be fixed for the rest of the people who were effected. Like, do they continue to just live like that? Kind of rough.

I've never read Tingle's previous books, but he holds up pretty alright in the writing department for this one. I felt it was pretty stilted at the beginning and more natural later on.

Thanks to Tor Nightfire for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This was fun and I think it's an important read (as well as of course a good horror story). The camp does not feature heavily in the pages themselves, but weighs very heavy on the town and minds of those who inhabit it. I like the subversion of what a camp like this is supposed to be, and the supposition that the only way to really solve the "problem" of these teens is... to go supernatural.

I agree with other reviewers that this felt more like YA horror than adult, but that worked for me. I think some of the writing felt disjointed, but then we were reading it from the perspective of a neurodivergent narrator, so I was willing to go along with that. It isn't a perfect book, but it made me laugh and ponder and most importantly made me care that our heroine get her happily ever after (and most importantly, survive). Four solid stars, and a must-read if you've had dealings with fundamentalist Christianity. The scariest parts if this novel were how close to reality its horrors really lie.

An absolute win from the Hugo nominated author of a whole host of novels. The description was just vague enough to get me hooked but give nothing away. I'm crossing my fingers that we get more horror from Chuck Tingle because this absolutely blew me away and I can't wait to recommend it to anyone who will stand still long enough to let me

This book starts with the musings of Rose, a girl raised in a very religious home, whose thoughts include a lot of Biblical quotations, which can be kind of hard to get through - but those fall off fairly quickly after the first couple of chapters. Rose was raised in the Congregation of the Pine, a Christian congregation that runs Camp Damascus, a very successful gay conversion program with a 100% success rate. But something truly odd underlies their success, something truly unexpected from a group that lays its success at the feet of their interpretation of G-d.

Rose is, to outward appearances, a normal, if somewhat overly religious 20 year-old, her parents' only child, and just finishing high school, as members of her church take off 2 years of school to focus on the tenets of their religion. However, she's not really interested in her classmate, Isaiah, who is clearly interested in her, and she's really not sure why - and neither are either set of parents. In an attempt to please her parents, Rose attends Isaiah's birthday party, despite odd feelings of chill that have been plaguing her, and she sees something odd - something no one else can see. Her attempts to discover what it is lead her to the secret of Camp Damascus' success - and it's truly unexpected.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.