I had so much fun with Camp NetGalley. My favorite was the Bingo board. It was easy to use and pushed me outside my normal summer reading list. I chose The Silent Woods as my “Cover Set Outdoors.” This book was outside my typical genre and I loved it. So far it’s my favorite book of the summer. I did many of the other squares and had fun comparing with friends also on NetGalley.

I didn’t love the stickers activity. It was hard to do on my phone. I also didn’t think it wasn’t as interactive as the scavenger hunt or Bingo board.

Camp NetGalley was a fun activity to participate in for the month of July. I would have liked to see it hyped up a little more, though, since it didn’t come to my attention until the second week of the month. It was a short PDF, only 9 pages, with easy to follow instructions for all of the activities. There were different activities for each week of the month, and then an overall activity for the month.

Week one was devoted to bingo, which is one of my favorite kind of activities to participate in, so I was especially upset to have missed this first week. The bingo prompts were fun and the kind that motivate me to make progress in my NetGalley backlog, prompts like: review the oldest book on your shelf, let a friend pick what you’ll read, and a summer favorite, read outside! A reading journal and exclusive stickers are provided, which gave me that nostalgic rush of book club reading from elementary school. There were daily prompts on social media for a scavenger hunt one week, and another was focused on downloading and using the updated Book Advocate Toolkit. It offers a start to finish guide for using NetGalley, from setting up your account to maintaining a good ratio and writing reviews, and everything in between.

Finally, the “talent show” allows us to offer feedback on this guide/activity, and link one of our best reviews from July into the feedback. I really liked some of the activities, and would have liked if these were hyped up a little more. There wasn’t a lot of chatter that I came across on social media, and I didn’t really remember to check for prompts in the scavenger hunt on a regular basis. However, I think if more people were aware of this, it would be easier and more fun to participate in. Hopefully next year this will be mentioned more widely in the month or two leading up to it, to inspire even more participation. The bingo and scavenger hunt are activities that I think are super fun and would definitely want to do again next year, although the other two weeks had less structured activities, which are less appealing to me. I tend to enjoy activities that are more structured, so hopefully there will be more activities to choose from during the month. But overall, this was a fantastic event, and I’m thrilled to have been able to participate. Finally, a social forum where participants can interact directly can make things even more interesting, offering a chance to make this feel like more of a friendly competition than an isolated activity.

This is a well thought out reading adventure for the summer. It was easy to download all the information I'll need to participate in the fun. Let the stories... and bingo... begin!!
~~~
After a month of participating, it's been fun, but harder to do after a long day at work than I thought it would be. I seemed to end up completing the missions in one lump on the weekends when I had more time to scavenge what was posted instead of trying to complete them each day. I'm not sure if that is how it was intended, but it's the only way it worked for me. The bingo and creating my banner board were my favorites. I was hoping for a post to show my banner but haven't seen one as of this review. I'd definitely attend summer camp again in 2025 if it's offered. Thanks for keeping me busy with so many ARC's this summer... and all seasons of the year.

#CampNetGalley
#NetGalley

I am really excited to earn the Camp NetGalley badge! I think that's a wonderful incentive for joining this campaign. It was a struggle to follow along with what events were going on since the instructions were spread across the posts, infographics, etc. So I mostly joined in by following NetGalley's instagram stories. The social media events were my favorite to join in and I loved all of the provided graphics.

It would be fun next year to have a book for each bunk to read. Or an exclusive ARC offered as Read Now to camp participants. It would be great for networking to submit posts to be highlighted on instagram (like real camp talent shows/competitions). Also, weekly prompts so we could then post book reviews/make recommendations that matched the theme.

Thank you to the team at We Are Bookish and NetGalley for arranging this!

This was such a fun and creative way to engage the community! Sometimes NetGalley can be a little daunting or feel almost like a chore (especially if I'm too far behind in my reviews) - but this series of activities gave a fun and refreshing angle to being a book reviewer and participating in the community as a whole.

I loved the idea of the bingo board! I'm a sucker for book bingos, so this was my type of activity. I also really appreciated the welcome packet that outlined all the different ways to engage throughout the month - downloading it made it easy to follow along and decide on what activities I could participate in.

The link to the review I'm including is one of my favorite posts of mine on IG currently. I love the way that the photo turned out - but more importantly, I loved the book and really feel like I captured the essence of my excitement in the review post.

What a fun idea! Who doesn't love bookish fun.
I know I do.
I will share this on my social media platform @thegirlwholovestoreadandreview
And earn myself some

I had such a fun time with Camp NetGalley this summer and I really hope to see it back next summer. I found that it was such a great motivator to get me back into the ARC groove since I had been feeling out of it for a few months. I really made me excited to get through a few of the books on my shelf and look around for some other really fun titles. I definitely had the most fun with the bingo board since I've been very into them this year and have been doing at least one a month this year. I also found the revised toolkit super helpful and I definitely wouldn't have checked it out on my own. I also love that this prompt in particular is giving me a chance to reflect on the reviews I have written over the years and find one I am really proud of.

Due to my busy schedule, I am sorry I didn’t get to participate and enjoy this package, from what I have read it sounded like, it was a fun time all around.

Maybe I'm the wrong target audience for this, but it felt like a whole lot of work. I'm also not a full time book blogger or similar, so my reviews tend to be things that I am hoping will help others decide if they want to buy and are not intended to be something that I would necessarily feature the way that some of the challenges here implied.

I started out really excited to participate in this challenge and to build some momentum for my summer reading, but the way that this is set up, was disappointing for me. If you are already on social and recognized for your reviews, then you probably don't need this type of camp to keep you motivated and to link your NetGalley space to your book review space. If you are, like me, not doing this as a career, then a lot of these challenges are just more effort than I'm willing to invest. I am more likely to do the Pop Sugar reading challenge or similar because it's attainable and lets me have fun with my reading beyond a social focus.

I'm sure that there is a right audience for it. Just not me.

This is so fun!! I have been a member of NetGalley for a few years now, and do not remember ever participating in something like this. Way to go, NetGalley! Love it!

I think this was a fun summer activity! I liked the bingo, but I feel like the stickers page was unnecessary. Also, on page 8 I feel like the subheadings were a little hard to read due to the lack of contrast between the beige and light green colors. Overall I enjoyed participating in Camp Netgalley and thought it was a creative idea!

I think this is such a cute idea and I hope it is brought back next year and all the years after!
For some more ideas, I think it would be neat to have authors participate in the challenge. Such as, get approved for one of the authors books that are apart of the camp you get a badge.
I think it would also be cool to have special books for the campers!
i LOVE THIS IDEA!!

July has been a crazy busy month for me, so I wasn't able to participate in as many challenges and activities as I had hoped, but Camp Netgalley was a super fun idea, and the packet was a really cute and helpful resource. I will definitely participate again if this becomes an annual tradition. I'm including a link to a review I was super proud of earlier this year in the box below, so hopefully I read those instructions correctly. Lol.

This is the kind of camping I actually *enjoy*--the kind that happens indoors, with books.

I loved this challenge. My fave parts were meet the camper and the fun challenges. While I didn’t get to participate in many of the challenge for lack of reading time, I hope to participate more next year.

Needing a place to stay while she finishes her masters program, Tallulah impulsively accepts a position as an Au Pair for professional hockey player, Burgess Abraham. Due to a traumatic event in her past, Tallulah has a hard time trusting men. So why does she quickly feel so comfortable and safe with Burgess? Can she actually trust this hulking hockey player? Or is she just going to get hurt all over again?

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

The first 70% of this book was absolutely perfect. I loved the building tension between Tallulah and Burgess, the bond forming between Tallulah and Lissa, and all of the adorable family moments in between.

But that is exactly what was missing from the last 30% of the book. There was tension, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t the kind that had me swooning like the first 70%. It was the kind that made me anxious and sad. It was a beautiful ending with so many life lessons and character development - but the vibe switch threw me for a loop. I wasn’t expecting to feel like I just walked out of a therapy session after reading a Tessa Bailey book.

Even after being disappointed in the ending, this book is still nearly a five star read for me, and it is all because of Burgess.
I loved how protective he was. It was a different type of protectiveness than what I had anticipated from a giant hockey player. It wasn’t all about him being domineering and throwing his weight around for the girls physical safety, but more of his concern about Tallulah and Lissa’s emotional well being, and making sure they were always comfortable and happy. The second he realized Tallulah was hesitant to be alone in a room with him, he was doing everything he could to make her feel safe. It was refreshing and so thoughtful, I forgave him immediately for his lapse in judgment later in the book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for the free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

First of all, I want to say how grateful I am that NetGalley and We Are Bookish care so much about us reviewers and create events like this camp to keep us motivated and inspired. I was not able to participate in all of the activities, unfortunately, but I loved filling out my bingo each time I finished a book and practicing tracking it in the journal. In the future, it would be amazing if reviewers from across the world could chat about NetGalley during the camp to feel more connected (on Zoom or in local groups). Because all of the activities I was aware of were individual, it felt more like a meditation than a camp experience -- which is not bad, just not what I expected.

What a fun idea! I enjoyed this and thought it was a fun activity. I particularly liked the Book bingo as a creative way to read new and interesting books. I unfortunately did not have time to participate in as much as I would have liked, but loved the concept and hope it becomes available again, maybe with a holiday theme.

My favorite part of Camp NetGalley was having a fixed activity guide for reading over the summer. I loved using my library summer challenges as a young girl so this was very much reminiscent of that. I really enjoyed reading Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar this summer but my favorite NetGalley book was Lucy Foley's Midnight Feast, link to the review on Goodreads is attached.

I’ve been a happy camper participating in Camp NetGalley this July! ⛺️

The Camp NetGalley Welcome Packet was so well done and so immersive. I loved the camping theme present throughout and how many fun activities there were. The ideas for the Talent Show and the packing list were adorable! I also appreciated the events guide and the checklist - they both were very useful for someone like me who likes to keep track of things. The Camp NetGalley Bingo board was also very fun - so many people in the bookish community including myself utilize bingo boards as a fun way to challenge ourselves to read each month, so the addition of that was wonderful.

One idea I have for next year is creating different bunks based on genres. There could be a romance bunk, a mystery bunk, a thriller bunk, etc. Readers are all so unique and read in different ways and I feel like this can both celebrate our differences while further fostering a sense of community.

Even though we are all participating in a digital way, the idea of camp made it feel like a fun experience that fostered togetherness. I had a great time joining in on the fun this year and am looking forward to next July!

Thank you for a fun summer activity! Maybe next year we can have a bookclub discussion. Looking forward to Camp NetGalley events and reading at the beach!