They open the door to find Buddy, the creepy-ass smiling guy from the front cover. Wendy and Elliot are startled when someone knocks on the trailer door. That, or the book from here on out is just Wendy’s ICU fever dream. They crash land in the forest and somehow don’t die. The kids realize that their camper has become unhitched and they are picking up speed rolling downhill. So they’re riding in the back while their parents drive up some steep mountainous road when they suddenly start moving in the wrong direction.

All I can think of is the lack of seatbelts because I have an innate fear of car crashes. Their parents give in and let them, which is insane but also believable. They beg their parents to let them ride in the camper which is trailer-hitched to the back of their car. The Horror at Camp Jellyjam opens with Wendy and Elliot being extremely bored on their family’s cross-country camping trip. Score: 3.5ĮRMAHGERD #33: The Horror at Camp Jellyjam. It’s hard to stay mad at the messier parts when I was enjoying the ride. Despite its flaws, The Horror at Camp Jellyjam was fun to read and it leaned into its weirdness. With a few edits to explain some of the plot holes, or perhaps a significantly longer page count, this book could have really worked. Unfortunately, the book fell short of making enough sense to place it in the upper echelon of Goosebumps classics like One Day at Horrorland and Welcome to Camp Nightmare. The twist at the end was batshit crazy in the best way. That would have been literal hell for me as a child, so I deeply related to Wendy’s disillusionment as the story progressed. Buddy the counselor was super-creepy, and the sports-based summer camp sounded like a never-ending gym class. Part of me was wondering if the whole book was just Wendy’s ICU fever dream because they were not wearing seatbelts. The book opens with Wendy and her brother Evan arriving at the camp when the trailer that they’re hiding in gets unhitched from their parent’s car and they crash in the woods. It wasn’t afraid to go big and get weird. The Horror at Camp Jellyjam contained all of the elements I crave in a Goosebumps book. Goosebumps #33: The Horror at Camp Jellyjam

Rl stine the horror at camp jellyjam