A Murder Most Camp

A Murder Most Camp

Author: Nicolas DiDomizio

Rating: B+

Vibe: Adirondack whodunit with sloppy joes, sass, and a nepo baby becoming a real person

Mikey Hartford IV is the kind of guy you'd love to hate-watch at a yacht party: a 29-year-old trust-fund disaster whose entire skill set appears to consist of shooting iPhone videos and burning through money. When his father finally pulls the cord on his trust unless he can "do some good" before his thirtieth birthday, Mikey ends up exiled to Camp Lore—a rickety Adirondack summer camp—where he's tasked with helping his twelve-year-old aunt (yes, aunt) come out of her shell. Then a thirteen-year-old cold case starts crawling out of the woods, the campers go full amateur documentarian, and a very hot lifeguard moves into his cabin. So begins A Murder Most Camp, Nicolas DiDomizio's breezy, snarky, surprisingly warm whodunit.

I had a great time with it. The voice is sharp—DiDomizio writes like someone who's spent a lot of time on Bravo and isn't shy about it—and Mikey, against all odds, becomes someone you root for. You can feel him slowly learning how to be useful to other people, and that arc is more touching than I expected it to be. The relationship between Mikey and Annabelle is the soul of the book—an awkward, kind-of-tender thing between two people who didn't ask to be family but are stuck with each other anyway. There's a quiet moment where he offers to be her "uncle" instead of her nephew at camp, just to make her life a little less weird, and it lands harder than half the romantic beats do.

The dialogue does a lot of the heavy lifting, and it earns its keep. The banter feels natural, the kids actually sound like kids (a harder trick than most authors get credit for), and the cast of suspects is small enough that you can keep track of everyone without a spreadsheet. The book is also blessedly tight. At a moment when every queer novel seems to be sprawling to 450 pages, A Murder Most Camp is the rare summer read that knows exactly how long it should be and clocks out on time.

The mystery is the breeziest part of the book—for better and worse. The setup is fun, the red herrings keep the pages turning, but if you've read more than three of these you'll probably see the ending coming a few stops before it arrives. That didn't ruin it for me; cozy-adjacent mysteries aren't usually trying to outsmart you. But the climax lands more as a confirmation than a revelation, and a book this committed to its twists could've used one more knot.

Where I wanted more was the romance. Jackson—the dishy lifeguard/medical-student/bunkmate trifecta—has all the ingredients for a great slow-burn, and there are flashes of real chemistry. But the actual relationship beats kind of just… happen. They go from circling each other to together without quite earning the in-between. The result is a love story I liked in concept more than I felt on the page. In a book where the family stuff feels genuinely lived-in, the romance felt like it skipped a few scenes the reader needed.

Underneath the camp shenanigans (camp in both senses, which DiDomizio is clearly enjoying), there's a quietly real story about a privileged gay guy learning to give a shit. The nepo-baby-grows-up arc isn't new, but there's something specifically gay about Mikey's particular brand of arrested development—the curated brunch persona, the protective shield of irony, the assumption that charm and a punchline will get you out of every actual responsibility. Plenty of us know a Mikey. Plenty of us have been a Mikey, at some point and to some degree. Watching him fumble his way into something resembling adulthood, while pretending the whole time that he isn't, was the part of the book that stuck with me longest.

A Murder Most Camp won't change your life, and it isn't trying to. It's a fast, funny, well-crafted summer read with a protagonist who's more lovable than he should be and a setting that pulls you in even when the mystery doesn't fully surprise. The romance could've used another draft, and the twist could've used another layer—but the dialogue, the pacing, and the messy little heart at the center earn it a solid B+.