I absolutely loved so many things about this book. The setting itself—the queer camp where kids get to spend a few weeks being unapologetically themselves and figuring themselves out and getting to forget homophobia and transphobia exist—is an awesome place that made me kind of envy the characters. There are so many cool little camp traditions, fun activities, interactions with councilors, and all of it ties so well into the plot. I loved plenty of the side characters, both the campers and the staff. There was so much witty banter, so many fun messy teenage moments, and some excellent discussion of internalized homophobia and toxic masculinity.

However, it took me a while to get into the story, despite all of these awesome things, because the main character infuriated me so much. From the first few pages, I just kept wanting to shake him. It's not just that he has this plan to pretend to be someone else for a guy he barely knows and ignores everyone's suggestions that perhaps this is kind of unfair to both himself and the guy in question. It's that he does it literally based on this weird reasoning: "Hudson makes me feel like it's okay to be myself, like, totally myself, anywhere, anytime... so I'm going to pretend to be someone else to get him to even look my way, and I'll come up with an elaborate plot to keep his attention, and then it'll just work out in the end." So does he make you feel like you're free to be myself, or do you need to literally pretend to be a different person who's never been to this camp before? HOW CAN IT BE BOTH? Seriously, this boggled my brain.

At least in the first half of the story, Randy had a good number of people regularly tell him that if anyone needs him to change so much for them, they're not worth it, and that he's being manipulative and unfair to Hudson. At the same time, they don't try to stop him from making his own mistakes, which is a really nice touch. All of that helped me stick with the story for more than a few chapters, which is something I'm really grateful for, because there were so many fun and important moments here. But the further we get into the story, the more focus there is on how Randy was totally right to come up with this plot, because look! He discovered important things about himself, like that he can have multiple interest and doesn't have to choose between being just a theater kid or a sportsy kid etc!  And he and Hudson did eventually hit it off, and Hudson opened up to him so much, and it all worked out in the end! The implications of the fact that it's been all built on lies get abandoned instead of resolved, and that leaves me with a somewhat unpleasant taste in my mouth, tbh.