Giulia Heinzelmann

Boot Camp

Morton Rhue

Realistic Teen Fiction

„Boot Camp“, by Morton Rhue is a teen-fiction novel that is very loosely based on real events in the United States of America. The story is revolving around behaviour-correcting boot camps for teens from the age thirteen to eighteen. The main character Connor Durrell is kidnapped against his will (though the abduction was initiated by his parents), and is brought to Lake Harmony, a correction center in upstate New York, that was designed for ‚troublemakers’ like him. Although he often states that he did nothing wrong, he is constantly punished either mentally (public humiliation, for e.g.) or physically (regular beatings until fainting). Trying to survive his time in camp with supervisor Joe constantly keeping an eye on him, Connor meets Pauly and Sarah, two teens that are desperate to get out of the camp before the next Winter starts- one way or another. Pulling Connor into their escape plan, they plan to flee from Lake Harmony, putting their life on the line.

Personally, I’m not too sure myself if I enjoyed the book or not. Though I think that the concept of the story is very interesting with its sinister and somewhat disturbing athmosphere, the story repeated itself a lot- or at least that’s how it seemed. During the book, Connor is often left to his own thoughts (especially since this book is written in the first person), but his inner dialogue doesn’t change much throughout the chapters whereas surprisingly you can still see some character development (for e.g. how he interacts with the minor characters). At the beginning of the book, to the reader, Connor might appear as an ‚ideal’ character. This image of the character is not broken until the story reaches its climax. The book describes him as a well-built, highly intelligent protagonist with just enough tragic backstory to make him seem realistic, who fortunately happens to also be stubborn enough to not lose his mind at the abuse he was receiving on a daily basis, which bothered me and made it harder for me to identify with him as a person. Additionally, the book lacks detail on things that would have been worth reading about, such as the environment of the establishment, minor characters, etc., which is unfortunate since it would have helped the readers create a better image of the boot camp in their heads.

Though my opinion on this novel is somewhat negative, I wouldn’t ultimately call the book ‚bad’- the story in itself is well thought-out and does offer some insight to the rough treatment of the campers. Though I wouldn’t recommend this book for younger kids, it does count to the imaginary list of ‚books you should consider reading if you don’t have any priorities’ of a teen/young adult.