The Counselors

Specs:

What The Vibes Are

What It’s About

Camp Alpine Lake is the only place where Goldie Easton feels safe.

She’s always had a special connection to the place, even before she was old enough to attend. The camp is the lifeline of Roxwood, the small town she lives in. Alpine Lake provides jobs, money, and prestige to the region. Few Roxwood locals, though, get to reap the rewards of living so close to the glam summer that camp, with its five-figure tuition and rich kids who have been dumped there for eight weeks by their powerful parents. Goldie’s one of them.

Even with her “townie” background, Goldie has never felt more at home at camp, and now she’s back as a counselor, desperate for summer to start and her best friends, Ava and Imogen, to arrive. Because Goldie has a terrible dark secret she’s been keeping, and she is more in need of the comfort than ever.

But Goldie’s not the only person at camp who has been lying. When a teen turns up dead in the lake late one night, she knows that the death couldn’t have been an accident. She also knows that Ava was at the lake that same night.

What did Ava see, and what does she know? Why hasn’t she said anything to Goldie about the death? Worse–what did Ava do?

But asking questions offers no answers, only broken bonds of lifelong friendship, with hidden danger and betrayals deeper than Goldie ever imagined.

What I thought about it

***Possible Spoilers below

Welcome to Camp Alpine Lake, a summer camp for teenage wealth…

Located in small, rural Roxwood, Vermont, townie Goldie Easton was looking forward to another year as a counselor at her favorite summer camp. She craved a sense of normalcy with her out-of-state friends after a stressful year. Since the prior summer, Goldie had gotten wrapped up in a dark secret that left her as a social outcast in her small town.

After the counselors arrived and spent the evening out on the town, the group decided to go skinny dipping and turned off the camp’s security cameras to not getting caught. It didn’t take Goldie and her friends, Ava Canter and Imogen, long to realize that each of them was hiding something. This caused a fight between Ava and Goldie. During the night, Goldie watched Ava leave her cabin and head off toward the lake as if she were meeting someone in secret. She returned later on to Goldie’s cabin, where she crawled into Goldie’s bed and began crying.

During one of the flashback chapters, we learned that on New Year’s Eve, Heller and Goldie were driving back from a party and hit Dylan, one of the town’s sports stars, paralyzing him from the waist down. Effectively ruined his career and caused him to lose his spot at college. Heller was driving after a few drinks, and out of fear of losing his seat at Dartmouth, he asked Goldie to take the fall. She agreed, and the town turned on her.

The following morning, Ava was gone, and a body had been that was discovered floating in the lake. The body happened to be that of Heller McConnell – Goldie’s ex-boyfriend, who was also involved in the incident. (Goldie and Heller had begun dating shortly after the previous Halloween.) Heller’s body was found floating by the buoys in an apparent drowning.

At Heller’s funeral, Goldie was verbally attacked by a bunch of Heller’s teammates. Jordan, Dylan’s older brother, alluded to him knowing the truth and that Heller “got what he deserved.” I smell motive!

It’s also revealed that Stu and Mellie, the camp’s owners who had sway in town, helped Goldie get a lower sentence and had her come work for them as community service. Stu and Mellie were also Goldie’s parents’ employer, which was how she was able to attend such an expensive summer camp growing up.

As the plot and investigation ensued, Goldie discovered quite a few things… 1. Cal, Heller’s friend, had Heller’s work ID for his position at the town clerk’s office. Apparently, Heller had given it to Cal for safekeeping, stating he wanted Cal to have it in case anything went wrong. 2. Goldie found Heller’s necklace on the beach in the sand, confirming he was on camp property, which contradicted the police report. The report stated that Heller stayed in the water.

Goldie eventually ran into Jordan again and confronted him about what he knew. Jordan explained that Heller got drunk right before his death and confessed to everything. Jordan has tried to tell Dylan, but his younger brother refused to believe that his friend would do such a thing. Especially since Heller was an incredibly doting friend after the accident. I feel like that should tell you enough, but apparently not.

After getting into Heller’s emails, Goldie was able to uncover that Heller was sending out stories to different media outlets about finding out a huge financial scandal involving Ava’s dad, Mark Canter. Turned out that Heller mistook Ava for Imogen and asked her to meet him that night to talk about his findings. Ava claimed that she left Heller in one piece after they heard someone coming, and he was headed back to his boat.

Heller’s story ended up going public postmortem anyway, and Mark Canter was called out for helping his clients avoid taxes by putting money away in offshore accounts.

Back where she found Heller’s necklace, Goldie noticed a separate security camera that wasn’t hooked up to the mainframe. This meant that the camera might have picked up something. After breaking into Stu and Mellie’s cabin, Goldie was able to access the footage and saw Ava’s story check, but that wasn’t all. The footage revealed that Heller got back out of his boat and walked toward something off-screen. The next thing you see was a dark figure hauling Heller’s limp body into the lake. Although no face can be seen, the perpetrator was wearing a senior staff shirt.

When Goldie’s phone connected to the wifi, she suddenly received a bunch of texts from Cal stating that Meg, one of the other counselors, wasn’t who she said she was. Trying the put the pieces together, Goldie watched Meg walk off with Stu and Mellie and followed out of fear for the safety of the elderly couple.

When Goldie confronted Meg, the counselor had no idea what she was talking and Stu suddenly bumped Meg into a wall, which knocked her out. It’s revealed that Stu and Mellie killed Heller in an effort to stop his story from running. They were the ones that Ava and Heller heard coming; they’d come to scope it out after seeing Heller on the camera feeds.

Seemed that Stu and Mellie began embezzling from their own company as a way to keep up appearances. As their camp for the rich became popular, clients wanted to be schmoozed, so they skimmed some here and there until it became too much and too noticeable. They hired Mark Canter and even set up an offshore account through him. If Heller’s story went through, they were finished. Stu, who was a diabetic, injected Heller with insulin and then dumped his comatose body into the lake, where he drowned.

Meg had come to during their villainous monologue, and the elder couple left the girls to burn as they barricaded them in the burning mess hall. Goldie was able to call for help on the intercom, and the girls were saved.

Stu and Mellie had tried to flee, but when they were caught, they confessed to everything. Ava, Imogen, and Goldie remained friends but put Camp Alpine Lake behind them as they each began new chapters of their lives and stepped into adulthood. The truth about Dylan’s accident came to light, and Cal backed up her truth as he had promised earlier in the novel.

Conclusion

The Counselors was a fun, engaging murder mystery that was filled with mischief, twists, drama, and that campy, small-town feel I love in mysteries! Definitely one of my new favorite mystery reads! If you’ve read The Counselors, leave a comment below!

♡ G&P