Why don't you have a seat right over there, sir?
This is gonna be a very short review because to be honest, there's really not much to say about this book. I'll start by explaining the plot: two unathletic 12-year-old white kids get sent to sports camp for the summer even though they hate sports. While they're there, other kids start to mysteriously disappear and they must work together to find out what's been happening to their fellow campers. Simple enough, right?
God bless Kevin Spacey
This mystery story takes a side role to make room for the much more interesting main story of how these two kids play various sports with the other campers. Because it's a sports camp. Because the kind of kids who would willingly buy and read Goosebumps books are obviously more interested in sports than they are in reading scary stories. Because R.L. Stine was probably high on pot when he wrote this book, like Stephen King was when he wrote Cujo. So basically, when you pick up this book, you can expect an introduction and a climax like any other book, but those other 80-something pages?
Touchdown! Home run! Ace! Hole in one! GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLL!
Pretty much. Oh, don't get me wrong. The main characters still do their investigating, but they don't do much of it before something comes up and they have to call it quits to go play another match of badminton. Here's how the sports work: You win a game, you get a special coin. You get 6 of these bad boys and you get to take part in the special winner's ceremony held nightly in a run down shack outside of camp that nobody else besides the counselors is allowed in. So, they basically find the most physically fit children at camp and then take them to a rape hut. Terrific.
The main characters eventually figure out that the kids who are going missing are the ones who go to the shack and they go there to find out just what's lurking inside of it. They enter the shack and find themselves face to face with.....
OH MY GOD, IT'S ROSIE O'DONNELL!
King Jellyjam. King Jellyjam is a giant purple blob that constantly needs to be scrubbed and washed by the "winners" so he doesn't choke on his own gross blob stank that's always spewing out of every pore of his gross blobby body. The main characters tell the scrubber kids to all lie down on the ground, and when they do, King Jellyjam realizes just how bad Chipotle can be for your body and he dies in a danky fog of his own purply armpit stench. All of the kids escape the shack and are just about to be killed by the counselors before the cops show up and arrest all of the counselors.
Hopefully, not the same cop
This book is really bad. Like, really bad. There are some bad plots and monsters in the Goosebumps series, but this has to be one of the absolute worst. No character development, no interesting plot scenarios, a boring and overdone setting, and WHAT KID WANTS TO READ A BOOK ABOUT OTHER KIDS PLAYING SPORTS ALL DAY?! Nothing about this book works as a horror novel, and it definitely shows. If you ask anybody what they think of The Horror At Camp Jellyjam, they'll either laugh at your face or ask you what Disney Channel Original Halloween movie that is. It's a goopy, purple stain on the already soiled underwear that is the Goosebumps franchise. I give The Horror At Camp Jellyjam a measly 1 *insert sports reference here* out of a possible 10. Sorry for the hiatus, but I'm back now and better than ever. Just you wait.