Kristin's Bookshelf

📖 Camera Stays On
✍️ Tylor Paige
🎙️ Luke Persiani & Ava Flynn
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

“Camera Stays On” feels destined for a gloriously campy horror movie adaptation, and I would absolutely be there opening night.

This was a wild ride from start to finish. Purdy returns home and finds herself caught between her childhood best friend, Asher, and his brother, Sawyer, who also happens to be her ex-fiancé. With few options, she agrees to help them make a found-footage horror film. Naturally, that’s when all hell breaks loose.

The storyline is absolutely chaotic in the best way, with Sawyer determined to bring his found-footage vision to life while seeking revenge for a wrong he believes was done to him in the past. From there, the body count starts climbing. One by one, we have to say goodbye to characters and, honestly? I wasn’t exactly devastated. 😂 Most of these people were pretty terrible, which made watching everything spiral wildly out of control even more fun.

There’s something about campy horror that works so well for me, especially when a story fully commits to the insanity. “Camera Stays On” delivered the blood, revenge, messy relationships, questionable decisions, and sheer WTF energy I wanted. I could practically see the movie playing in my head while I listened.

My picky nit was the narration. Luke Persiani and Ava Flynn both had aspects of their performances that I really enjoyed, but I think this story would have benefited tremendously from duet narration. Sawyer in particular sounded noticeably different depending on who was voicing him, and those shifts occasionally pulled me out of the story.

That said, the narrators were both incredible. Great range and a lot of fun voice dynamics. Flynn’s depiction of Purdy was fantastic as was Persiani’s take on Sawyer (he sounded unhinged).

This was my first Tylor Paige book, but it definitely won’t be my last. I’ve already spotted a few others in her backlist that look VERY up my alley.