Camera Stays On by Tylor Paige
Tylor Paige’s Camera Stays On is a dark romance with a slasher flavor that blends a love triangle, a buried childhood secret, and a mansion wired with cameras into a story I couldn’t put down. It’s the kind of read that eats up an October evening.
It’s Halloween, and three fourteen-year-olds are at the movies: Asher, his younger brother, Sawyer, and Purdy, the neighbor girl with a stutter and a home life no kid should have. An impulsive act of protection one night binds them together and Paige wastes no time showing how that bond starts to curdle. Sawyer’s whispered promise that Purdy is his “from now until forever” is chilling, and reverberates in every subsequent chapter.
A Haunted Production With Deadly Stakes
Fast forward 12 years. Now she calls herself Andi, the name she gave herself when she left town five years ago, and she’s only back for her mother’s funeral. The warm, wry brother Asher is a horror-loving location scout, and he’s planning a haunted attraction. The filmmaker Sawyer is as magnetic and unsettling as ever. When he offers a fat pay check and a starring role in his found footage slasher, filmed at an isolated mansion with a cast of old friends, the reader knows it’s a terrible idea. Half the fun is watching Andi talk herself into it anyway.
Andi is a great heroine: wary, funny and tough. Her stutter is sensitively portrayed, flaring under stress and easing in safe company, and thus acts as an emotional barometer. Once a woman who survived by people-pleasing, she transforms into a woman who trusts her own voice.
Asher is such a delight. He has a dry sense of humor, a cowboy hat and a knack for showing up when Andi needs a buffer. Even his dogs, Blair and Toby, are named after found-footage favorites, a small detail that tells you all you need to know about the book’s sense of fun. The Andi and Asher romance is slow-burn, charged, and consent-forward. He checks in, he leaves room for her to say no, and that care is important given what she is escaping.
And then there’s Sawyer. The scariest villains are those who believe they are the heroes of the story, and Sawyer is a case study in possessive charm: public gestures meant to trap someone, charm that becomes pressure, affection that becomes surveillance. His working behind a camera makes his control feel organic to the premise.
When the Camera Becomes Part of the Horror
The horror is inventive, with traps, escalating stakes, and the constant sense that someone is always watching. The found-footage conceit is more than window dressing. Paige understands the form’s rules, uses them to build suspense, and then cleverly turns them against her characters. Horror fans will enjoy the winks to genre classics, while readers newer to it will find it easy to follow and hard to look away from.
The dual narration lets us feel both the dread of being trapped and the helplessness of watching someone you love in danger. The pacing never sags, and the final act is tense, cathartic, and satisfying, honoring the characters’ growth.
Camera Stays On is perfect for fans of horror-tinged romance, slasher movies, and love stories where the stakes are literally life and death. It’s clever, thrilling, a little twisted, and heartfelt.
About Tylor Paige:
Tylor Paige (she/her) is a USA Today Bestselling author of what her readers have lovingly labeled, whorror.
Tylor is proof that horror doesn’t have to be serious to be effective. It can be self-aware, playful, and at times romantic, while still telling a solid scary story. In blending her passions for both romance and horror she’s not only creating something that’s both risqué and bloody, she’s bridging the gap between the hopelessly romantic and the hopelessly haunted.
