YMMV / The Curse of Camp Cold Lake

• Base-Breaking Character: Sarah. Some dislike her for being seen as whiny and entitled, not to mention some of the unsavory actions later on, while others like her as they can releate to her, seeing her actions are understandable mistakes most of the time.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Della may also be considered one, if only because she was much more likable and interesting compared to the actual protagonist of the book she was a villain in. If anything, the fact that she was able to gain a section in the Characters page before Sarah Maas just shows how much the readers actually prefer Della.
• Moral Event Horizon: It's easy to feel sorry for Della when we find out she died at summer camp, and she has been trapped in a limbo version of it for years while the counselors covered up the accident. Sarah herself admits that she feels bad for Della. Della crosses it, however, by revealing that she goes on a murdering spree, trying to kill any kid unlucky enough to have a Near-Death Experience and convince them to cross over to the Other Side with her as a permanent buddy. Sarah wasn't even the first victim! It turns out that Della succeeded in killing Briana the previous year, and went after Sarah when Briana refused to spend the rest of her afterlife with her murderer.
• Ron the Death Eater: Sarah gets this treatment in most fanfiction involving her, which portray her as a bully or even have her turn evil. Fans in general exaggerate how bad she is and act like she was a cruel bully hell bent on making her bunkmates miserable and ruining their camp experience, when she felt guilty for her mistakes, thanked Briana for trading bunks with her, and apologized for accidentally revealing Jan's asthma (one could say that this accidental reveal may as well be Sarah doing Jan a favor, as the latter was adamant about hiding her asthma and doing so could have easily put her in danger had her condition flared up at any moment), as well as immediately forgiving her bunkmates and being completely happy with making a fresh start both times they apologized.
• Rooting for the Empire: Because Sarah's much too whiny and selfish for many readers to sympathize with, they end up rooting for Della instead since she's not only considered more interesting of a character, they could actually sympathize with her more due to her tragic backstory on how she died.
• The Scrappy: Jan, Meg and Briana, Sarah's bunkmates. They react to Sarah's annoying, but minor mistakes that she was genuinely apologetic for by cruelly bullying her. At one point, Meg and Briana apologize for pretending there were firecrackers in the fire and causing Sarah to run away screaming and get laughed at, only for it to be a trick to put a snake down her back. When Jan is Sarah's canoeing partner, she capsizes the canoe they're in while knowing Sarah's a bad swimmer just because she accidentally revealed she had asthma, and later lies to Liz that Sarah did it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Sarah Maas' more mature, social, level-headed younger brother Aaron disappears halfway through the story. He would've made a great Foil to the socially awkward, foolish Sarah, especially since he's the only character of the whole book that actually treated Sarah with any kindness at all. It helps that he's one of the few characters of the series who averts the Annoying Younger Sibling stereotypes of other younger siblings in many of the other books of the franchise.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Sarah is considered this by some. While she is portrayed as socially awkward and rather shy, it's a bit difficult to sympathize with her when she can come off as whiny, and comes up with a plan to pretend to drown as such a poorly desperate attempt to get the others to sympathize with her.