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marmaladereads 's review for:
Saint Juniper's Folly
by Alex Crespo
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was such an unexpectedly beautiful story, it really washed over me in stages, and by the time I reached the end, I was completely entranced.
This story is a triple POV shared by three teenagers connected by a haunted old house in the woods.
Jamie has been rejected his whole life by everyone around him. He was raised in foster care and immediately does not fit in the small town of his latest placement. He runs away from his foster home and ends up squatting in an abandoned house in the woods, only to realize once he's entered the house that the ghost that occupies it will not allow him to leave.
Theo is an overly anxious goody two shoes who has always felt like he has to be perfect to be loved by anyone, including his parents. He stumbles across the haunted house and Jamie, and vows to help him, even though they don't really get along.
To help Jamie, Theo also locates and enlists the help of Taylor, a local witch who comes from a long maternal line of witches but has been forbidden from practicing her craft by an overprotective father after the death of her mother.
The three must work together (racing against time and fighting an angry ghost) to rescue Jamie from the house he is trapped in before it is too late, growing from strangers to friends to more. There is a beautiful romantic subplot between Theo and Jamie, as well as the unraveling of multiple interconnected threads of family and personal secrets that all made this story feel like it was really woven together.
I loved the way the relationship between Theo and Jamie blossomed, but I also really enjoyed the fact that Taylor remained integral to the story throughout and never felt like a third wheel. There are definitely some twists that shocked me, and I rushed through the end of the book with baited breath. By the end I simply loved it.
There are definitely a couple of creepy moments but this is more of a mystery than a horror and ultimately I found it more hopeful and heartwarming than scary. It does start at a slow to medium pace, and at about the 60% mark it picks up pretty rapidly and it suddenly becomes apparent that everything up until that point was some skillful build up.
I did have an issue with a couple of moments that didn't make sense to me other than to dismiss them as Teenage Logic™, like why it would be so bad for anyone else to discover that Jamie was trapped in the house, and I didn't feel that Taylor's friend Anna really added much to the story, but these minor issues didn't take away from my enjoyment of the story in the end.
This story is a triple POV shared by three teenagers connected by a haunted old house in the woods.
Jamie has been rejected his whole life by everyone around him. He was raised in foster care and immediately does not fit in the small town of his latest placement. He runs away from his foster home and ends up squatting in an abandoned house in the woods, only to realize once he's entered the house that the ghost that occupies it will not allow him to leave.
Theo is an overly anxious goody two shoes who has always felt like he has to be perfect to be loved by anyone, including his parents. He stumbles across the haunted house and Jamie, and vows to help him, even though they don't really get along.
To help Jamie, Theo also locates and enlists the help of Taylor, a local witch who comes from a long maternal line of witches but has been forbidden from practicing her craft by an overprotective father after the death of her mother.
The three must work together (racing against time and fighting an angry ghost) to rescue Jamie from the house he is trapped in before it is too late, growing from strangers to friends to more. There is a beautiful romantic subplot between Theo and Jamie, as well as the unraveling of multiple interconnected threads of family and personal secrets that all made this story feel like it was really woven together.
I loved the way the relationship between Theo and Jamie blossomed, but I also really enjoyed the fact that Taylor remained integral to the story throughout and never felt like a third wheel. There are definitely some twists that shocked me, and I rushed through the end of the book with baited breath. By the end I simply loved it.
There are definitely a couple of creepy moments but this is more of a mystery than a horror and ultimately I found it more hopeful and heartwarming than scary. It does start at a slow to medium pace, and at about the 60% mark it picks up pretty rapidly and it suddenly becomes apparent that everything up until that point was some skillful build up.
I did have an issue with a couple of moments that didn't make sense to me other than to dismiss them as Teenage Logic™, like why it would be so bad for anyone else to discover that Jamie was trapped in the house, and I didn't feel that Taylor's friend Anna really added much to the story, but these minor issues didn't take away from my enjoyment of the story in the end.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Abandonment
Moderate: Animal death, Violence
Minor: Xenophobia