I really enjoyed this one. The three protagonists were fantastic, and we know I always fawn over for a good paranormal mystery. The themes in the book surprised me most of all, I didn't expect it to go as heavy or deep as it did in some things. Race, generational trauma, representation, it was all handled incredibly well.

As a whole I'm starting to find the whole "found family" trope overdone, but this book does it well enough that it didn't bother me. The three characters form a bond that's believable and genuine and doesn't feel like the author ticking off a box because they know that readers enjoy that type of things in a book like this.

The romance is slow, which works in the confines of the story and I enjoyed how it played out. Their interactions were some of my favorites of the book, and I often looked forward to the chapters that were just the two of them talking.

Overall, I enjoyed the hell out of this book and couldn't really think of a single negative to give it without being insanely picky. I fully recommend.

Saint Juniper's Folly is a beautiful story of found identities and found families. The three main characters struggle with their families in various ways, but find comfort in their friendship and bond over solving the mystery of the Blackwood, and the angry ghost that lives within it. It is a story filled with hardship, but also heartfelt love. Dabbling in witchcraft, powers, and the unknown with a magnetic call that brings our trio together to accomplish what failed before. It is a truly mystical and beautifully written book. Alex Crespo did a magnificent job on this debut novel, and I can't wait to read future books written by them.

Thank you Netgalley and Peachtree for letting me read a copy of Saint Juniper's Folly, and thank you Alex Crespo for an amazing read!

thank you to netgalley for this arc !

i thought this book was so lovely and good!! theo, jamie, and taylor are such a good trio, the way their characters and relationships with each other develop was so nice to read. the way their different backgrounds all came together to give them a common ground was really well done and i just love them a lot! the plot was also really interesting, i was so intrigued that once i started reading again, i couldn't put it down. overall, i thought this was such a nice book to read. the povs worked well, the characters were so lovely, the plot was interesting, it was just really good!! i cannot wait for it to come out, i think i'll definitely be buying a hard copy of it!

Received an arc from NetGalley, thank you! Right off the bat, I knew I was going to enjoy this book! This book has beautiful friendships and relationships! What is not to love!?! This book had queer romance, witches, and haunted houses.

4.25 stars
I did not expect this gem of a story when I picked up this YA contemporary fantasy! I fell in love with the characters pretty quickly and the supernatural elements pulled me in further. Throw in a sweet romance and I had a hard time putting this one down.

Three seventeen-year-olds in Saint Juniper, Vermont, have their own separate problems and have to face them after a magical crisis involving a haunted house brings them all together. Jaime is in foster care after having been left by his mom when he was nine and he has a hard time letting people in. Theo is under pressure from his parents to be the perfect son. Taylor recently lost her mom and is banned by her magic shop owning dad from practicing very real magic.

Jaime, Theo and Taylor form the kind of connection and friendship that lonely people who feel like outsiders quickly do. I rooted for them all to get along and help each other, and also for two of them to realize they could be more than friends. Friendship, love and support of others are important themes of the novel. See also this reader squealing with joy when certain realizations between characters were made. ;)

Two of the main characters are of Mexican heritage, which is partially explored in the book. Especially for Jaime who has had his own journey with being a white-presenting Mexican-American in foster care. There is also great LGBT+ representation.

A lot of the elements gave me Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas vibes, as well as some Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater. For me this novel fell somewhere inbetween those two when it came to the writing and enjoyment of the story. I liked this better than Cemetery Boys, but the prose was not quite at Stiefvater levels, and some side-characters felt underdeveloped. I can't wait to see this book out in the world however, and for the author's future novels. Those will be insta-buys for me!

Thank you to Peachtree Teen and Netgalley for sending me this ebook for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

A phenomenal queer ya mystery!! It's got so many twists and turns and I highly enjoyed it! I really loved the characters. I will be recommending this to anyone who enjoys a good YA mystery!

This book has everything: Small town, misfit teens, magic, haunted woods, that one weird old house in the middle of the woods where you live that everyone says is haunted (yes that one), queer representation, library volunteering, some generational trauma, witches, and found family.

Saint Juniper's Folly is a teen gothic mystery that follows three teens who are on separate paths in life but are all feeling stuck in this small Vermont town. Theo keeps to himself and volunteers at the library. Jaime has moved back after being away for 8 years in foster care. Taylor is a practicing witch who helps run her late mother's apothecary. However something has been calling out to each of them...an old house located in the middle of the forest called Blackwood. Together the three strangers must work together to solve a mystery.

I do have to say that it took me a bit to get into the book. Especially as each chapter bumps between the three characters POV"s so it took a moment to get used to it. I do like that it focused on each character equally which is usually not something you get to see with three main characters. The queer representation in the book is very realistic and sweet. I really enjoyed this book. It is a little spooky but not scary book. However the quote "Do you ever think about how the forest won't remember us?" is absolutely haunting.

Thank you to PeachTree Teen and NetGalley for the eArc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This YA lgbtqiap+ mystery romance novel is said to be “Cemetery Boys meets The Haunting of Bly Manor” and I’d say they were pretty darn right.

A small eerie tourist town in Vermont, a haunted house in the middle of a forest, a boy just living life day to day so he can escape town after his senior year, a boy running from his past, and a witch whose father doesn’t want her practicing.

This book has 3 POV’s, Theo, Taylor, and Jaime, and they are all in first person. Their lives intersect when Theo wanders into the forest, Saint Juniper’s Folly, after hearing a scream, to find Jaime trapped in a haunted house. But Theo doesn’t know where to start in helping Jaime get out, so he brings in a witch, Taylor, who might know what to do.

This was such a good ya mystery, the writing was great and easy to follow. All three of the characters were complex and interesting in their own way, and I liked how throughout the book they really grew into and felt confident in themselves.

It had a slow pace romance which was super sweet to read, the friendship and found family between the three was cute and fun, and I love how sarcastic and sassy Jaime was with them.

It was a good haunted house story, the only criticism I have is that I wish it included a little bit more of a horror theme but overall, it was a quick fun romance mystery and it was a really great debut novel! And that cover is beautiful!

Thank you NetGalley for providing this e-ARC, all opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed this book! You really can't go wrong with a little YA haunted house mystery. The friendship between Jaime, Theo and Taylor was sweet and felt very real. I adored the slow building of Jaime and Theos relationship and love that it wasn't turned into an awkward and unnecessary love triangle situation. Just pure love and friendship.
The main thing that bothered me was the formatting of the book. I assume this was just because this is an ARC and will not be the case in the released book. But especially chapter 29 was very confusing and distracting in its format. There were also some typos and missing letters in some words, nothing major or extremely noticeable but it did happen a couple of times.
All in all this was a quick, great and fun read and I would recommend this to people that enjoy some light haunted house and mystery vibes with a lot of friendship, teenage/young adult problems and some very cute romance.

"Do you ever think about how the forest won't remember us?"

AAAAH, THIS WAS SO MUCH FUN!

Haunted houses, curses, magic and three traumatised teenagers – what could go wrong? Alex Crespo serves both very thoughtful and fun story about old secrets, walked right by murderous spirit in strange town. It's such a fun to read, characters are easy to fall in love with, perfectly balanced between warm YA and chilling horror-wanna-be.

Recommended to every Cemetery Boys Starkid lover!

Review in progress and to come.

I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review

Saint Juniper's Folly is an interesting read about a boy who gets trapped in a house in the woods, a witch who's struggling with her ability after her mother's death, and a boy who's looking for purpose and identity in his small town life.

I enjoyed both the story and the characters. The author does a really good job of giving the town its own persona and setting the eerie theme for the house and the forest. The characters were wonderfully individual, and it was great to watch them grow together.

There was a little of the common YA trappings of insta-love. I'm usually less critical of it within the genre, but it felt a little like being beaten over the head with the ~immediate attraction~ of it all, despite a brief and antagonistic first interaction. Once we were in the swing of things though, I thought it progressed very well, and enjoyed the conversations Jaime and Theo.

I also really enjoyed Taylor and her journey with her magic, although I feel like the book would have benefited by keeping her friend Anna involved more presently in the story, even if it were still as a foil, both because of her connection to magic but also to one of the groups regular life.

Overall, this was an enjoyable story about three kids learning who they are (in magical and regular ways), which is always a fun time as far as I'm concerned.

An emotional and breathtaking paranormal YA story!

Saint Juniper, Vermont is not a place Jaime, Theo and Taylor like, and they have good reasons not to.

For Jaime, it's where his parents left him. For Theo, it's a tiny world burdening him with expectations. For Taylor, it's a place where a witch is not safe.

But when Jaime gets trapped in a supposedly haunted house, the 3 teenagers are brought together in a race against time to unravel mysteries of the town's past, and in Taylor's case, of her family's past.

To solve the mystery, Jaime will have to deal with memories he buried long ago, Theo to deal with new, confusing feelings and Taylor to deal with the grief from her mother's death, while keeping everything secret from her father.

The book is an emotional rollercoaster, a real page-turner and an excellent debut!

Thank you NetGalley and Peachtree Teen for the ARC!

I knew about this book when it was still being written (since I follow the author on twitter) and that was why as soon as I heard that „Saint Juniper‘s Folly“ was on Netgalley, I immediately jumped at the chance to read it. And let me tell you – it did not disappoint.

The story follows three teenagers – Theo, Taylor and Jaime – as their small town lives change drastically one summer, bringing them together to solve the mystery of Blackwood manor, before it’s too late and one of them ends up dead…Told in triple perspective the book delves into what it means to be true to yourself and to others, the importance of family – both blood and found – and the age old problem – growing up.

Even if it might seem that a multitude topics have been touched upon in this story, all of them are intertwined and dealt with in such a masterful way, that at no point in the book did I feel like I was being spoon fed the ideas. Instead, I found myself nostalgic for my own teenage years and the friends I made and lost through the years… A particular passage stuck with me, where one of the characters wishes to exist in a moment of common day happiness forever, feeling as if seeing the scene from outside, and then pondering how such happiness is always just out of reach.

The reading experience was so smooth and I found myself flying through the book (even though I read the pdf of it on my Netgalley app on my phone and everyone knows that pdfs and phones do not mix), making it probably the most enjoyable book I’ve read this year, based on the experience itself. I loved the characters and their wit, the atmosphere and the picturesque descriptions. This is definitely a book I’d recommend reading (especially in the summer)!

I received an advance review copy from Netgalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Decent book, had really great potential but was really slow and drawn out, until the end and then everything seemed to happen at once. Wish there would have been more horror and excitement.

This story follows Jaime, Theo, and Taylor as they navigate life in their small towns, ghosts, and magic. There is mystery, multigenerational trauma, and themes of self-discovery.

I enjoyed this book so much from start to finish. I loved all three of the main characters, which I feel like often I do not, so that was nice. Each of the three fulfill typical YA character tropes - you have the sarcastic one who uses that and a prickly exterior to hide pain and trauma, you have your golden retriever boy who is actually deeper than he seems at the start, and the one with the brains who has a side issue to solve and has to teach one or more characters. Basically a classic golden trio, which I do not always enjoy, but I did this time.

The setting of the Blackwood house is very gothic in a watered-down YA way but still gives a good amount of creepiness to it and is an ideal backdrop for the story. There are many themes of self-discovery and acceptance throughout this, as well as identity, race, and LGBTQIA+ issues. I feel like if there was an entire series of books devoted to these three and gothic mysteries I would 100% read them.

I like this book and the characters! Jamie Theo and Taylor were all really cute and I thought the mystery was intriguing. The book was atmospheric and I thought was suitably disconcerting. The major issue I had is that the plot felt rushed into. There was no buildup in the beginning and the characters and their relationships were basically forced onto us pretty much straight away. It was too brief of a beginning to properly get us fully invested into the story. The beginning and the set up for the main plot should’ve been drawn out more. It really stilted the rest of the novel because it made the whole book feel off balance. It read similar to a short novella except the length itself was that of a novel (albeit a shorter novel). Overall I thought it was fine, the characters were fine and relatable and the writing was good if not for the plot development.

This book was a very fun read. It had all the beauty of gothic horror with just a touch of wholesome. While the teen angst was definitely necessary it did very good at never being too much. The characters were given arcs that were great to see and I loved watching their friendship grow. I felt like the story was really well done. I would've loved to see some more cultural mentions put in such as food but what was in there was well done.

I loved reading this book. It was quite short, so I was able to finish it between an evening and the next afternoon, but I was very tempted to stay up late reading it all the way through. I found it to be very compelling and hard to put down, which doesn't happen too often for me.

My favorite aspect of the book was the characterization, and specifically, I loved Theo's character. He felt very autistic-coded and I related so much to him. The way that he struggled sometimes to get his thoughts out coherently felt so real, and I empathized with how seriously he takes things and how much of a goody-two-shoes he was for most of his life.

(Mild/vague spoilers below about the romance aspect of this book)

I also can't get over the raw romantic chemistry that was somehow translated onto the page. I find that a lot of romance relies pretty heavily on the author telling the reader the two leads are falling for each other, or the reader filling in the gaps on their own based on their knowledge of various tropes. In this book, I could feel the characters falling for each other and it felt very real. The language is very lyrical and vivid, and Crespo is able to capture living emotions in a way that many authors struggle to do.

As much as I loved Theo and Jaime, Taylor's story left a little bit to be desired. I think this book could have benefited from being a little bit longer to allow us to really get to know her character better. Since Theo and Jaime spend a lot of their chapters getting to know each other, I felt like I left the book less connected to her than I was to the boys. I would love to see more of her and Anna's relationship, which was abandoned for most of the book. I would also love to see more of her personal life beyond the core plotline, and the same goes for Theo. Once the three main characters got together, it felt like their home lives disappeared almost completely.

I really did enjoy this book, though, and I am excited for it to be released. I can already see it making the rounds through queer reading circles, and I would love to get my hands on a physical copy. Thank you NetGalley and Peachtree for the opportunity to read an eARC!

Man, was this a delightfully fun read! I read this in chunks but it was difficult putting it down! Saint Juniper’s Folly revolves around three main character POVs: Jaime is the gossip of the town as soon as he steps into Saint Juniper due to being in and out of foster homes but his return is filled with the hope of a new beginning. However, he goes into the woods for some solitude and mysteriously does not return. Theo is an A-type upcoming senior who feels trapped by the expectations he’s held by in all aspects of his life. It isn’t until he wanders into the Folly and finds a haunted house with a boy trapped inside that he begins to branch out and ask who *he* wants to be. Taylor is an aspiring witch thanks to her mother opening the world of magic to her as a child. Unfortunately, she died suddenly when Taylor was young leading to magic being banned by her father and leaving Taylor with no one to help her. It isn’t until Theo appears in her life asking for a witch to help a boy trapped in a haunted house. Secrets are uncovered as these three work together to escape the Folly’s shadows.

I thoroughly enjoyed the entirety of this book as it weaved together a haunted house mystery, a budding lgbtqia+ romance, and the sweetest found family! Each of our main characters had distinct voices that were easy to decern from and none felt like they were lacking story-wise. Each character provides their own bits and pieces to this story's mystery and allows us to learn alongside them. Jaime was a stubborn, snarky character that blossomed as he let his walls down which led to some really beautiful, and sentimental moments between all of them. Theo felt like the rock of the group despite his shaky hold on his own life and that’s why I related the most with him. And Taylor had so much grief right underneath the surface but thankfully by the end of the book, she felt more supported and able to process the grief she was holding on to the tightest. I think the book's pacing was perfect as no places ever felt drawn out or unimportant. Everything was written in a very easy-to-read manner that enabled us to truly connect with each character's struggles with themselves and the people around them. All conflicts and situations felt age appropriate with nothing sticking out as absurdly unrealistic. One of my favorite things was comparing these characters from their beginning and end selves because of how different they are in the best possible ways. I highly recommend this to anyone wanting to pick up a quick read that will leave you with a warm feeling in your heart.

I think the only issue I had with this book was the almost comical lack of adult interaction with these kids especially since this goes on for a few months. It never took me out of it nor did it negatively affect my experience but I felt like pointing it out.

Nevertheless, I am truly very grateful to NetGalley and Peachtree Teen for being given the chance to provide my honest thoughts and opinions on this book!