A scene where Norris is confronted by his mother for getting drunk and belligerent with a white cop is diluted by his refusal or inability to grasp the severity of the situation and the resultant minor consequences. The scenes showcasing his emotional growth are too brief and, despite foreshadowing, the climax falls flat because he still gets incredible personal access to people he’s hurt. Norris’ ego, fueled by his insecurities, often gets in the way of meaningful character development. He’s greeted in his new life by an assortment of acquaintances, Liam, who is white and struggling with depression Maddie, a self-sacrificing white cheerleader with a heart of gold and Aarti, his Indian-American love interest who offers connection. His professor mom’s new tenure-track job transplants Norris mid–school year, and his biting wit and sarcasm are exposed through his cataloging of his new world in a field guide–style burn book. Norris Kaplan, the protagonist of Philippe’s debut novel, is a hypersweaty, uber-snarky black, Haitian, French-Canadian pushing to survive life in his new school. Readers who enjoy watching a queer love story unfold amid peril will enjoy that aspect of this otherwise middling debut.Ī teenage, not-so-lonely loner endures the wilds of high school in Austin, Texas. Part romance, part story of new friendship, part family history, this story never fully relaxes into itself, and the pace of the storytelling flip-flops between rushed and overly expository. The alternating three-person point of view follows Theo and Taylor as they discover that biracial White-passing Jaime, whose father was Mexican, is trapped by an invisible barrier inside the crumbling and definitely haunted Blackwood Estate, which may be connected to Taylor’s mom’s death. All feel hemmed in by Saint Juniper’s Folly, a densely wooded region that’s been the subject of fear and rumor for generations.

Taylor, with a stern Boricua father and a recently dead White mother who was descended from local witches, lives above her family’s occult shop in Wolf’s Head, the slightly scrappier town next door. Privileged White boy Theo chafes under his overbearing father but finds solace volunteering at the library. Jaime is newly returned to picture-perfect Saint Juniper he lived there as a child but ended up in foster care after his unstable family left 8 years ago. Jaime Alvarez-Shephard, Theo Miller, and Taylor Rivera Bishop all live in small-town Vermont.

Teens save themselves from a haunted house.

Saint Juniper's Folly by Alex Crespo