forestsofpine

Basic summary: Adam has just moved to the small town of Springville. His first day there, he meets Sally, who tells him the town’s real name is Spooksville because of all the spooky things that go on. Adam doesn’t believe her - until they go in search of the Secret Path, a magical path that leads to other Spooksvilles.

Join Adam, Sally, and their friend Watch as they take the Secret Path and pass through a dark doorway. On the other side you’ll find a terrifying Spooksville where there are huge spiders, living skeletons, evil black knights, and a witch who just loves to make dolls...out of kids!

My thoughts: Short and easy listen to at around 2 hours, I thought the part after they went through the gravestone was quite fun and the children missing parts of their bodies was spooky.

I kinda feel like the book was more for boys in the way Adam interacted with Sally but idk since I'm not that age anymore how I took it when I read it the first time.

I wonder if the characters in this book will be in any of the future books? They all take place in Springsville/Spooksville since that's the series name. Bum did say that depending on the person, you could end up in different places.

The narrator's voice was fine. I really like the cover of the physical volume I had:



CWs:

-Witches = bad/evil
-Children kidnapped and body parts taken (there's just skin where the parts were) - when the characters go back to free them, they're already gone and it's not certain if they made it back out and what happened to them after...
-Claustrophobic scene where Adam gets stuck in a hole in the tree
-Homelessness

Basic summary: Everyone has secrets. I’ve kept a few big ones from my two best friends, and I know they’ve both got plenty of their own. After all, Embry and Adam never told me why they stopped talking to each other the night we graduated college. And I’ve never told them that I’m bi—or that I’ve been in love with both of them for years. I’m also definitely not telling them I’ve nearly run my family’s tree farm into the ground and we’re about to go out of business right before Christmas.

But when I crash off a ladder hanging up holiday lights, they come running like Santa’s elves. They’re both very grumpy about facing each other again, but I can’t be mad that I’ve finally got my two favorite people in the world in one place. Wait until they find out we’re all sleeping in one bed…

At least their feud is put on hold when they discover what a mess I’ve made of my business. Soon the three of us are scrambling to pull off a Christmas miracle together and save my family’s farm. And maybe it’s the magic of the holidays, but now a whole lot of feelings and long-buried truths are coming to the surface—and our long-time friendship is starting to become something much bigger.

Will we survive the season? Or are all my dreams about to be crushed this Christmas?

My thoughts: Look, I'm not a fan of Christmas but I am of polyam and I'm so glad I ended up reading this. The humor hit me pretty fast, then the charming Jeb before I learned more about Embry and Adam and came to love them too. I loved how all the characters in general fit in!

My favorite part was the hurdles the three had to go through. Sometimes a relationship can be too instalove or instalust and it's all fluff with little tension or angst. In this book, Embry and Adam do not get along for a while because of something that happened between them, Jeb is caught in the middle and misses the '3way' chat they had going in their college days, and while Jeb's parents are off taking a well-deserved vacation after running a tree farm for years, Jeb ends up running it nearly into the ground and feels like a failure - on top of getting hurt trying to put up Christmas lights on his own, which leads to Embry and Adam dropping everything to come help him before people come in droves to buy his trees.

I really appreciate the personal touches the authors put in, like that the three MCs names come from their own names, the 'demon' goat Sherbert etc. Their acknowledgements page about it was so fun.

This was my first attempt using TTS (Audify on my iPhone) to listen to a book that doesn't have an audiobook version and it worked really well, though I still made sure to glance at my phone to check things now and then. Embry's all caps in chat was hilarious, and the running joke about texting each other when they're in the same room. And the chat group name! Oh, and Jeb's taste in music!!

I'm very excited to read the 2nd in the series which follows the firefighter/mayor Doug, his friend Zeke and Max. I will also absolutely reread this someday. It just hit me at the right time in the right away! Gotta be honestly though I don't like the cover, it's just kind of a nothingburger, I don't even know who that is on the cover.

[There are two polyamorous groups (one a closed triad), Embry has two dads (one trans)]