It's a massive understatement to say that being a teenager is difficult. As your sense of self begins to develop, it's at odds with everything else around you: your upbringing, your family and their traditions, the opinions of people around you, and your own needs and wants. The most caring and well-meaning parent can still make mistakes, and the most unsympathetic acquaintance can still feel like an authority figure whose opinion carries weight.

At times, it can feel like the only solution is to shut the world out and hide away where nothing can hurt you. And that's what happens to Jaime, whether he likes it or not.

Jaime is one of the three protagonists of Saint Juniper's Folly: a teen who's been through the foster system and is seen as a troublemaker by the extremely beige residents of the small town. He's returned after eight years, and it hasn't gone well. His new foster home doesn't care much about him beyond making sure he doesn't cause trouble for them. But when local boy Theo first meets him, he's not in town. He's in an old house in Saint Juniper's Folly, the valley near town. And he can't seem to leave.

Theo enlists the help of Taylor, a practicing witch who lives nearby. Or, at least, as "practicing" as she can be. Witchcraft is in her blood, but her father has forbidden her from following in her mother's footsteps. The trio meet at the old house, Theo and Taylor working with Jaime to figure out what's keeping him in there. They don't have long to free him, either. Not only will he have to be present for a check-in at home in a few weeks, but there are also plans to demolish the house. Not to mention the house already has a resident: a ghost who wants nothing more than to keep Jaime indoors where it's "safe."

As the trio attempt to discover more about the house and its ghostly inhabitant, they all have to contend with their own struggles. To help her new friends, Taylor must disobey her father and connect with her family's traditions... even if doing so might hurt her. And Theo and Jaime are navigating a burgeoning romance—one where initially neither is sure if the other feels the same. Even when their feelings are laid out, there's still the problem of Saint Juniper, and whether they'll have to hide their feelings from the very traditional locals. Word travels fast, after all.

While supernatural at its core, the true threat of Saint Juniper's Folly is one we're all familiar with by the time we're adults: the feeling of needing to hide something about ourselves while also not wanting to. The feeling that it would be better to be open, but safer to hide. That's the real conflict at the heart of this book: not ghosts vs. kids, but safety vs. freedom. And the resolution is satisfying, both in terms of the intensity of the magical battle at the book's climax and the lesson it leaves us with.

The story is told in first person, with each chapter traded off among the three protagonists. For the most part, it's well done, with enough nuance of voice given to each character to tell them apart. It feels like Jamie got the bulk of the attention here, though—with his poetic musings (rather pleasingly, he refers to his nervousness around Theo as "positively Austenian") subverting his presumed Bad Kid persona. Theo and Taylor's chapters are also strong, but don't bring as much narrative variety as Jaime's chapters do. That's not a failing of the book so much as a success that I'd love to have seen go further.

Also rather pleasingly, Saint Juniper's Folly plays with tried-and-true house symbolism. (I highly recommend reading up on this if you have the time.) Any time a house is a "character" in a book, there's a good chance of this coming into play, and Alex Crespo absolutely goes there. The house is Jaime, from its selective barrier to the rooms in which certain self-realizations play out. It's wonderful to see this at work in modern literature.

Saint Juniper's Folly is a smart, emotional, satisfying read. Modern in its sensibilities while classic in its execution, it's a solid read for anyone who feels "stuck" in their own lives—at any age.

Saint Juniper's Folly goes on sale June 6.