Audio ARC Review: Into the Woods by Jenny Holiday

 

Summer camp just got a whole lot hotter in this enemies-to-lovers romance, perfect for readers of Tessa Bailey and Lucy Score.

Teddy Knight’s band has just broken up in spectacular fashion after his longtime bandmate and—he’d thought—closest friend decides to go solo. So when he’s offered a last-minute gig to fill in as an artist-in-residence at a summer arts camp—which comes with a lake cabin and lots of free time to work on a revenge album—he takes it. No matter that he knows nothing about nature, dislikes kids, and is generally a grump.

Gretchen Miller is having a mid-life crisis. Luckily, her summer job as the dance teacher at Wild Arts summer camp will allow her to drop out of society for a while. Having sworn off dating, she decides she’ll go into the woods and become a crone. She might skip the “luring innocent children to their death” part of cronedom, but she’s all for the “curse men” aspect.

Teddy and Gretchen clash from the get-go when he mistakes her for a fan, and she relegates him to the “entitled jerk” ash heap. Despite their determination to dislike each other, a wary friendship blooms as the magic of the woods starts to unwind them, and they spend long hours by the campfire talking about art, being stuck, and the idea of starting over. But woods are often filled with monsters, and Teddy and Gretchen will have to face their fears if they want to start over together.

Title: Into the Woods

Author: Jenny Hoilday

Publisher: Forever (Hachette Audio)

Narrators: Teddy Hamilton; Kit Swann

Expected Publication Date: January 7, 2025

Review:

Thank you to NetGalley, Hachette Audio, and Forever for providing me with a copy of this audio book to read and give my honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.

I will be honest and say the reason I requested this book was because Teddy Hamilton was narrating. He is one of my top two male narrators and I will listen to anything he puts his voice to. As I was expecting, I really loved his voice for his namesake character in this: Tennison "Teddy" Knight. Whenever he plays a character, it's easy to feel the emotions in his voice. And he makes the characters he narrates so likable. Even with whatever flaws the author might give them, Hamilton makes sure you see all their sides. This was my first time listening to Kit Swann narrate. I really liked her for Gretchen Miller's voice. One of the things that made me like her even more was her tone and inflection. You could tell she got into the character, feeling the emotions of the scenes, and portraying that with changes in her lilt and pitch. There were scenes where the character was very distraught and it was easy to feel that from her. I enjoyed that dual narration the most. I love when the characters voices are done by the male and female narrators to coincide with those genders. Sometimes when that is not done, I have a hard time liking the character as the voices are not quite what I would expect.

I enjoyed the story Holiday created for these characters. I feel like it could have been a little tighter in its execution. I think there was a lot of fluff woven into the story that did not necessarily lend to the plot and didn't push it along as I would have liked. Actually, it often times slowed the pace a bit for me. But it was worth it to push through and see where the characters landed on the other side of it all.

I loved the setting. This is not the first book I've read this year with a camp setting and, even though the main characters were adults, it really brought me back to my times at sleep away camp. Especially this camp being specialized as I attended a specialized gymnastics sleep away camp when I was young. The author made it easy for me to connect with the story in this way.

I also loved that the characters were a bit older (FMC 40, MMC 35). So they've lived some life and have some experience to go on. It was refreshing to hear their perspectives in that way. I will say I didn't quite believe the FMC to be the age stated, she seemed a bit younger. But that could have been due to the narrators voice and may come across differently if I were to read this in a print version. I definitely got the midlife crisis vibe Holiday was going for, though. There is a ton of growth with the two main characters in this book, as well. They truly come into who they are. They find out things about themselves they didn't know and then lean into that part of themselves.

There's some great banter surrounding the more serious topics hit on with this book (poverty, child abandonment, fear of love). I thought they were done very well and I could really understand the characters related to their backgrounds. I advise you check the trigger warnings in case you have any. The story also explores the power of friendships, old and new and the realization that those friends can also be family. There's also some spice in it, though it's not explicit (at least not for me, but check those triggers, as I said before). 

This was my second holiday book, I recently listened to Canadian Boyfriend (mostly because Joshua Jackson narrated the male character and who can resist him) but also because the story line seemed interesting. Holiday appears to be an up and coming romance writer and I can see she is has honed her craft a bit with this new story. I love how she writes characters who have relatable and understandable flaws. 

Overall, this was a pleasant read and I would definitely recommend it to my audience. Especially those who enjoy a good audio book!

Author:

Jenny Holiday is a USA Today-bestselling and RITA®-nominated author whose books have been featured in The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, and Buzzfeed. She grew up in Minnesota and started writing at age nine when her fourth-grade teacher gave her a notebook to fill with stories. When she's not working on her next book, she likes to hang out with her family, watch other people sing karaoke, and throw theme parties. Jenny lives in London, Ontario, Canada.