Jon and Mack's Terrifying Tree Troubles

Jon's Mysteries Case, Book 5

By: AJ Sherwood

Narrated by: Lloyd Thomas

Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

It’s like a bad game of Telephone.

Grant locates a murdered teen in McMinnville. He calls Jon.

Jon locates the girl’s ghost. He calls Mack.

Mack talks to the ghost who leads them to more ghosts. Who lead them to even more ghosts.

And why are all the murder victims buried under trees?

The boys are ready for this game to end, please. (Donovan especially.)

©2023 AJ Sherwood (P)2023 AJ Sherwood

Oh crossover time...

Ok so go to my Goodreads review to get more details on what I thought about this one. I hate typing on my phone so it will have all the details.

In here we have Jon, Donovan, Mack, and the forgotten to the end, Brandon.

Donovan and Brandon are literally the same character. It's very noticable in here.

Anyways, they get called in to help find the body of a teen. Then they find out that there's a heck of a lot of ghosts and a serial killer family.

Things get resolved as they always do, and Cho moves in with Garrett.

That's all we get about those two.

The narrator is still making everyone but Mack sound the same but at this point, it's fine.

Loved it!

I loved finding out about the mystery behind the killings and I loved that Jon and Mack were in this book. Two psychic’s work out the problem.

Wow, pretty good

I have to say the storyline development. And the plotline in this one I think might be the best if I recall correctly out of the series. My personal opinion please enjoy. It’s worth a listen or read.

Fabulous

This was an amazing crossover book! It was wonderful to hear this story from all of my favorite characters perspective.

Crossing over

It's part of the Jon universe so you know it's going to be a good read/listen. With it also being a crossover (pun intended) with Mack's stories we get to see pretty much the entire family at work.

The downside is that instead of 2 POV's telling the tale (Jon/Donovan) or (Mack/Brandon) we have all four taking chapters and it got confusing for me, at times, to which character was speaking.

Basically, a good story, and useful for the larger story universe, but not the strongest in the series'.

Awesome crossover

I was stoked to have another Jon & Donovan story, and this one was so good. I was also excited to finally get a Mack & Brandon story on audio. I have been wsiting ages for that series to come to sudio.

Fingers crossed that the rest of Mack & Brandon stories come to audio!

Very much looking firward to one more Jon story, tho I will miss the series.

Love the cross over

I really love both series so I of course already own all the Kindle additions. The only thing I was disappointed with was I wish the narrator was better at voice distinction. The characters all sound the same so it was pretty hard to keep up with who was talking

crossover fun

3.5⭐️
Audio: 3.75⭐️

I thought Mack's Rousing Ghoulish Highland Adventure was wild, but this one said 'hold my beer' so expect and accept insanity in many forms. As sparse as the blurb is, it tells you everything you need to know. Ghosts are literally coming out of the woodwork, and Jon and Mack are kept hopping so the story is quickly paced.

I like Sherwood's comedy and am a fan of both series so this is still a lot of fun with characters I love, and secondary characters that work well with the MCs. There is just something off(?) about Jon imo. He doesn't sound much like himself at times. He's doing more of that 'aren't I terrible, hehehe'-4th wall breaking thing that seems to be an aspect of many of Sherwood's recent MCs, and I didn't love it. It’s more noticeable as Mack does it too. I like Jon and Mack’s more down to earth personalities so having him sound more like her newest characters is slightly off-putting.

There are also times when it seems like there’s no character bible/it wasn’t consulted bc there are things Jon says or Mack does that are established in previous books that are ignored, like Mack’s serious food limitations or Jon’s wonderment that Mack can amplify ghosts enough so they can be recorded since Mack did just that soon after they met. And of course there’s some “common sense isn’t common” moments that I’m still learning to go with for the shenanigans to shenanigan.

Additionally, Sho gets described as K-pop star cute but has no Korean heritage from Sherwood's own description so yikes. Almost every character with Asian heritage is described with the K-pop descriptor these days bc so many ppl now know what that is so I get what she's going for, but it's giving 'you all look alike' vibes. It's also still hard to read Donovan in situations with so many ghosts since he has a real phobia but at least the characters are being more sympathetic and not outwardly teasing him like in Jon's Spooky Corpse Conundrum, and he’s (mostly) no longer the butt of a running gag.

To me Lloyd Thomas’s narration fits the series well; I appreciate that he doesn’t use The Southern Accent™. I’m also glad he went back to giving Jon a slight southern lift to his voice as it was flattened in the later installments. As someone from TN, it was nice to hear and frustrating when it was gone. Where he struggles a bit is that some of his character voices blend in to each other; I’m also not sure why Sho’s voice changed so much. I think Thomas’s earlier rendition fit the description of Sho’s demeanor and build unlike whatever’s happening here. However, I still enjoyed the audio and as these series are a comfort read for me, I love returning to their world and all the heartwarming affection, familial support and love the character share.