The magic of untamed hearts

Sky Flores fell off a cliff and vanished for eight years, reappearing two years ago only to announce that she had been in a sort of stasis induced by the Old Gods. Ostracized by the community, she disappears into the woods for hours on end, emerging with birds and snakes clinging to her clothing and an entourage of protective predators around her. She can communicate with the animals, and they become her only friends. Former reporter Adam Noemi is living with his grandfather after being fired again. Despite his inability to maintain employment, Adam is a beloved celebrity in the town of Cranberry. Seeing this, Sky hatches a plan. She'll give him an exclusive interview about what happened to her, which he can use to restart his career--if he will pretend to befriend her, hopefully making her less of a town outcast. The plan goes awry, however, when they begin to develop feelings for each other. VERDICT Gilliland's sequel to Lightning in Her Hands is another enchanting magical-realism romance with well-developed characters and engaging, lyrical writing. Readers will get swept up in Sky and Adam's story.--Heather Miller Cover

Sky Flores was a ghost for eight years, her consciousness separated from her body, which was sleeping in the woods. Can Adam Noemi, the golden boy of their small town, help her learn to live again? Like her sisters, Sky has magic. Hers manifests in the ability to communicate nonverbally with animals, which makes her a freaky outcast in the small town of Cranberry, Virginia--where everyone already thought it was strange the way she just disappeared when she was 16 and showed up again eight years later, at 24, having been presumed dead. She knows her older sisters love her, but one is a new mother and the other is preparing to launch a business, so it seems like they have forgotten about her. She finds unexpected comfort in weekly dinner dates with her grumpy elderly neighbor, William. When Adam returns home after losing his dream job as a reporter at theNew York Times, he's worried that William, his grandfather, is showing signs of dementia and is initially concerned about Sky's motives, but their obligatory initial miscommunication is quickly resolved and Sky suggests that Adam write about her--something she hasn't allowed any of the reporters who approached her to do since she came back two years ago. In return, all he has to do is be her friend; hopefully, that will make the other residents of Cranberry start to see her as a person instead of an oddity. The final book in Vasquez Gilliland's Wild Magic series is a sweet, sexy, friends-to-lovers story with a few twists, but it does a lot more. The way Sky and her sisters find their ways back to one another is just as important as the romance between Sky and Adam. Sky's innocence and curiosity are coded as emerging autism, which the author mentions in her acknowledgements. And the sex is somehow both hotand wholesome. Come for the romance, get swallowed up by the lush, atmospheric writing and Latine magic. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.