Come for the romance, get swallowed up by the lush, atmospheric writing and Latine magic.
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 the New 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 hot and wholesome.
Come for the romance, get swallowed up by the lush, atmospheric writing and Latine magic.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9780593952481
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
A deep examination of grief, love, and the power of art.
Former lovers embark on a bucket-list road trip to honor their late mentor’s memory, reigniting their own connection in the process.
Dani Jenkins made a name for herself after pivoting from model to influencer, but creating the videos that made her an online it girl doesn’t hold her interest the way it used to. When Tanya Holden, her longtime mentor, dies, having kept her cancer a secret, it’s a shock for Dani—and it brings her face to face with the man who broke her heart years ago. Micah Wright is a talented artist who credits Tanya with steering him away from a criminal path; he’s nursing his own regrets for how things ended with Dani the first time around. A meeting with Tanya’s attorney reveals her dying wish for Dani and Micah: To complete a scavenger hunt that will take them through her past. Traveling all over the country is the last thing either Dani or Micah wants to be doing, but they’re willing to honor Tanya’s memory through a surprisingly illuminating road trip—and, despite the risk of aggravating old wounds, find themselves warming to the possibility of picking up where they once left off. Bishop’s latest expands on characters previously introduced in supporting roles in Only for the Week (2024); it was clear then that Dani and Micah had a complicated history. Unlike Janelle and Rome’s lust-to-love trajectory in that first installment, Dani and Micah have an undeniable slow burn, with Dani reluctant to lower the walls she’s built around her heart and Micah endearingly cautious in his attempts to win her back. While the lingering angst from their shared past would have been better served through more flashbacks to that period, and the road-trip conceit introduces a revolving door of characters who occasionally distract from the irresistible love story, the book’s most tender moments evince Bishop’s strengths as a writer.
A deep examination of grief, love, and the power of art.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781638932741
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Zando/Slowburn
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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