Colleen Mondor Reviews Witch of Wild Things by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

Witch of Wild Things, Raquel Vasquez Gilliland (Berkley 978-0-593-54857-8, $17.00, 336pp, tp) September 2023.

Witch of Wild Things is exactly the sort of magi­cal romance that pairs perfectly with a dreary fall evening. It’s all about making sweet conversation while tramping through the woods, cooking some amazing meals, and negotiating a ton of family drama. There is also a romance rooted in a years-past teen crush that carries its own drama (and complex history). In the end, the magic makes things fun while the drama (and getting to the bottom of a ghostly sibling mystery) is what keeps the pages turning.

Author Raquel Vasquez Gilliland introduces her protagonist, Sage Flores, at a particularly low moment in the young woman’s life. After a brief, disastrous (and exceedingly unsatisfying) affair with her boss, Sage is fired from her job as an ad­junct instructor in the art department of Temple University. (The official reason is budget cuts, but she knows the truth.) Returning to her family home in Cranberry, Virginia, she finds her younger sister Teal in a typical state of fury, her great-aunt patient but disappointed, and a potential job at the local plant nursery bringing with it an excit­ing but nerve-wracking partnership with a crush from her past.

The job is a no-brainer because Sage is the wild witch of the title and has a special gift when it comes to communicating with plants. Paired up with the still quite appealing Tennessee Reyes, the two of them are supposed to comb the surround­ing areas for plants that can be relocated from sites slated for development with an eye for the unusual and potentially lucrative. (Propagation is the goal here.) Tennessee does not know that he was Sage’s crush, and there are issues to be dealt with as that romance unfolds, but it is the relationship with her volatile sister Teal, whose magical gift involves controlling the weather, that commands most of Sage’s attention. The other big problem is Sky, the youngest sister who died in an accident eight years earlier. Sky is haunting Sage and not behaving at allas ghosts are supposed to act. Sage thinks keeping Sky a secret is the right thing to do, but this is a fam­ily that is boiling over with emotion, and holding a lid on all that is no longer working. Back at home after several years away, with rising tension on all sides, Sage finds herself unable to keep everything under control. Then Sky finds a way to make her presence known to everyone and Sage suddenly realizes that maybe her sister never was a ghost in the first place.

The Sage/Tennessee romance is a sizzler, with a totally relatable backstory but it’s the simmering relationships with all the supporting characters that really dominate the plot. Teal and Sage are a hot mess, there is a lot of frustration and anger from her childhood that Sage has not shared with aunt Nadia (who raised the three sisters), her best friend Laurel is in the midst of a marital crisis that demands no small amount of attention, and then there is Sage and Teal’s grandmother, who is an unlikely source of magical information but also a bit of a scary dragon. Sorting all of this out, while Sage and Tennessee move ever closer to a very sexy night together, makes Witch of Wild Things a very diverting title that also imparts plenty of interesting plant lore. On top of everything else, I have to mention the food. Everybody is cooking and eating (and drinking) the most delicious things in this book and the publishers really missed an opportunity to include some recipes in the ending author’s note. To sum it up, there’s a lot of laughing, crying, hiking through the woods, crafting jewelry, discussing whimsical plans for the future and, yes, cooking, in Witch of Wild Things. I found it a charming read and hope that Gilliland returns with a sequel as there are certainly more romances (and mysteries) waiting in the wings for this family.

This review and more like it in the October 2023 issue of Locus.

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