REVIEW: Witch of Wild Things by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

In Witch of Wild Things by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, Sage Flores is a witch with the ability to communicate with plants. After her sister Sky died, and her other sister, Teal, blamed her, she took off. But now she’s back in town, working at the Cranberry Rose farm to discover unusual plants. She has to work with Tennessee Reyes who had unknowingly broken her heart in high school. In addition to dealing with Tennessee, she has to deal with her still-hostile sister, her aunt that doesn’t seem to care very much about her feelings, and Sky’s ghost, who appears whenever Sage cries and leaves her cups of coffee.

Tennessee is dealing with his own issues, and when he and Sage discover a very rare plant, he believes it’s a way to solve them. Only when Sage reveals her abilities to him, will he believe her?

Many of the characters in the book are hard to root for. We’ll start with Sage. Back in high school, she and Tennessee had been communicating through AIM. She misled him back then, and she’s lying to him now. A lot of her actions come across as immature, but then almost everyone seems to treat her poorly and she doesn’t stand up for herself. Then there’s Teal, whose anger at Sage is misplaced, and when she finally admits why she’s been acting the way she was, it didn’t feel like a valid excuse. She wasn’t the only one hurting, and instead of helping her sister through it, she just piled on the pain.

While I didn’t find Tennessee to be quite as bad as those two, his behavior towards Sage’s abilities once he didn’t like the answer she received from one of the plants didn’t paint him in a good light. Sage’s aunt parentified Sage when she was younger, and for most of the book, she still doesn’t acknowledge how she treated Sage versus how she treated the other siblings. All in all, it made it hard to root for them.

I was expecting more witchy things to happen, but other than making some plants grow and Sky’s ghost, there wasn’t any. Instead, readers get a book about a fractured family, a man hung up on an unknown woman he chatted with over the internet in high school, and a ghost that can’t figure out why she can’t do things other ghosts can do, such as traveling to other planes. The characters come across as being much younger than they are, so this ended up feeling like a YA novel, which I’m not a particularly big fan of. I didn’t think it was a bad book, but it wasn’t really a book for me.

Book Info:

Publication: September 12, 2023 | Berkley |

Legend goes that long ago a Flores woman offended the old gods, and their family was cursed as a result. Now, every woman born to the family has a touch of magic.

Sage Flores has been running from her family—and their “gifts”—ever since her younger sister Sky died. Eight years later, Sage reluctantly returns to her hometown. Like slipping into an old, comforting sweater, Sage takes back her job at Cranberry Rose Company and uses her ability to communicate with plants to discover unusual heritage specimens in the surrounding lands.

What should be a simple task is complicated by her partner in botany sleuthing: Tennessee Reyes. He broke her heart in high school, and she never fully recovered. Working together is reminding her of all their past tender, genuine moments—and new feelings for this mature sexy man are starting to take root in her heart.

With rare plants to find, a dead sister who keeps bringing her coffee, and another sister whose anger fills the sky with lightning, Sage doesn’t have time for romance. But being with Tenn is like standing in the middle of a field on the cusp of a summer thunderstorm—supercharged and inevitable.