Book Review Wicked Like a Wildfire (Lana Popovic)

Wicked Like a Wildfire is so well written, that, like its cover, the descriptions are sweet and keep you wanting to read more, and when it overly describes, those small instances are quickly forgiven.

Iris and Malina are twins that are different in almost every way except their ability to perform magic, or what they call the gleam.  Iris is headstrong and boisterous, and Malina is peaceful and congenial; Iris cannot get along with her mother, and Malina is favored by her; Iris is the partier, and Malina thinks of a good time as singing songs with her bestie; and Iris dreams of leaving home and using her magic while Malina can’t imagine a life outside supporting her mother.

Iris and Malina do not know much about the gleam or their past other than that they have never met their father, their mother’s family was killed because they had it, and they must keep it a secret (they cannot share it with others or practice it) for fear of their lives.

As much as Iris and Malina may or may not have hunted for truths about the past, they must find out quickly because their mother has been injured to the point that the doctors do not even understand. The only chance at saving her is by figuring out what the gleam really is and why anyone would want to harm their mother.

Lana Popovic’s descriptions are gorgeous Below are a few of my favorites:

•  "My stomach knotted. I always yearned for the battle, because it was so much better than nothing, but still it hurt every time [my mother] picked up the gauntlet."
• "She spat the word out like it hurt, like she’d been holding tacks on her tongue."
• "We’d had a mother, wrapped in barbed wire more often than not, but still alive and ours."

Her long descriptions flow together seamlessly, and her similes are as imaginative as the plot she created. Popovic includes her love of aerial yoga in the book, and some of her imagery seemed to dance and become an entity of its own.

Her descriptions become almost too descriptive, though, when it comes to a character’s sexual exploits. There is a scene where the character admits that the sex was out of pure lust, and she describes it in great detail. Blushing myself, I would feel a little nauseous handing this over to every young adult. I like my characters flawed, but as a reader, the steamy pages made me a bit too uncomfortable to hand it over to a thirteen-year-old reader.

There is a sequel coming out, and thankfully the ending to this book leaves you looking up the sequel release date (nope, it hasn’t been released just yet), but you are satisfied and not left outraged by similar books within the fantasy genre.

Wicked Like a Wildfire by Lana Popovic (ISBN 006243683X) was published by Katherine Tegen Books on August 2017. I read the book on Overdrive (a free app through your local library), but you can purchase the book on Amazon for $12.59 here.