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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
This one really did not work for me! I am so bummed because I typically enjoy Lyla Sage's books, even if it wasn't my all time favorite. This felt extremely underbaked to me. I felt frustrated that so much of the character development for Collins was off page, like how she decided she wanted to stay in Sweetwater Peak, after all. Where was the doubting? Internal negotiation? It really came across like she was just staying for Brady, which I don't think was the intention but that's what's on the page and her dynamic with her sister confused me it seemed like they absolutely hated each other, which surprised me. Since they were the only two that understand each other's "ability," I never felt like I fully understood what they were, because they don't talk about them with each other until the 90% mark, at the climax . There's a sense that I am missing the first story in Sweetwater Peak- which I was hoping would feel like Meadowlark, just spooky, but it's not quite there yet. I don't think there's enough fleshing out of the atmosphere and I didn't feel situated at all. But since Collins starts the story with her abilities lost, fighting with her sister (who comes across as totally insufferable and unlikeable, from Collins' point of view. Every time Clarke is on the page she's criticizing Collins or suggesting she's exaggerating about something) and avoiding her family's store until 75% of the novel, I couldn't feel grounded in the setting and the family we are reading about. Especially since the third act turn was meant to be all about saving the antique store. Why am I supposed to care about something that Collins doesn't seem to? The way Brady's ex magically appears during this plot was corny, didn't like it. I also felt disappointed the way that Brady and Collins knew each other, they seemed to just retread a few tropes that have already been covered in Swift & Saddled and Wild & Wrangled, done to better effect in those books. It felt like there was another way they could have become involved, especially since it was such a tiny, deserted town. But I guess Collins didn't really bother to reach out to anyone outside her family while she was in town, and so maybe they wouldn't have met after all. I realize I'm sounding really harsh here, but I think LS can do better than this. I really do look forward to reading the other book in this duology, because I kept thinking to myself that I wish that I had been introduced to this entire town and its characters through Clarke's POV. There's a lot of potential here, but in my opinion, needed a few more passes to make it click.
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Lyla Sage’s newest book is an atmospheric departure from her Rebel Blue Ranch series, which means that this book delivers the joys of discovering a new fictional, haunted town and its inhabitants – both the normal and paranormal. Count. Me. In.
Our protagonist, Collins, finds herself struggling in her career when one of her innate abilities unexpectedly begins to fade, resulting in a last-ditch effort to ground herself by heading back to her hometown – a place she’s been fighting against since she left it.
Our other protagonist, Brady, is new to Sweetwater Peak – looking to make a new life for himself in a low-key, small town. When his friend’s twin sister (Collins) needs a short term job and place to stay, he provides both.
This spooky, steamy book felt a little bit like R.L.Stine’s Fear Street, all grown up. The haunted town, its sprawling secrets, and eerie vibes make a great backdrop for the friendship and inevitable romance between our two main characters to blossom. And, in typical Lyla Sage fashion, she also provides sweeping descriptions of the rich Wyoming landscape as we get to know family, friends who are as close as family, and the secret histories around town.
This might be my favorite Lyla Sage book yet.
A haunted fictional Wyoming town AND a spicy love story? I’ll always be in.
Thank you NetGalley and Random House for this ARC!
Objectively I can find nothing wrong with this book, it's very well written, the characters are fun and the romance/bantering was cute.
But, nothing happened for about 60% of the book and then out of know where the plot just appears, and isn't resolved? (I understand this is the start of the series, but it really just left so much open)
I did enjoy the book and I think I'm going to go read her other series as I did really enjoy her writing, but this just felt too all over the place for me.
Lyla Sage knows how to write the most atmospheric romances I’ve ever read. I loved Meadowlark in her Rebel Blue Ranch series, and now I love Sweetwater Peak just as much (if not more!) Perfectly spooky and vibey for fall.
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The love child of Lucy Score and Ashley Poston
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
While I picked this book up because I blew through the Rebel Blue Ranch series, and this book was set in a different part of Wyoming, I have to say that the start of this series is very different from Rebel Blue Ranch.....mainly because of the paranormal aspect.
Collins returns home, to figure out her next move and deal with some problems she has left to fester, but she spent her entire life trying to leave Sweetwater Peak. When she comes home, she not only has to repair the relationship with her family, but she is starts a sort of relationship with Brady....her landlord and employer. Enter the spirits and ghosts that Collins is trying to reconnect with....
Can't wait to see where this series ends up and if the next book will be about Collins' twin sister.
Thanks to Penguin Random House for the ARC!
Collins returns home, to figure out her next move and deal with some problems she has left to fester, but she spent her entire life trying to leave Sweetwater Peak. When she comes home, she not only has to repair the relationship with her family, but she is starts a sort of relationship with Brady....her landlord and employer. Enter the spirits and ghosts that Collins is trying to reconnect with....
Can't wait to see where this series ends up and if the next book will be about Collins' twin sister.
Thanks to Penguin Random House for the ARC!
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for this eARC!
I was unbelievably excited to receive this ARC because I love the Rebel Blue Ranch series so much! And let me tell you, Lyla Sage has done it again. This book was so adorable and also a really lovely exploration of life and death and the meaning of them both. It had the heartwarming message that the meaning of life is what you make of it and death isn’t the end, but a new beginning. Sage also played with the idea of fate a little bit, and even though I personally am not really a fate gal, it worked very well with what I came to know of the characters and their world.
On to the characters. I LOVE Brady. He's such a cutie. If I've learned anything from this book, it's that I absolutely need more nerd content in what I read because I was eating that ish up. I deeply appreciated all of Brady’s Lord of the Rings analogies (and his withheld joke about simply walking into Mordor) and having a horse named Shadowfax was the PERFECT bonding thing and I’m ashamed I hadn’t even thought about the possibility. Sage wrote the perfect “elevated normal guy,” by which I mean, he’s such a normal dude but he’s also the perfect gentleman and is genuinely very nice and sincere. Last note about Brady, he absolutely shocked me with his bedroom behavior. I was shocked. Love that for him though (or for Collins I guess).
I really liked Collins as an FMC. Also, love that her name is her mom’s maiden name because me too! So that was fun for me. Her journey with the ghosts was a very nice complete arc. I liked the way it was tied off loads. It was very fun to read about a character with the abilities she has and explore the way it impacted her childhood, especially living in a small town with so much history. It was also wonderful to read that in the FMC of a romance novel where it was simply a fact of life and not used to create any kind of weird tension. It was a helpful push for their relationship but, I think that it would still be strong if you removed that aspect.
I liked their relationship a lot as well. I was super glad we didn't go for a miscommunication thing in the third act. It would’ve been very easy with everything happening in the third act, so thank you Lyla Sage for steering clear of that trope. The way Sage chose to further their relationship was perfect the the kind of story this was, and allowed for a delightful amount of both banter and tender/intimate moments. I loved getting to know Sweetwater Peak and Collins with Brady and see Brady and Sweetwater through Collins’s eyes.
Speaking of Sweetwater Peak. Loved it. Cute asf town and Lyla has
once again nailed the small town vibe and absolutely made me fall in
love with it. There’s a balance of how much of background characters and adjacent setting one can show before it gets overwhelming or distracts from the main plot, but I think Sage does it very well.
Lastly, I love the Cartwrights. I can’t wait to see more of Joanie and Dex in the next one, they’re so wholesome. All of the family interactions we saw in this were so freaking cute; I love this little family. Also, I thought the exploration of Clarke and Collins’s relationship was a nice layer to the story and added a helpful amount of complexity to Collins’s journey and the arc with Toades.
I only have one spoilery thing to say, so to avoid marking the whole review as containing spoilers, I’m putting it down here. Avert your eyes if you don’t want to know.
⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️
As much as everything at the end w/ Amos and Cam was slightly fan service-y, I ATE. IT. UP. I was loving Amos and Boone the whole time, it was super cute to see that and hear bits about everyone we know and love from Boone’s perspective. It also felt very tonally correct for the Meadowlark crew to help our new Sweetwater friends; small towns stick together and all that. I loved all of that very much.
⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️
All of this to say, this book was great. I had high expectations and they were most certainly met. A wonderful book to pick up whether you have read Done and Dusted five times or have never heard of Lyla Sage.
I was unbelievably excited to receive this ARC because I love the Rebel Blue Ranch series so much! And let me tell you, Lyla Sage has done it again. This book was so adorable and also a really lovely exploration of life and death and the meaning of them both. It had the heartwarming message that the meaning of life is what you make of it and death isn’t the end, but a new beginning. Sage also played with the idea of fate a little bit, and even though I personally am not really a fate gal, it worked very well with what I came to know of the characters and their world.
On to the characters. I LOVE Brady. He's such a cutie. If I've learned anything from this book, it's that I absolutely need more nerd content in what I read because I was eating that ish up. I deeply appreciated all of Brady’s Lord of the Rings analogies (and his withheld joke about simply walking into Mordor) and having a horse named Shadowfax was the PERFECT bonding thing and I’m ashamed I hadn’t even thought about the possibility. Sage wrote the perfect “elevated normal guy,” by which I mean, he’s such a normal dude but he’s also the perfect gentleman and is genuinely very nice and sincere. Last note about Brady, he absolutely shocked me with his bedroom behavior. I was shocked. Love that for him though (or for Collins I guess).
I really liked Collins as an FMC. Also, love that her name is her mom’s maiden name because me too! So that was fun for me. Her journey with the ghosts was a very nice complete arc. I liked the way it was tied off loads. It was very fun to read about a character with the abilities she has and explore the way it impacted her childhood, especially living in a small town with so much history. It was also wonderful to read that in the FMC of a romance novel where it was simply a fact of life and not used to create any kind of weird tension. It was a helpful push for their relationship but, I think that it would still be strong if you removed that aspect.
I liked their relationship a lot as well. I was super glad we didn't go for a miscommunication thing in the third act. It would’ve been very easy with everything happening in the third act, so thank you Lyla Sage for steering clear of that trope. The way Sage chose to further their relationship was perfect the the kind of story this was, and allowed for a delightful amount of both banter and tender/intimate moments. I loved getting to know Sweetwater Peak and Collins with Brady and see Brady and Sweetwater through Collins’s eyes.
Speaking of Sweetwater Peak. Loved it. Cute asf town and Lyla has
once again nailed the small town vibe and absolutely made me fall in
love with it. There’s a balance of how much of background characters and adjacent setting one can show before it gets overwhelming or distracts from the main plot, but I think Sage does it very well.
Lastly, I love the Cartwrights. I can’t wait to see more of Joanie and Dex in the next one, they’re so wholesome. All of the family interactions we saw in this were so freaking cute; I love this little family. Also, I thought the exploration of Clarke and Collins’s relationship was a nice layer to the story and added a helpful amount of complexity to Collins’s journey and the arc with Toades.
I only have one spoilery thing to say, so to avoid marking the whole review as containing spoilers, I’m putting it down here. Avert your eyes if you don’t want to know.
⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️
As much as everything at the end w/ Amos and Cam was slightly fan service-y, I ATE. IT. UP. I was loving Amos and Boone the whole time, it was super cute to see that and hear bits about everyone we know and love from Boone’s perspective. It also felt very tonally correct for the Meadowlark crew to help our new Sweetwater friends; small towns stick together and all that. I loved all of that very much.
⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️
All of this to say, this book was great. I had high expectations and they were most certainly met. A wonderful book to pick up whether you have read Done and Dusted five times or have never heard of Lyla Sage.
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I really enjoyed Lyla Sage’s Rebel Blue Ranch series, so I was curious to see how she’d approach a new genre. I’m not typically drawn to fantasy or paranormal romance — I tend to prefer stories grounded in reality — but I was intrigued by the unique premise of this one. Unfortunately, the execution didn’t fully work for me.
The paranormal element, particularly the “seeing ghosts” aspect, felt underdeveloped. Rather than coming across as a meaningful or fleshed-out gift, it occasionally made the protagonist seem more unstable than insightful — a perspective seemingly validated by the male lead’s skepticism. There was also some unresolved confusion regarding a key plot point:
It’s never clearly explained whyCollin suddenly stops hearing her ghost companions. We’re told she gave up photography due to a toxic work environment and went into a downward spiral, after which the ghosts went silent. Later, she has one brief interaction with Earnest, a ghost who’s supposedly been part of her life for years — and then it seems like everything just… resets? It was unclear whether this was intentional or just left hanging.
The romance also fell a little flat for me. The slow burn lacked the emotional tension or angst that typically makes that trope satisfying. When the love confession finally happens, it feels abrupt, coming so soon after their first intimate moment that it almost reads as post-hookup euphoria. The pacing felt off again when a major conflict was introduced at the91% mark — after only a quick mention earlier — and resolved just a few pages later . It felt rushed and anticlimactic.
On a stylistic note, I found the repeated use of “stuttering” in dialogue distracting. Nearly every time a character was nervous, it came out as “I-I…” or similar. It would’ve been refreshing to see a variety of ways those emotions could be portrayed through body language or internal thought.
That said, Lyla Sage’s voice and creativity are evident, and I appreciate her willingness to explore a new direction. While this story didn’t quite land for me, I’m sure it could still resonate with readers who enjoy light paranormal elements blended with romance. I’m curious to see how her writing continues to evolve.
The paranormal element, particularly the “seeing ghosts” aspect, felt underdeveloped. Rather than coming across as a meaningful or fleshed-out gift, it occasionally made the protagonist seem more unstable than insightful — a perspective seemingly validated by the male lead’s skepticism. There was also some unresolved confusion regarding a key plot point:
It’s never clearly explained why
The romance also fell a little flat for me. The slow burn lacked the emotional tension or angst that typically makes that trope satisfying. When the love confession finally happens, it feels abrupt, coming so soon after their first intimate moment that it almost reads as post-hookup euphoria. The pacing felt off again when a major conflict was introduced at the
On a stylistic note, I found the repeated use of “stuttering” in dialogue distracting. Nearly every time a character was nervous, it came out as “I-I…” or similar. It would’ve been refreshing to see a variety of ways those emotions could be portrayed through body language or internal thought.
That said, Lyla Sage’s voice and creativity are evident, and I appreciate her willingness to explore a new direction. While this story didn’t quite land for me, I’m sure it could still resonate with readers who enjoy light paranormal elements blended with romance. I’m curious to see how her writing continues to evolve.