Wicked like a Wildfire

Wicked like a Wildfire, Book 1

By: Lana Harper, Lana Popović

Narrated by: Hallie Bee Bard

Two sisters must unearth an ancient curse—before the magic that bonds them together tears them apart.

All the women in Iris and Malina’s family are born with a gleam—a unique way of manipulating beauty through magic. Seventeen-year-old Iris sees flowers as fractals and turns her kaleidoscope visions into glasswork, her twin sister Malina interprets moods as music, and their cold, distant mother Jasmina bakes scenery into decadent treats at her confectionery in Old Town Cattaro, Montenegro.

Jasmina forbids Iris and Malina to share their gleams with anyone, and above all, she forbids them to fall in love—being discovered could shatter the quiet lives they’ve built in their tucked away, seaside town. But Iris and Malina are tired of abiding by their mother’s rules and rebel in secret whenever they can.

Yet when a mysterious, white-haired woman attacks their mother and leaves her hovering between life and death, the sisters unearth an ancient curse that haunts their line—a wicked bargain that masquerades as a blessing, and binds the twins’ fates—and hearts—to a force larger than life. To save each other, they must untangle a thousand years of lies and reveal their own hurtful secrets. But even the deepest sacrifice might not be enough.

Wicked like a Wildfire is author Lana Harper's (writing as Lana Popovic) first book in a sumptuous, bewitching duology about the power of love, death, magic, and the many faces of beauty.

©2017 Lana Popović (P)2024 Dreamscape Media

Critic reviews

“This sensory-rich debut and series opener highlights the mysteries of life, death, and love for modern twin witches.”—Kirkus Reviews

Very well written and narrated and a unique plot

I really enjoyed the series, it was different, well written, and unique, and the audiobook narrator was also very talented and very good at the accents.

A must read for the seekers of the weird and magical!

This book is not like most I have read. As most books start out slow and gradually climb. This books details from the drama to the full character descriptions made for an amazing read from page 1! Wouldn’t expect anything less from Lana Popovic though!

Mildly annoying like a lukewarm breeze

Our book club (15 strong, wildly intelligent, and usually very forgiving readers) chose Wicked Like a Wildfire as our February pick. Spoiler alert: not one of us finished it. Not. One. We tried…oh, how we tried. I personally pushed through far longer than I should have, thinking surely something magical would spark. It didn’t. The only wild thing about this book was how quickly we all agreed to abandon ship.

The story could have been interesting, there’s a whisper of an original idea buried somewhere under all the flowery prose, but it gets buried under layer after layer of dragged-out scenes and agonizingly slow pacing. It’s like the book took the phrase “take your time” and turned it into a personal vendetta.

And then there’s the Russian accent. My goodness. The audiobook narrator (bless her effort) gave it such an over-the-top treatment that it became the literary version of nails on a chalkboard. It went from distracting to cringe to “I can’t do this anymore” within chapters.

By unanimous decision, our club officially slapped this one with the DNF stamp: Do Not Finish, Do Not Recommend, Don’t Even Bother. If you’re looking for a book about magic and sisterhood, there are plenty of others out there that don’t require superhuman endurance to get through.

On the bright side, we all got to vent about it over wine. So… at least something good came out of it.