Lark Donovan has kept the Wild Heart Sanctuary alive on grit, duct tape, and a coffee tin of singles. The mustangs she grew up with roam the red mesas outside High Mesa, New Mexico, and the only way to count them after a season of wildfires is from the sky. Enter Cole Harrow, a taciturn bush pilot out of Cottonwood Municipal with a scar across his knuckles and a spotless Cessna 180 named Juniper. Their first survey flight unspools into a desert thriller when a dry lightning cell spits them toward a ravine; Cole drops the plane onto a narrow wash with calm hands and a voice like gravel. The dust settles, the engine ticks, and Lark discovers the worst kind of crush: the kind fueled by adrenaline, altitude, and the scent of avgas.
When Cole offers her a steeply discounted backcountry training package to make amends, Lark should say no. Flight hours are an egregent luxury, her tips from the Blue Coyote Diner already vanish into her mother's physical therapy bills, and the sanctuary's fence posts are as rotten as her credit score. But flying could be more than a dream; with aerial observation skills and a Part 107 credential, she could land real work with wildlife surveys and keep hay in the barn. Soon they are tracing Diablo Canyon at dawn, plotting routes over sectional charts sticky with green chile fingerprints, sharing a dented thermos over Granite Creek Airstrip, and learning each other's silences between headsets.
The higher they climb, the more the turbulence between them smooths—until Lark's secret barrels down like a dust devil. Months ago, she signed an option with a luxury eco-resort to sell a slice of the sanctuary's water rights, gambling on a payout that never came. Worse, the investors now have ties to the contract firm keeping Cole in the air. Lark has seen the wreckage that follows when business and desire collide. Can she risk her heart on a man whose livelihood might depend on the very deal that would gut her land, or is love another wild thing that refuses a fence line?
Lark's impulsive gamble and Cole's stoicism make sparks, but their dialogue too often circles the same beats, so the chemistry feels more engineered than earned.
Think of it as Leah Kincaid's Canyon Skies meets Ramon Ortega's Dust Country: the romance sits between backcountry aviation competence and small-town obligation.
If you enjoy procedural detail, quiet chemistry, and landscapes that feel lived in, you will find plenty to like here.
El paisaje de Nuevo México manda. Mesas rojas, arroyos, humo de incendios recientes y la sombra de una Cessna que busca caballos: todo se siente auténtico sin atascarse en tecnicismos.
La autora muestra cómo el cielo abre posibilidades y también riesgos, y el santuario se vuelve un personaje con su propia necesidad de agua y tiempo. Terminé con ganas de seguir volando sobre esas rutas y de ver a los mustangs cruzando la meseta.
I wanted the bush flying hook to carry the plot, but the story idled.
Craft-wise, the prose is precise and workmanlike, with aviation terms folded into scene work so they signal competence without drowning the reader. The dialogue under headsets is economical and lands some quiet humor.
Structurally, the training arc lingers a few chapters too long before the money stakes squeeze both leads, and the final alignment is convincing but not cathartic. Solid construction, low heat, dependable finish.
This romance soars. My heart lifted with Juniper as the sun broke over Diablo Canyon, and I was grinning like a fool every time the headsets clicked on.
Lark's stubborn hope and Cole's careful calm collide in all the best ways. The aviation detail hums, but it is the generosity in small acts that left me breathless.
I loved how the book refuses simple binaries: survival versus stewardship, solitude versus community, grit versus grace. And that line about love being "another wild thing that refuses a fence line" lit up the whole story for me.
Every lesson flight becomes a tiny covenant, and every thermos of coffee tastes like forgiveness. When the storm forces them down, the dust isn't just weather; it is the past settling and blowing off again.
Yes, yes, yes. More desert, more mustangs, more people choosing to stay and do the work.
