Soul Searching by Lyla Sage

Lyla Sage, the bestselling author of the beloved Rebel Blue Ranch series, ventures into new territory with Soul Searching, the first installment of her Sweetwater Peak series. Known for her ability to craft swoon-worthy contemporary romances set against rugged Wyoming landscapes, Sage now adds a supernatural twist to her signature style. This paranormal romance explores what happens when the voices that have always defined you suddenly disappear, and whether finding yourself sometimes means losing everything you thought you knew.

The Heart of the Story

Collins Cartwright has always been different. In a town built on shadows, she’s spent her entire life conversing with ghosts—spirits that exist parallel to the living world, visible only to her and her twin sister Clarke. These conversations have shaped not just her identity but her career as a photographer, capturing places infused with the souls of those who once inhabited them. But when the voices go silent, Collins loses more than her supernatural abilities. She loses her artistic vision, her sense of purpose, and ultimately, her place in the world.

Returning to Sweetwater Peak feels like defeat. Collins tells herself she’s coming home to help save her family’s antique shop from a predatory developer, but the truth runs deeper. She’s broke, jobless, and spiritually adrift. When she takes a room above Brady Cooper’s upholstery shop, she doesn’t expect to find someone equally lost, equally running from something he won’t name. Brady moved to Sweetwater Peak after seeing Collins’s own photographs in a magazine—a cosmic joke neither of them can ignore. What begins as a practical arrangement evolves into something neither anticipated: a partnership in soul searching, both literal and metaphorical.

Characters That Breathe

Sage excels at crafting protagonists who feel refreshingly real, and Collins Cartwright stands as perhaps her most complex creation yet. She’s prickly, guarded, dressed entirely in black, and perpetually talking to beings no one else can see. The author resists the temptation to make Collins’s abilities purely magical or whimsical. Instead, they’re portrayed as both gift and burden, isolating her even as they connect her to something larger. Collins’s journey isn’t about regaining her powers through some simple epiphany; it’s about understanding why she lost them and whether she’s brave enough to do the work required to reclaim them.

Brady Cooper serves as an ideal counterpart. He’s warm where Collins is cool, steady where she’s restless, yet equally damaged beneath his gentle exterior. His choice to open an upholstery shop in a town that barely appears on maps speaks to his own need for reinvention. Sage carefully reveals Brady’s backstory, allowing readers to understand that running away and moving forward aren’t always distinguishable from each other. His willingness to believe Collins—not in ghosts necessarily, but in her experience of them—becomes one of the novel’s most tender gestures.

The supporting cast enriches the narrative considerably. Clarke Cartwright, Collins’s twin, provides both mirror and contrast, representing the path not taken. Their strained relationship adds emotional depth, exploring how even the closest bonds can fray when communication breaks down. The ghosts themselves emerge as fully realized characters, particularly Earnest, whose decades-long separation from his lost love becomes a poignant parallel to Collins’s own fears about connection and vulnerability.

The Setting as Character

Sweetwater Peak isn’t merely a backdrop; it’s an active presence throughout the novel. Sage constructs a town that exists slightly outside time, where the boundary between past and present remains perpetually thin. The town’s origin story—an earthquake that literally split the ground and turned fresh water salty—mirrors the fractures within Collins herself. From the abandoned church where secrets are whispered to ghosts, to the river that changes composition mid-stream, every location carries weight and meaning.

The author’s descriptions balance the cozy and the eerie with remarkable skill. Sweetwater Peak feels simultaneously like a place you’d want to visit and a place you’d be nervous to stay after dark. This atmospheric achievement elevates the novel beyond standard paranormal romance into something more haunting and memorable. The small-town setting also allows Sage to explore themes of claustrophobia and belonging, examining how the same community can feel both suffocating and essential.

Where the Novel Soars

The central romance develops with patience and authenticity. Sage understands that true intimacy requires vulnerability, and she allows both Collins and Brady to resist, stumble, and gradually open themselves to possibility. Their relationship builds through shared experiences—midnight adventures, quiet conversations, moments of crisis—rather than through instant attraction alone. The chemistry crackles on the page, yet never overshadows the individual journeys each character must complete.

The paranormal elements integrate seamlessly with the contemporary romance framework. Rather than feeling gimmicky, Collins’s abilities serve as a metaphor for authenticity and self-acceptance. The ghosts want to be seen and heard, much like Collins herself. When she loses her connection to them, she loses connection to her own voice. This symbolic resonance gives the supernatural aspects unexpected emotional depth.

Sage’s prose demonstrates considerable growth from her earlier work. Her sentences carry a lyrical quality particularly suited to this slightly gothic atmosphere. She’s unafraid of quiet moments, allowing scenes to breathe and characters to simply exist together. The dialogue sparkles with wit and genuine warmth, particularly in Collins and Brady’s banter, which evolves naturally from antagonistic to affectionate.

Where It Stumbles

Despite its many strengths, Soul Searching occasionally falters under the weight of its ambitions. The pacing becomes uneven in the middle section, with some sequences feeling drawn out while others rush past too quickly. Collins’s photographic career, so central to her character, sometimes feels underexplored. While we understand intellectually why losing her abilities devastates her professionally, we don’t always feel the full weight of that loss.

The resolution of certain plot threads arrives somewhat conveniently. The developer storyline, while providing external stakes, never achieves the urgency it needs to truly threaten the family business. Similarly, Brady’s backstory, when fully revealed, feels slightly predictable for readers familiar with contemporary romance tropes. The cosmic coincidence connecting Brady’s past to Collins’s present asks readers to suspend considerable disbelief.

Some secondary characters remain underdeveloped, existing primarily to move the plot forward rather than as fully realized individuals. Given that this launches a series, perhaps future installments will provide them necessary depth. The novel’s ending, while satisfying emotionally, ties up certain threads almost too neatly, sacrificing some of the atmospheric ambiguity that made earlier sections so compelling.

The Deeper Resonance

Beneath the romance and supernatural elements, Soul Searching explores profound questions about identity, belonging, and the courage required to be truly seen. Collins’s journey resonates because it addresses a fundamentally human fear: what happens when the thing that defines us disappears? Her abilities aren’t just supernatural gifts—they’re her coping mechanism, her artistic vision, and her excuse to keep the world at arm’s length.

The novel also examines how isolation can exist even in community. Both Collins and Brady surround themselves with people yet remain profoundly alone until they risk genuine connection. Sage suggests that sometimes we must lose ourselves completely before we can begin the work of being found.

For Fans Of

Readers who enjoyed Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic, Sarah Addison Allen’s Garden Spells, or Alix E. Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January will find familiar pleasures here. Sage’s work also appeals to fans of Emily Henry’s emotional depth combined with Christina Lauren’s contemporary romance sensibilities. Those who loved the Rebel Blue Ranch series will appreciate Sage’s continued mastery of small-town Wyoming settings, while newcomers will find an accessible entry point into her expanding fictional universe.

The novel also pairs well with:

• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab (for its exploration of being seen versus being invisible)
• The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling (for cozy small-town paranormal romance)
• Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas (for sympathetic ghost-seeing protagonists)
• House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig (for atmospheric gothic elements)

Final Thoughts

Soul Searching represents both an evolution and a risk for Lyla Sage. By introducing supernatural elements to her contemporary romance formula, she invites comparisons to authors working in well-established paranormal genres. While the novel doesn’t fully transcend every convention, it succeeds more often than it stumbles. The romance satisfies, the setting enchants, and the characters linger in memory long after the final page.

This isn’t a perfect book, but it’s an ambitious and heartfelt one. Sage demonstrates a willingness to push beyond her comfort zone while maintaining the emotional authenticity that made her earlier work resonate. Collins and Brady’s journey toward each other and toward themselves unfolds with genuine tenderness. For readers seeking romance with substance, atmosphere with heart, and characters worth caring about, Soul Searching delivers a compelling experience.

The novel ultimately argues that being lost isn’t a permanent condition—it’s a necessary waystation on the road to being found. Sometimes the voices we need to hear most clearly are our own. And sometimes, the person who helps us find ourselves is the one who’s equally lost, equally searching, equally brave enough to admit they don’t have all the answers. In Sweetwater Peak, where the road ends and the shadows begin, Collins and Brady discover that the journey matters as much as the destination, and that home isn’t always a place—sometimes it’s a person willing to see you, ghosts and all.