3.5 stars

Firewalker is the second book of Josephine Angelini’s Worldwalker trilogy and if you haven’t read book one yet, stop here because I don’t want to ruin any of the story for you. I loved Trial by Fire and was anxiously waiting for this one so I could dive back into the world of witches and magic. I am going to apologize in advance if things sound vague in this review but it is mostly because I don’t want to spoil anything. A lot happens in this book and where book one focused a lot on building out the world and developing the characters, this one is more focused on tying everything together and advancing the story.

This book picks up immediately after Trial by Fire ends and now Lily is back in her world with Rowan. Having been severely burned in the pyre, she isn’t one hundred percent when they turn up in her world and are greeted by Lily’s mom and sister. As Lily begins to see the issues her leaving left behind, she also starts to think that there could be a future for her and Rowan.

Now that we are in Lily’s world, we get to see her connections with her family and her friends and I loved seeing this part of her. Since she spent the majority of her time in another world in the last book, we didn’t get too much of this. When she finally reconnected with her Tristan and Breakfast and Una as well, we learned more about them as well as how critical they would be to the remainder of the story. I also loved the relationship between Lily and her sister, Juliet.

As the story moves forward, Lily’s friends are drawn to her and as Rowan explains, they are natural mechanics. When Rowan begins to show the group what it means to be a mechanic, they all opt to have Lily claim them and their real training begins. This is definitely important because Lillian hasn’t given up on getting Lily back to her world and she is willing to do whatever it takes to get Lily to do what she wants which means the entire group is in danger.

As the group ultimately ends up back in Rowan’s world, they are faced with a number of challenges. The tribes are caught between the Coven and the Woven (both dangerous in their minds) and the ultimate reason why all the scientists were being killed by Lillian becomes clear… at least to Lily. Because of this, things between Rowan and Lily take a turn. I won’t say much about this but I have to say this was one of those moments in the book that change how I thought things would go – not just for them, but overall.

This is where I mention, there are a bunch of secrets floating between Lily and Rowan in this book. One of the secrets is directly linked to the reason Rowan encourages Lily to claim her friends as her mechanics. One of the other secrets is that Lily is still connected to Lillian and she is continuing to let Lillian show her all the justifications she has for doing what she has. All of them take a toll on the relationship between Lily and Rowan and in the end, even though they still very much care about each other, they are the things that make everything more complicated.

This book dives more into the Woven and as the group heads west, they finally encounter the Hive. As story comes to a close, it is clear that things will be very different for everyone going forward. I know this review is somewhat vague but I can’t apologize. If you are looking for a story with magic and lots of action, definitely check this one out and if you haven’t started book one, now is a great time to read it and dive right into Firewalker when it comes out.