The Wishing Game

Review #58: Fiction 

The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer 

What a quick and whimsical read! This reminded me of so many childhood favorites, as if Shaffer created a patchwork quilt out of beloved stories to wrap us in and warm our chilly adult hearts. A square of Peter Pan, some Charlie and the Chocolate Factory thread, a little Matilda trim, and finish with Ready Player One backing and you get The Wishing Game quilt, perfect for a cozy night in. 

Lucy Hart is a member of a very exclusive club, though she doesn’t know it. As a child, after feeling unloved and neglected by her family, Lucy ran away to the home of her favorite author, Jack Masterson. He wrote the Clock Island book series that Lucy always imagined herself the brave, adventurous heroine of. Masterson, notoriously reclusive, keeps to himself at his home on the real Clock Island, where Lucy comes knocking late one night, hoping Jack will take her in, become her guardian and go on real adventures with her. Beyond disappointed when she is returned home, Lucy must grow up and leave her fantasy world behind.  

Years later, Lucy becomes a teaching aid, sharing her love of books with her students, namely a young, orphaned boy named Christopher. Lucy has fallen in love with this little boy, and has plans to adopt him, but she is running out of time to get her finances and home together to make that happen. At just the right time, Jack Masterson announces a new book, years after his last, and has created a contest to bestow the one and only copy on a lucky winner. Only a select few have gotten invitations to Clock Island to compete in this contest; those who were once young children looking for answers in their favorite books. Each person had once run away to Clock Island and were now being invited to return.  

Lucy debates not participating, remembering the hurt of being turned away so many years ago. But the chance to have a new Jack Masterson book, to return to the series, to sell the manuscript to the highest bidding publisher, would bring her everything she wants; it could give her her life with Christopher. 

Clock Island is as mysterious and magical as Lucy remembers, but as she starts completing the tasks to win the contest, she must grapple with a more sinister and somber reality. 

The Wishing Game packs a ton of heart, adventure, and some tough topics into 300 pages. With a dazzling setting pulled straight from a child’s most imaginative dreams, Shaffer seamlessly weaves in hard issues with breathtaking care. Using Lucy, Christopher and James as the conduits, Shaffer tenderly addresses childhood and generational trauma, addiction, loss of family members, toxic relationships, and the disappointments of the foster system (to name just a few) allowing us to face these topics directly without losing the heart of the story to the darkness.  

A story about facing your fears, making wishes and following your dreams, and the healing power of laughter, The Wishing Game goes down like a warm glass of milk, reminding us to escape every now and then into the silly and punny side of life, to let our inner children out to play. 

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars. 

📚📸: @_amber.reads.a.book_ 

You’re Invited

Hardcover book, You’re Invited by Amanda Jayatissa, laying on a pile of envelopes and invitations.

Review #56: Fiction 

You’re Invited by Amanda Jayatissa 

This story’s twists and turns have twists and turns! Though I didn’t love every decision that was made along the way, it’s impossible to call You’re Invited boring or predictable. I had as many theories as there were characters in this book; some panned out, and some Jayatissa took in entirely different directions. In the end, the resolution simply pales in comparison to the tantalizing possibilities we are lured into imagining along the way.  

Amaya and her longtime best friend Kaavi have had a falling out. Amaya has not heard from Kaavi in years and has satiated her curiosities by cyber stalking her across multiple social media sites, all under fabricated accounts. So when an invitation to Kaavi’s wedding arrives (Amaya had no idea Kaavi was seeing someone!) she’s not just intrigued, she’s hopeful. Which is why when she realizes the groom is not just someone she knows, but in fact her ex-boyfriend Spencer, Amaya decides two things: One, she has to go to this wedding. And two, she has to stop it from happening. 

Shortly after Amaya arrives in Sri Lanka for the wedding, she finds out Kaavi didn’t invite her after all, and still wants nothing to do with her. Kaavi allows Amaya to stay and attend to keep up appearances, but there is clearly no love lost between them. Then the night before the wedding, Kaavi goes missing and is presumed dead the longer she goes unfound. Jayatissa utilizes the present and flashbacks to tell Amaya and Kaavi’s story, filling the reader in on what caused their falling out, and all the details from the time Amaya arrived in Sri Lanka up to Kaavi’s disappearance. These present scenes are interwoven with police interviews with the various guests of the wedding after Kaavi is reported missing. 

The interviews as plot progression are one of my favorite things about You’re Invited. They’re a unique way to tell the story and introduce readers to all the various players at the same time. Since these interviews are incredibly self-serving, we develop a mistrust of everyone. They’re all just a little bit unreliable, which makes them all suspects. With the inclusion of the intricate and extravagant depictions of the Sri Lankan culture and elaborate wedding celebrations of the wealthy, You’re Invited feels like the love child of Crazy Rich Asians and an Agatha Christie novel.  

None of the characters is more suspicious than Amaya herself, at times in a way that is far too heavy handed, to the point of being ridiculous and obviously an attempt to steer the reader in her direction. This only made me more sure that Amaya would not be whodunit. Amaya has a highly active, violent imagination and dislikes everyone. She has some online friends, and I questioned if they were even real a few times with how detached from reality Jayatissa portrays Amaya. It would not have been much of a surprise if we ended up with Amaya the obsessed, jilted stalker as kidnapper and possible murderer. 

In the flashbacks, we find out Kaavi’s parents adopted a baby girl right before Amaya and Kaavi stopped speaking. Whispers suggest that the little girl is the love child of Amaya and Kaavi’s father. This rumor adds to the understanding of the rift that tore Amaya and Kaavi apart, and explains the frigid welcome Amaya receives from Kaavi’s mother when she arrives. The truth of who this little girl is is what the entire story hinges on.  

When the loose ends are all tied up, what we’re left with in You’re Invited is a story of strong, powerful women who are ruthless when it comes to keeping up with cultural appearances. There’s a wife’s shame because of her husband, a mother’s pride, and a daughter’s unwillingness to become her mother or allow herself to be treated how the generation of women before her were treated. All of these secrets and lies come spilling out the night before Kaavi and Spencer’s wedding, revealing which leads were real and which were red herrings. The truth is still scandalous, but for me, what could have been was far more entertaining.  

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars 

📚📸: @_amber.reads.a.book_ 

Thistlefoot

Review #55: Fiction

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

In Thistlefoot, GennaRose Nethercott brings the Baba Yaga folklore into the modern-day, using a magical realism backdrop to tell a unique story of both blood- and found-family. In a debut novel that doesn’t shy away from the painful and grotesque aspects of life, Nethercott builds a world with Grimm’s fairytale bones, complete with whimsy and magic, and modern accents throughout. 

When the Yaga siblings, Bellatine and Isaac, inherit a house from a long lost relative in Eastern Europe, the house getting up and walking around on a pair of chicken legs is just the beginning of the oddities that lie ahead. When a shadowy figure crosses countries and oceans to claim the house for himself, the siblings must band together to understand and protect not just their present, but their past. An epic fantasy that spans thousands of miles and hundreds of years, Thistlefoot breathes new life into Jewish folklore. 

Bellatine and Isaac have not spoken in years—Bellatine pursuing woodworking and looking to settle into a normal life, and Isaac following the whims and impulses of a street performer and petty thief wherever they take him. When they each get the call that a great-great-grandmother has left them an inheritance, they meet again at a shipyard to open the giant container together. When the shock of a sentient house on chicken legs walking out wears off, they strike a deal. If Bellatine joins Isaac on a cross-country tour to perform their family’s old puppet show, he’ll take the spoils, and she can keep the house. What they don’t know, is that the Longshadow Man wants Thistlefoot for himself to settle a century’s old debt. To save themselves and Thistlefoot from a deadly fate, both Bellatine and Isaac must confront their very worst fears from their past and start using each of their unique abilities for good. 

With a cast of characters from the past and present, told through the perspectives of Bellatine, Isaac, and Thistlefoot (who gives us the backstory to understand the Longshadow Man’s pursuit), Thistlefoot will walk right into your heart and soul like a hot cup of tea next to a roaring fire. Nethercott has created a beautiful, whimsical tale of love, loss, and memory through a fantastic adventure complete with ghosts, betrayal, and vengeance. But the ghosts in this story are not just people, they are places and events, and the horror of experiencing a ghost is not shied away from. Nethercott does not hold back on visceral depictions of pain and suffering; she is unashamed of broaching taboo topics and showing the gritty, violent realities of the world. 

Existing in a world of magical realism that I didn’t question for a single second, Thistlefoot is a captivating story of generational trauma, exploring what being bound by blood really means, what a family really is, and the price we’re willing to pay for love. 

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars 

📚📸: @_amber.reads.a.book_ 

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

Review #48: Fiction

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver

What would you be willing to sacrifice for a second chance at lost love?

That’s the question Lydia Bird must reckon with in The Two Lives of Lydia Bird. After losing her fiancé Freddie to an unexpected car accident, Lydia is completely unmoored, finding herself unsure of how to move forward with a life she never imagined she would be living. When Lydia begins taking sleeping pills to get some sleep and maybe feel a bit normal again, she gets much more than the reprieve from her reality than she anticipated.

When Lydia is asleep, Freddie isn’t dead. She quickly realizes this isn’t just a dream, either. Lydia is living the life she believed she would have with Freddie. As she begins to spend more and more time in her sleep life, planning her wedding and soaking up every moment she can with the man she thought she lost, her waking life takes a back seat. The more time Lydia spends asleep, the more she sees that she’s missing the good things she still has in her waking life, and that just because Freddie is alive in her sleeping world, doesn’t mean bad things can’t happen there too.

Lydia must ultimately decide if she’s willing to leave her waking life, her family and friends who were there for her through the hardest moments of her life, for the man and the marriage she always wanted.

A truly new take on the discussion of love and loss, of survivor’s guilt and moving on, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird lets us imagine the ‘What Ifs’ that surround our worst days, exploring how difficult but fulfilling it is to start over, and asking, “Would you be willing to sacrifice the new life you fought for and earned for the one you always wanted?”

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

📚📷: @_amber.reads.a.book_