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_ 

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_