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The Wishing Game is just about my perfect book: it has romance, happy endings for all, a clever mystery/game, and a sweet story that gently touches the heartstrings (without being melodramatic or overdoing it). It is a book that pays tribute to books and the worlds readers escape in, and it sparked my own imagination, making me feel the desire to write or do something else creative. Ahhhh. It makes me happy just thinking about it.
The story goes like this: an older man, Jack Masterson, lives in a big house on a large island by himself. Well, and one other person: his longtime illustrator. Jack wrote 60-plus books in a children’s book series called Clock Island. But he stopped writing six years ago, leading the much-younger illustrator, Hugo Reese, to move to the island to keep an eye on him.
Now, Jack has finally written another Clock Island book: but he’s not going to publish it. He’s inviting four people to the island to compete for the chance to win the one and only copy. They’ll have a week to gain points playing a series of games.
One of the lucky chosen competitors is Lucy Hart. She’s not had a lot of luck previously; she grew up with parents who largely neglected her. She had a bad relationship with a narcissistic boyfriend. And now, she’s a kindergarten teacher’s aide who loves a little boy at her school. She wants to adopt Christopher, who was orphaned a couple of years earlier, but she needs money to do that. This contest is finally a big chance to make this wish come true — just like in the books she lost herself in as a child.
The story reminds me a bit of the middle-grade Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, with its whimsy and book-based game set in a library that’s every reader’s dream. And the book itself has some characters reference Willy Wonka (of course). But this book has layers of poignancy that those do not have.
The Wishing Game is an absolute delight start to finish, and I wished it wasn’t only 300 pages long. It transported me and left me feeling happy and full of my own creative juices. I could read this kind of book every day.
Rated: Moderate. Profanity includes 3 uses of strong language (in one sentence), around 20 instances of moderate profanity, about 20 uses of mild language, and 5 instances of the name of Deity in vain. There are also 11 instances of British (bl-) profanity. Sexual content is just kissing. A boy is left orphaned when both parents die of a drug overdose.
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*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
