What would you do if you woke up the morning after your birthday — let’s say your 16th birthday — and outside your window was a giant pink My Little Pony? Or what if the next day your former favorite toy, Raggedy Ann, suddenly was life size and became your constant companion? If gumballs took over your room?
Or maybe the worst: what if you thought you would be the reason you lost your best friend?
You Wish begins just before Kayla’s 16th birthday, which her mother — party planner extraordinaire — will inevitably mess up. When Kayla blows the candles out of her big pink cake, she is disappointed: this wasn’t the party she wanted, and her best friend Nicole is too busy with her new boyfriend (and Kayla’s long-time crush) Ben. That is when things get crazy in her life. Literally. We’ll watch as each of her former birthday wishes come true, leaving her more and more worried about what will happen when her biggest secret wish, kissing Ben, comes true.
Mandy Hubbard’s new title will please younger teen readers: it is sweet, a little sassy, and full of mortifying (…and hilarious) moments. The book is squeaky clean and would be an excellent book to recommend to fans of Lisa Greenwald’s My Life in Pink and Green, a title that my patrons adore. Kayla is a typical teenager who wants to fit in, keep her best friend, become girlfriend of her biggest crush since elementary school, avoid her crazy mother, and to have the most memorable 16th birthday. Fortunately, she’ll achieve many of those things, despite the presence of an overly doting Ken, the magical dirt bike, and spotlight stealing Ann.
I must admit, though, this wasn’t my favorite book. I never was quite convinced of Kayla’s persona: she was a little too scattered for me, and a lot of the things she comes to realize about who she is never quite made sense to me. That is, I never felt she was rebellious at school, which is something that will be rectified at the end of the story. I struggled, too, with Kayla’s maturity: for a 16-year-old, she acted much more like a 12-year-old, making me believe that had she been written younger, this book would have a readership MADE for middle schoolers. I think her being 16, though, might turn off some librarians, parents, and younger readers from picking up this title and enjoying it. Additionally, Kayla’s relationship with her mother never came together at the end for me; I felt there was some missed potential to give us a stronger mom figure or a stronger reason to dislike mom, but instead, she was more of a tool than a fully fleshed character. And finally, I never got resolution of or understanding why things ever happened. We know it has to do with a birthday cake, but the time frames, the events, and the ingredients never coalesced for me. But perhaps that’s all a part of the suspension of belief.
What I loved about this book, aside from its total clean factor, was its magical realism. I don’t think there are enough books for this age group that are willing to be a little silly. We have an overwhelming number of issues books, covering everything from suicide, to hoarding, to eating disorders, to abusive parents. While we have genre fiction (besides vampires), but there really is little that spans a little of both the real world and the magical world. I’m glad Hubbard tackled this sort of story, and I think that alone will give it some staying power.
This is a quick moving story once you pass the first couple of chapters. I anticipated the strange to happen, and making it through the first few chapters was challenging, since it was primarily setting up our characters. But for most readers, this won’t be difficult because as soon as the action begins rolling, the story flies.
You Wish will work for fans of Greenwald’s previously mentioned book, but I think it’ll also be a nice title for fans of Raina Telgemeier’s Smile, Wendy Mass’s 11 Birthdays and Finally, and even Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girls series.
You Wish will be available August 5 from Razorbill.
*Review copy provided by publisher