2014, 312p, YA Contemporary Romance
My Rating=5 Stars
Source: Received a copy for an honest review
What Lacey needs is a miracle. What she gets is a genie with rules.
Lacey Linden is hiding the truth of her life—a depressed mom, a crumbling house, and bills too big to pay. While her high school classmates see a girl with a ready smile and good grades, Lacey spends her evenings seeking ways to save her family. On a get-cash-quick trip to the flea market, Lacey stumbles over a music box that seemingly begs her to take it home. She does, only to find it is inhabited by a gorgeous “genie.” He offers her a month of wishes, one per day, but there’s a catch. Each wish must be humanly possible.
Grant belongs to a league of supernatural beings, dedicated to serving humans in need. After two years of fulfilling the boring wishes of conventional teens, he is one assignment away from promotion to a challenging new role with more daring cases. Yet his month with Lacey is everything that he expects and nothing like he imagines. Lacey and Grant soon discover that the most difficult task of all might be saying goodbye.
Lacey's life is rough. After her stepfather's death, her mother hasn't been able to cope with life so she has taken on the responsibility of running the household. She has an 8-year-old brother, Henry, and she works hard to make sure he has a somewhat normal life. While at the flea market one day, she picks up a music box which she soon discovers is housing a handsome genie named Grant. He is able to grant one wish per day for a month which need to be humanly possible.
It was fun to see the changes Lacey went through during that month. I can't imagine how difficult her life was and it had to have been a relief to have someone to lean on and help her out. She was fun to get to know as she dealt with friend, family and relationship issues. I honestly wasn't sure where the romance would be in this book and was a little surprised at the direction it went. I enjoyed it, though, and also wasn't surprised at how it left off.
Grant, the genie, went through lots of changes as well. At the end of each chapter, he submits status reports to his boss and we get some insight into his thoughts and feelings. He's not impressed with Lacey at first but his opinion changes over time and he learns valuable lessons throughout the book.
This was a fun book to read from beginning to end! When I got done, I was glad I had the next one to start reading right away!
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Praise for I Wish
From School Library Journal (I Wish #1)
Langston wisely limits the power of wishes, so there can be no easy fixes to complex problems. [The story] is all the better for it, putting the focus on the compelling and sympathetic characters.
… the denouement offers enough twists and unresolved questions to have readers wishing the next book was already available.
From K-books blog:
I Wish is a fantastic storyline, with a dash of romance that is perfect for any YA fan. I can’t recommend it enough.
From Reese’s Reviews blog:
This is definitely one of the most beautiful and amazingly written books I’ve ever read. Elizabeth Langston has written a fantastic story that drew me in from the first page.
2015, 268p, YA Contemporary Romance
My Rating=4 Stars
Source: Received a copy for an honest review
She’s a girl who can’t remember. He’s the guy she can’t forget…
It’s her final semester of high school, and Kimberley Rey is curious to discover what will come next. She needs to pick a college, but her memory disability complicates the choice. Will her struggles to remember make it impossible to leave home?
Help arrives through an unexpected and supernatural gift. Grant is a “genie” with rules. He can give her thirty wishes (one per day for a month) as long as the tasks are humanly possible. Kimberley knows just what to ask for–lessons in how to live on her own.
But her wishes change when a friend receives a devastating diagnosis. As she joins forces with Grant to help her friend, Kimberley learns that the ability to live in the moment–to forget–may be more valuable than she ever knew.
We meet Kimberley in the first book (she's friends with Lacey) and learn more about her in this one. She had cancer when she was young and now has short term memory loss. When a friend confides in her, she finds ways to help him live life on his terms. Their relationship took a different turn than I originally thought it would and I thought it was perfect. I found it interesting to see how she coped with memory loss on a daily basis and how it affected her mother and their relationship.
Kimberley is completely different than Lacey and I thought the author did a fantastic job of conveying that. This book had a totally different feel to me. It was more emotional and brought tears to my eyes a few times. New characters were introduced and we got to find out what was going on with other characters from the first book.
I didn't find myself racing through this book like I did I Wish, but it was still enjoyable. I have to admit that I got distracted with the romance from the first book and where it was or wasn't heading and those scenes were some of my favorites due to the drama factor. It's not hard to guess the next person that Grant will be helping and if that book was out, I would have been just as anxious to start it as I was this one. I'm excited to read more because I definitely want to see how this ends!
Excerpt:
A puff of blue smoke curled from the center of the pocket watch, swirling lazily in the air before dissipating near the foot of my four-poster bed. In its place appeared one of the hottest guys I’d ever met—every bit as gorgeous now as he’d been the last time I’d seen him months ago. “Grant?”
“Hello.” He watched me calmly, his hands clasped behind his back.
He hadn’t walked through the door. He’d simply materialized out of the blue smoke, which ought to have been impossible but clearly wasn’t. There were plenty of things wrong with my brain, but hallucinations were not one of them. “Where did you come from?”
“I live in the watch…”
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Elizabeth Langston lives in North Carolina, halfway between the beaches and the mountains. She has two college-age daughters and one old husband. When she’s not writing software or stories, Elizabeth loves to travel with her family, watch shows on dance or Sherlock Holmes, and dream about which restaurant ought to get her business that night.
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1 comments:
The covers are great, making me think maybe there genies are real. Should I make a wish?
sherry @ fundinmental
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