How to Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake

They are so cute and adorable and sweet and great!! And I love their pure relationship!! I love my children!! but also - there's angst between them that isn't drama. As the lovely Sana put it, this is a book about learning you’re not okay, and more importantly, that it’s okay to not be okay.

I honestly found myself connecting so, so much to her within her story of learning to trust and overcome some of the effects of her mother’s abuse. That is so important to me.Īnd Grace’s character arc is so freaking perfect. She is a shitty parent who has humanity but whose humanity does not negate her horrible treatment of Grace. The implication seems to be that parents need to be totally gross 100% of the time to be True AbusersTM, which feels so toxic and gross and weird and I hate it.īut Grace’s mom? She is not that.

I feel like a lot of depictions of shitty parents in YA literature have to depict the abusive parent as the Shitstain Of The Earth and it feels so erasive of the fact that, well, most parents are in shades of grey. Y’all have got to stop complaining about that because I have started doing it constantly.īear with me for this next weird sentence: Grace’s mother is one of the most well-written shitty parents of all time. This is yet another book that drew me in so much that I basically had to let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding when I finally put the freaking book down. Guys, I’m going to have a hard time reviewing this objectively: this book was almost overwhelmingly emotional for me. Everything about this book depends on your emotional connection to this story - primarily, your ability to connect with narrative around having a useless parent. How To Make A Wish is one of the most personal books I have read this year. “Why do you keep doing that?” she asks, her voice small and low.

How to Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake