Scan barcode
A review by sparksinthevoid
How to Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake
4.0
you and me, we’re sandy spoons and fireworks, lighthouses and wishes and peanut butter.
tw: grief, death of a parent, toxic relationship with parent, depression, unhealthy coping mechanisms
this book was true. i don’t know how else to describe it, it just seems realistic, completely real.
in a way, we follow these really ordinary events: with a mum being completely infatuated with a new guy, with a grief-stricken new girl coming to town, worrying about the future.
ashley herring blake manages to make it into something beautiful.
all these characters are incredibly flawed. they are not good or bad, they are both. their actions hurting somebody else even though they just want to help. and no one is just this perfect person with all the right thoughts and all the right things to say.
oh, but this book made me angry. maggie is just such an infuriating person who hurts everyone in her way, including herself. with grace in the middle of things, it gets hard. and while i kind of understand grace’s but she’s my mum, i can’t just leave her, i personally it’s important that she does leave because it is her mother, because her staying could cause damage (for herself). and i was glad when she realises that she has to put herself first, the while her mum’s recovery is important, it won’t work if maggie herself refuses it.
so i really liked the friendship between luca and grace. maybe because it showed how complicated friendship sometimes can be, with other people coming in between and the two of them having to reorganise how to treat each other while staying the same to one another. it hurt to see them fight and the whole time i just wanted them to make up.
and then there’s eva, who by herself is lovely. and then sometimes she would run after grace, probably to comfort her, to be there for her, but i just felt like she was being pushy and at some point i was almost annoyed by her presence on the page.
but then again, maybe this is also because she, too, is not perfect. she just tries her best to mourn her mother in the best way she can, and that sometimes means hurting people you didn’t mean to hurt.
all in all, this was a really good book, with its exploration of grief and complicated relationships.
tw: grief, death of a parent, toxic relationship with parent, depression, unhealthy coping mechanisms
this book was true. i don’t know how else to describe it, it just seems realistic, completely real.
in a way, we follow these really ordinary events: with a mum being completely infatuated with a new guy, with a grief-stricken new girl coming to town, worrying about the future.
ashley herring blake manages to make it into something beautiful.
all these characters are incredibly flawed. they are not good or bad, they are both. their actions hurting somebody else even though they just want to help. and no one is just this perfect person with all the right thoughts and all the right things to say.
oh, but this book made me angry. maggie is just such an infuriating person who hurts everyone in her way, including herself. with grace in the middle of things, it gets hard. and while i kind of understand grace’s but she’s my mum, i can’t just leave her, i personally it’s important that she does leave because it is her mother, because her staying could cause damage (for herself). and i was glad when she realises that she has to put herself first, the while her mum’s recovery is important, it won’t work if maggie herself refuses it.
so i really liked the friendship between luca and grace. maybe because it showed how complicated friendship sometimes can be, with other people coming in between and the two of them having to reorganise how to treat each other while staying the same to one another. it hurt to see them fight and the whole time i just wanted them to make up.
and then there’s eva, who by herself is lovely. and then sometimes she would run after grace, probably to comfort her, to be there for her, but i just felt like she was being pushy and at some point i was almost annoyed by her presence on the page.
but then again, maybe this is also because she, too, is not perfect. she just tries her best to mourn her mother in the best way she can, and that sometimes means hurting people you didn’t mean to hurt.
all in all, this was a really good book, with its exploration of grief and complicated relationships.