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cardinalgirl75 's review for:
If Wishes Were Retail
by Auston Habershaw
What would people wish for if a genie suddenly appeared and set up shop in their neighborhood? Would they wish for the things they truly wanted, or would they waste their wishes on frivolous things that would only bring them more misery? And what would the genie think of their wishes?
For most of this book, I wasn't quite sure what it wanted to be. I wasn't entirely sure the author knew, either. Was this a funny story about a wisecracking teenage girl and a clueless genie, and how they navigated the modern world (in a dying mall) together? Was this a morality tale about being careful what you wished for? Was this a serious story about the dangers of capitalism?
Turns out, it's a little bit of all of them, with some dysfunctional family dynamics thrown in. I'm not entirely sold on all of it, especially the seeming last-minute change of heart on the part of Alex's father and brother--I don't know that there was enough work done on them to make it believable, and I wish her mother had been better fleshed out as a character, since she came across as a humorless harpy. But overall, not a bad first effort.
For most of this book, I wasn't quite sure what it wanted to be. I wasn't entirely sure the author knew, either. Was this a funny story about a wisecracking teenage girl and a clueless genie, and how they navigated the modern world (in a dying mall) together? Was this a morality tale about being careful what you wished for? Was this a serious story about the dangers of capitalism?
Turns out, it's a little bit of all of them, with some dysfunctional family dynamics thrown in. I'm not entirely sold on all of it, especially the seeming last-minute change of heart on the part of Alex's father and brother--I don't know that there was enough work done on them to make it believable, and I wish her mother had been better fleshed out as a character, since she came across as a humorless harpy. But overall, not a bad first effort.