Reading Journal 2024: The Wishing Game
Author: Meg Shaffer
Reads like a mix between The Inheretance Games and Willy Wonka, just with a literary subtext woven in. The whole adult-child relationship, following our main character’s obsession with an author and his books amidst a problematic childhood, provides a vantage point for exploring differing perspectives on life. Given that the story is being told from the vantage point of a grown woman, one who is looking back on her life while trying to make sense of her present, the YA element straddles a line between pushing towards maturity and recovering that childhood wonder and hope that maturity often threatens to strip away. Conceptually speaking, the book finds a unique way into the idea that our adult selves are rooted very much in those childhood experiences, particularly those moments that act as transitions between these two worlds.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of the romance, but I imagine it would land better for its target audience. Thematically speaking, the book also plays it relatively safe. There are no huge surprises, and it definitely wraps up its themes and its plotlines with a nice and tidy and happy ending. That is, I think, what the book advertises itself as, which makes that an ultimately satisfying element of The Wishing Game. Call it a comfort read, with just enough emotional power and resolution to make it engaging and trustworthy.
Although I could have used even more of the literary motif, it also gets points for its celebration of the power of the book and the imagination. Hope would be lost without its transformative power.
The Stories of my Life 