The short chapters made this a very quick read for me. The plot was interesting and kept my interest.
I didn't anticipate the major twists, so was surprised at the ending.
At times I felt like the writing was setting up to be a spicy romance, but never got there.
Overall, I gave it three stars because it kept my interest.
Thank you Kensington Publishing for my free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
This book explores many different themes, friendship, tragedy, parenting, women's rights, sex, deception... Yet among all of these things what stands out to me is the beautiful imagery that Meg Waite Clayton uses throughout the book.
While not a light beach read, if read in a book club would make for some great discussions.
Overall a good solid book that I liked.
I just finished this book, which was sent to me from first reads.
This book begins with a little girl in Japan and follows her through her life. The characters and relationships that Dilloway creates are vivid and interesting. More importantly, they are believable.
I loved this book and put it in the “If you like Amy Tan, you'll love Margaret Dilloway” category.
I was so excited to be a first reads winner of this book. The cover of the book is gorgeous and I was hoping for a gorgeous story to go along with it.
The first 50 pages really had me interested. However, once I read through the chapter of letters written to Pearl, it was almost like the book came to a screeching halt. That chapter made no sense and seemed to be included to rush the story along. There was one sentence about Willow getting kidnapped, then never mentioned again.
I thought the author failed to create the intimacy of really getting to know someone like a best friend does. It seems to me that Pearl was just on the periphery of the story.
Wow! This book is graphic, gritty, it made me nauseous and it made me cry. Meg Tilly's words are powerful and I think she captured the very real voice of being an innocent, but sexualized 12 year old.
I can guarantee this book will never get the “feel good” book of the year award. But it wasn't written to either.
Meg Tilly writes with a rare honesty that is not found often. She doesn't sugar coat anything and I appreciate that in an author.
The Wish Maker is about a Pakistani boy who is growing up without a father, in the midst of governmental strife and in a house full of women. I thought that many parts of this book were honest and gritty. And I really enjoyed those parts. I had high interest in the beginning of the book, but at the end, I was still confused who the characters were. I felt like more time should have been devoted to character development and defining more of the cultural terms for the audience. I liked the main character, I just wished he had a stronger voice throughout the whole book.
Ali's writing style is confusing to me. On some pages, the conversations happened in paragraph form and on other pages, it happened in line by line all the way down the page. The use of the Pakistani language was confusing to me too. Sometimes the words were translated, sometimes not. Sometimes the main characters voice was loud (like when Zaki went to school), sometimes I didn't know who was narrating or even at what point of the story it was being told (was it someone remembering? someone speaking about now?) Normally, I can understand why the author's style changed and am able to follow the flow of the story. I wish I could say the same for this book. I feel like this book has the potential to be a great book, but it's just not there yet. Some heavy re-working of the text is needed first. I was disappointed at best.