Charlie and the Chocolate Factory meets Mr. Lemoncello's Library with a grownup twist in Meg Shaffer's whimsical, wistful first novel, The Wishing Game.
Lucy's only wish in life is to adopt Christopher, an orphaned seven-year-old stuck in the foster system. Her meager teacher's-aide pay and multiple-roommate living situation disqualify her as a potential mom. Her dream gets a surprise second chance when she receives an invitation to the remote island home of reclusive mega-bestselling children's author Jack Masterson, who hasn't released a new book in years. Masterson has at last written a new book in his wildly popular, long-running children's series Clock Island, and he's holding a competition for ownership of the single existing copy. If Lucy wins, she can sell the book for enough money to start a new life with Christopher.
She makes the trek from California to Masterson's quirky Victorian mansion on the real Clock Island, off the coast of Maine. There she will pit her riddle-solving skills and lifelong fan's knowledge of Clock Island against competitors who share a special commonality with her: each of them ran away to Clock Island as children. Also waiting on the island is Jack's gorgeous and grumpy cover illustrator and caretaker, Hugo Reese, who says of Jack, "[H]e's Albus Dumbledore, Willy Wonka, and Jesus Christ all rolled into one. If Dumbledore, Wonka, and Christ had depression and drank too much." Returning to Clock Island makes Lucy look back on the painful past that caused her to flee to it as a teen and continues to haunt her. While she fights to stay a step ahead of her competitors and begins to fall for Hugo, Jack has a surprise ending up his sleeve for all of them that would astonish Wonka himself.
Shaffer tenderly portrays lost souls finding each other in this feel-good story that will ignite nostalgia for those most-loved reads from childhood. Lucy's steadfast yearning to give a bereft boy the love and attention her parents never gave her is a solid, complex emotional anchor for the fairy-tale concept. The riddles of Clock Island and the sweet, supportive romance blossoming between Hugo and Lucy lend a balancing lightness to the heavier matter of excavating and healing psychological wounds. Anyone who has ever dreamed of escaping into the world of a book should find resonance here, not to mention an affirmation of their inner child. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
Shelf Talker: A young woman accepts an invitation to a Wonka-esque competition in this whimsical, emotionally deep novel of second chances.