📖 Book Club Book Review 📖 Readers, dreamers and fans of puzzles say hello to what I think is shaping up to be a summer blockbuster book…The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer. This was a June @bookfriendsbookclub pick and our members were over the moon with feelings and nostalgia for this book. Quite simply, it is a hug in the book form.
“You can’t win until you face your fears. Until you face your fears, your fears are winning.”
Years ago a reclusive mega-bestselling author, Jack, just up and quit writing. And nobody knows why. Out of nowhere he resurfaces with a brand new book and a one-of-a-kind competition; offering a prize that will change one of the four potential winner’s lives.
“And when you feel wanted for the first time in your life, you realize how much you’ve been starving for it.”
Lucy knows all about growing up without parents and a childhood full of loneliness. Books have always been her escape. She found solace in the Clock Island series by Jack Materson, especially. As a teacher’s aide she is able to share her love of reading with young students, but it has been extra special sharing her favorite series with an orphan boy Christopher. Lucy sees so much of her self in this boy and would love to be his family and foster him. But right now it feels like an impossible dream with her salary and other roadblocks.
“Because only brave children know that wishing is never enough. You have to try to make your own wishes come true.”
When Lucy has all but given up on the foster idea, she gets invited to Clock Island to compete to win the only copy on Jack Materson’s new book. Not only would this book be so special for her and Christopher, the money publishing it would help her chances of fostering him. But things won’t be easy, the contest is full of difficult puzzles, ruthless book collector’s and one very handsome but grumpy illustrator, Hugo.
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty they say, and they aren’t wrong. We only know the right thing to do after we’ve done the wrong one. Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. Or, as all writers know, you can’t understand the beginning until you’ve read the end.”
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 I loved the themes this book explored - found family, parenthood, facing your fears, grief + processing trauma, childhood thinking vs. adult thinking…this will give our book club so much to talk about tonight! But mostly I loved the feeling of nostalgia and it just felt like a warm hug. A favorite, for sure. And one I will recommend over and over.
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