Book review - As You Wish

Title: As You Wish
Author: Chelsea Sedoti
Genre: magical realism
Similar books: Fragments of the Lost by Megan Miranda
                      The Wendy Project by Melissa Jane Osborne
Rating:

thought provoking

Summary (provided by publisher): What if you could ask for anything- and get it?
In the sandy Mojave Desert, Madison is a small town on the road between nothing and nowhere. But Eldon wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, because in Madison, everyone gets one wish—and that wish always comes true.
Some people wish for money, some people wish for love, but Eldon has seen how wishes have broken the people around him. And with the lives of his family and friends in chaos, he’s left with more questions than answers. Can he make their lives better? How can he be happy if the people around him aren’t? And what hope is there for any of them if happiness isn’t an achievable dream? Doubts build, leading Eldon to a more outlandish and scary thought: maybe you can’t wish for happiness…maybe, just maybe, you have to make it for yourself.

My opinion: A town with strict rules of wishing is a unique, if somewhat hard-to-sell, concept for a novel. Personally, I found the plot a bit hard to swallow, mostly because of all of the unknowns. There are very strict but arbitrary rules for the wishes, no reason given. Nobody really questions the rules or tests them for validity. And while Eldon and his friends do wonder about the system, their exploration of it's bounds is fairly tame and limited. There were a number of missed opportunities to explore their town's whole construction. There are a number of themes that come into play, though none of them ever get the novel's full focus. This results in plenty of topics for discussion but no clear takeaway.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley.