How to Make a Wish
by Ashley Herring BlakePublisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
Release Date: May 2nd 2017
Genre: Young Adult, GLBT, Contemporary
Synopsis:
All seventeen year-old Grace Glasser wants is her own life. A normal life in which she sleeps in the same bed for longer than three months and doesn't have to scrounge for spare change to make sure the electric bill is paid. Emotionally trapped by her unreliable mother, Maggie, and the tiny cape on which she lives, she focuses on her best friend, her upcoming audition for a top music school in New York, and surviving Maggie’s latest boyfriend—who happens to be Grace’s own ex-boyfriend’s father.
Her attempts to lay low until she graduates are disrupted when she meets Eva, a girl with her own share of ghosts she’s trying to outrun. Grief-stricken and lonely, Eva pulls Grace into midnight adventures and feelings Grace never planned on. When Eva tells Grace she likes girls, both of their worlds open up. But, united by loss, Eva also shares a connection with Maggie. As Grace's mother spirals downward, both girls must figure out how to love and how to move on.
The book flowed along very nicely. I like the sweetness of new love whether it is M/F, F/F, or M/M. I really liked how the love blossomed slowly instead of full blown all at once. I liked the friendship as well. It was really great that Grace had a has a support system with her friends since her mother is horrible.
You also get some controversial things in the book. I personally have no problems with them but some people may. Grace is bisexual and the romance is biracial. Parts of this book actually would be very good for a teenage girl struggling wit her sexuality. Even heterosexual's could learn more and understand better how their bisexual and gay friends feel and think.
Interview
1. What is your favorite part of this book and why? I loved writing the romance between Grace and Eva. It was just so fun and refreshing and, well, needed in YA. I also loved exploring Grace and her mom’s complicated relationship. It wasn’t always easy, but it was rewarding.
2. If you could spend time with a character from your book whom would it be? And what would you do during that day? I’d want to hang out with Grace and Luca on a boat. I just loved writing their friendship and they are definitely two people I’d love to hang out with. There is a scene on a boat in the book, and while Grace and Luca don’t talk a ton during that scene, I can imagine past summers spent on the boat and how much fun they had.
3. If you could have been the author of any book ever written, which book would you choose? Jandy Nelson’s The Sky in Everywhere or Nina LaCour’s We Are Okay. Both are just breathtaking books about grief, the kind I really dream about writing but just don’t think I’m able to do at this point in my life.
4. Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination? They are all from my imagination. However, the opening scene in which Grace returns home from a two week-long piano workshop to find her mom, Maggie, has moved them in with Maggie’s new boyfriend, was inspired, loosely, by a friend of mine’s experience.
5. What made you want to become a writer? I love stories, plain and simple, and I believe in their power to change us, to comfort us, or possibly, to hurt us. I wanted to write for kids and teens and be a force of good in their lives, a place they could run to find themselves.
My Review: 4*
This was actually my first F/F YA book. It is not something I have seen a lot of. I did enjoy how Ashley Herring Blake wrote the book as what I call gently. it was a sweet love story combined with a terrible relationship with Grace's Mother, which was heartbreaking.
The book flowed along very nicely. I like the sweetness of new love whether it is M/F, F/F, or M/M. I really liked how the love blossomed slowly instead of full blown all at once. I liked the friendship as well. It was really great that Grace had a has a support system with her friends since her mother is horrible.
You also get some controversial things in the book. I personally have no problems with them but some people may. Grace is bisexual and the romance is biracial. Parts of this book actually would be very good for a teenage girl struggling wit her sexuality. Even heterosexual's could learn more and understand better how their bisexual and gay friends feel and think.
Ashley Herring Blake is a reader, writer, and mom to two boisterous boys. She holds a Master’s degree in teaching and loves coffee, arranging her books by color, and watching Buffy over and over again on Netflix with her friends. She's the author of the young adult novels SUFFER LOVE and HOW TO MAKE A WISH.
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