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You Wish Mandy Hubbard Books

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You Wish Mandy Hubbard Books

The story starts on Kayla’s sixteenth birthday. Kayla is a cynical outsider, and she mocks the popular social sphere. Dare I say she’s even somewhat unlikeable at the start of the story, but I’ll grant that she has valid reasons to be cynical. Her father left years earlier, and her mother dealt with it by redecorating the house and her life. Now a party planner, Kayla’s mom uses Kayla’s birthday to showcase a sweet sixteen party to potential clients, but the overly pink party that mom throws completely clashes with Kayla’s personality and wishes.

That leads Kayla to realize that none of her wishes come true. Fifteen previous birthday wishes have been made with nothing to show for them—well, technically fourteen, since she probably didn’t make one at her first birthday party. So she wishes for her birthday wishes to come true.

And they do.

First off, this premise of wishes gone bad is one that I absolutely love. I recently reviewed a book where wishes made by partying high school students, some drunk and some not, came true in wild, crazy, and dangerous ways. Here, we have a succession of wishes coming true, one day at a time, all made by the same girl at various stage of her life—toddler, grade-school, pre-teen, and teen. What could she have wished for?

Bigger boobs? Yeah, a pre-teen girl could conceivably wish for that. One morning, she wakes up with them, and of course the popular girls notice.

Being a mermaid? Yeah, a seven-year-old girl would wish for that. Kayla doesn’t go full mermaid, but blue scales develop when her feet and legs get wet, making bathing after that impossible.

Having toys that come to life? Yeah, toddlers would wish for that. Enter a life-size My Little Pony, Ken in a convertible, and Raggedy Ann—arguably the scene-stealing best character of the book! How does she keep them from drawing more attention to her?

Kissing Ben? Yeah, a teen girl would wish for that. Kayla was fifteen when she did. And here’s the biggest problem of them all: Ben is currently the boyfriend of Kayla’s best friend Nicole.

So Kayla has to find a way to stop the wishes from coming true before that one does, find a way to reverse the inconvenient and troublesome wishes, and deal with the typical teen angst issues of parental relationships, boyfriends (or lack thereof), popularity, and generally fitting in. Yes, it’s a silly premise. And yes, it gets madcap hilarious. However, author Hubbard infuses it with a lot of heart, especially when the wishes pertain to Kayla’s absent father and at the climactic moments of the book.

The tradition is to keep birthday wishes inside so they’ll come true. The characters—believable teens—are so preoccupied with how they’re externally perceived that they don’t easily reveal their internal feelings. Kayla’s wishes symbolize those inner feelings. She’s not the only one hiding true feelings. Nicole has become distant because of something she’s hiding. Ben’s hiding something too. And so is Kayla’s mom, still dealing with the aftermath of her husband running out on her.

I love YA contemporary with a magical realism flair, and Hubbard perfectly sequences the plot through the wishes and brings life to these characters. I wish that you’d all check out You Wish, which I give FIVE STARS.


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You Wish Mandy Hubbard Books Reviews

I was expecting a nice light story to keep me entertained for a while, but this exceeded all expectation. It was a barrel of laughs, I couldn't stop laughing as each new wish appeared and how much it screwed with Kayla. This was definitely a book I picked out because of the cover (I just love it) and I'm glad I took a chance on it.

While it was funny, it didn't make joke out of what happens as friends start to come into their own and I liked that it didn't make fun of it. That it has some seriousness when it came to the strife between Kayla and Nicole. I was sad that she couldn't fall back on Nicole when all her wishes started to destroy the life she knew, but I was glad that it seemed to be resolved.

I liked how I got to see Kayla grow up in a few days following her birthday. Seeing how something she wished for when she was seven was just what she needed in this moment. Very well written. This is definitely a keeper. I am excited to read more from Mandy.
Kayla McHenry isn't part of her high school's in-crowd and she's okay with that. Really, she is. She has her best friend Nicole and she doesn't actually need anyone else. Not her workaholic mother, who spends more quality time with her Blackberry than she does with Kayla. And certainly not with her father, who walked away from the family seven years ago and never looked back. No. Nicole is enough. Even though she has a boyfriend now and doesn't spend nearly as much time with Kayla as she once did. And even though that boyfriend is none other than Ben Mackenzie, the boy Kayla has been crushing on for the last three years.

Kayla' was a little hurt when Nicole said she was going to be late to Kayla's Sweet 16 party (she and Ben were going out to dinner to celebrate their three-month anniversary), but whatever. It's not like she ever wanted the stupid party in the first place. In fact, she told her mother - repeatedly - that she did NOT want a party. But her Mom couldn't resist turning Kayla's birthday into a chance to promote her event/party planning business, so Kayla got a Sweet 16, whether she wanted it or not. Without Nicole there, Kayla had no one hang out with, since most of the people her mother invited were strangers. So Kayla was in a pretty sucky mood, which is probably what led to her wish "I wish my birthday wishes actually came true. Because they never freakin' do." What's the worry. That wish isn't going to come true either, right?

And yet, when Kayla woke up the next morning she was greeted by the sight of an atomic pink, life-sized My Little Pony romping through her back yard. The morning after that, it's a seemingly endless supply of gum-balls . Kayla is horrified when she realizes that all of the birthday wishes she has ever made are coming true, one every day. She needs to, has to, positively must, make them stop. Because last year? Last year she wished Ben Mackenzie would kiss her.

In You Wish, Mandy Hubbard expertly balances the truly funny notion of a lifetime of birthday wishes suddenly coming true with Kayla's slow, painful realization that she is not happy with what her life has become and that it's her own fear of getting hurt that has caused her to be unhappy. The narration is wonderful and spot on, capturing exactly the honesty of Kayla's emotions. I don't think I've ever read a better description of how it feels to have a crush than Kayla's description of sitting next to Ben in class "For the next fifty-five minutes, I will hold my breath, my heart will beat erratically, and the hairs on my arm will stand on end. This is life inside Ben's orbit, and it is the height of every day of my otherwise meaningless existence." Perfect.
Let me just say this book would have been a one star had it not had Ken.

The part that ruined this book was the main character. She was just awkward.
You know that freaky girl in your school who seems to have a mental issue and is always saying things that there is no appropriate response to? Yep, that's her.

She walks around bleating like a goat and telling people she's on steroids. She kind of creeped me out to the point of hating this book.

The extra star? Ken was exactly the way I imagined he would be if he suddenly came to life. He was creepy and awkward in a more enjoyable laughable way that got me through the book without having to skip pages.
The story starts on Kayla’s sixteenth birthday. Kayla is a cynical outsider, and she mocks the popular social sphere. Dare I say she’s even somewhat unlikeable at the start of the story, but I’ll grant that she has valid reasons to be cynical. Her father left years earlier, and her mother dealt with it by redecorating the house and her life. Now a party planner, Kayla’s mom uses Kayla’s birthday to showcase a sweet sixteen party to potential clients, but the overly pink party that mom throws completely clashes with Kayla’s personality and wishes.

That leads Kayla to realize that none of her wishes come true. Fifteen previous birthday wishes have been made with nothing to show for them—well, technically fourteen, since she probably didn’t make one at her first birthday party. So she wishes for her birthday wishes to come true.

And they do.

First off, this premise of wishes gone bad is one that I absolutely love. I recently reviewed a book where wishes made by partying high school students, some drunk and some not, came true in wild, crazy, and dangerous ways. Here, we have a succession of wishes coming true, one day at a time, all made by the same girl at various stage of her life—toddler, grade-school, pre-teen, and teen. What could she have wished for?

Bigger boobs? Yeah, a pre-teen girl could conceivably wish for that. One morning, she wakes up with them, and of course the popular girls notice.

Being a mermaid? Yeah, a seven-year-old girl would wish for that. Kayla doesn’t go full mermaid, but blue scales develop when her feet and legs get wet, making bathing after that impossible.

Having toys that come to life? Yeah, toddlers would wish for that. Enter a life-size My Little Pony, Ken in a convertible, and Raggedy Ann—arguably the scene-stealing best character of the book! How does she keep them from drawing more attention to her?

Kissing Ben? Yeah, a teen girl would wish for that. Kayla was fifteen when she did. And here’s the biggest problem of them all Ben is currently the boyfriend of Kayla’s best friend Nicole.

So Kayla has to find a way to stop the wishes from coming true before that one does, find a way to reverse the inconvenient and troublesome wishes, and deal with the typical teen angst issues of parental relationships, boyfriends (or lack thereof), popularity, and generally fitting in. Yes, it’s a silly premise. And yes, it gets madcap hilarious. However, author Hubbard infuses it with a lot of heart, especially when the wishes pertain to Kayla’s absent father and at the climactic moments of the book.

The tradition is to keep birthday wishes inside so they’ll come true. The characters—believable teens—are so preoccupied with how they’re externally perceived that they don’t easily reveal their internal feelings. Kayla’s wishes symbolize those inner feelings. She’s not the only one hiding true feelings. Nicole has become distant because of something she’s hiding. Ben’s hiding something too. And so is Kayla’s mom, still dealing with the aftermath of her husband running out on her.

I love YA contemporary with a magical realism flair, and Hubbard perfectly sequences the plot through the wishes and brings life to these characters. I wish that you’d all check out You Wish, which I give FIVE STARS.