The Wishing Place by Mindy Haig

Reviewed by April

A truly unique story by up and coming author Mindy Haig, The Wishing Place is hard to force fit into any one literary genre, but has elements of both fantasy fiction and coming of age romance. But no matter its intended audience, it was a nice little break for me from some of the more intense or steamy stories that have been filling up my Kindle app lately and I was honored to do this courtesy review!!

Valerie meets Nickolas when they are just 8 years old, and she knows right from the beginning that he is something special, somebody important, because that is exactly what she had wished for right before he arrived and joined her in The Wishing Place. And that magical place, nestled away in a snug little spot somewhere on the realm between dream and reality, always answered every wish and gave her anything she wanted, but only for the time spent in The Wishing Place...only until she woke up. So is Nick only part of the dream too, or is he part of a reality that hasn't happened yet...her future? One thing Val does know for certain, seeing Nick in The Wishing Place at night is the only thing that gets her through her the days of her sad and lonely childhood.

The story alternates between Nick and Val's perspectives although it seemed much more Val's story the further it progressed. While Nick gave me a little bit of a 'too good to be true' vibe, I chose to read him instead as a saving grace for my two young daughters' inevitable future with boys and the hope that little Nick's do in fact exist in our world too!! That said though, I did feel like maybe the story should have started further along than 8 years old because I never felt like their dialogue was truly child like and their thought process was maybe a little too ahead of their time. I was intrigued at the route Haig took with Val's abusive mother and stepmother, because so often it is the dad that is portrayed as the mean parent in divorce situations that it made this an interesting, and well executed, perspective to read.  

On the other hand, I did find myself struggling to connect with the latter parts of the book when Val has graduated and moved away to college, though I understood that the author's intent with bringing Levi into her life was for Val to come to realize that family doesn't have to adhere to traditional definitions and its really the people who love and support you who make up your family, and that is definitely a lesson worth sharing so I was happy to see Val find that peace after the childhood she endured. However, I felt that the storyline with Apache was somewhat incongruent with the atmosphere of the book, and honestly that more calm feel to the first portions of the story is what made it such a pleasant winding down the day read for me, so I personally would have preferred not to be introduced to the harshness of Apache at all, and I had a hard time reconciling the choices and happenstances of his storyline to the original plot of The Wishing Place and Nick and Val. That's not to say everyone would feel the same, he definitely shows versatility in character development on Haig's part and he definitely counters the peaches-and-cream sweetness of the softer characters to bring balance to the book too, so take my dislike of him with a grain of salt! I was excited for the story to get back to answering whether or not Val and Nick would in fact meet in real life and found myself entranced in the story again, the suspense for this potential moment was nurtured perfectly by Haig, so much that I was holding my breath in parts in hope and anticipation of how this could be brought to fruition outside of The Wishing Place!

As I eluded to before, The Wishing Place is not a mainstream read but its not so far fetched that you really have to let your grasp on reality go by the wayside to enjoy either. There is not a lot of intimacy in this book, though still not appropriate for younger readers, so it gave me a chance to read and free up the hand I've had to use to fan myself while reading some of my latest downloads!  No seriously, I was happy to have been given the opportunity to read something this different, and it put a smile on my face every time Nick and Val wished for something silly like a life-size Lego world and having it appear before them, because I spent a lot of time daydreaming about something very much like The Wishing Place myself as a kid (that's why they are called dreams right?!) and I was tickled to read of an author taking that idea and making something more out of it!! Thank you Mindy Haig for your creative and talent laden debut novel!!