[Mrs. Y Reviews] Just One Wish by Janette Rallison

Book Cover via Amazon.Com

I grew up and fell in love with the idea of Robin Hood. There is something about someone who can skirt on the grey line of good and evil, all for the sake of good. He’s not doing anything lawful, but he is helping his fellow man. What I didn’t know, was that anyone could take the premise of doing something wrong to make a right and change it just a bit from Robin Hood to something better. Get your bows and arrows guys, make sure you don’t drive on the median between the highway, and sit back for my review of “Just One Wish” by Janette Rallison. 

Opinion
I have to start with something that impressed me about this story, and that is the amount of action and pacing that happens. The tension in this book moves on with a fluidity to it that is both beautiful and intense. There are an ebb and flow to the tale that turns this story into something magical.

This is YA, and the protagonist is a seventeen-year-old girl, who would do anything for her little brother. That touched my heart, and the reason it did was that my daughter when she was three-years-old,  begged everyone who would hear her send her a little brother. She asked for one for Christmas; she told us we had to contact Amazon and have them deliver one, she did about anything she could to get a baby brother. She has one now, and she is cautious and considerate to him. My son is not like the brother in this story, but the bond of siblings is something that had such an essential connection to me. This made the story far more realistic.

With the tension and pacing came beautiful points that were both funny and also serious. There are animals, messed up hair situations, sneaking to places you shouldn’t be and all sorts of teenage shenanigans. Moreover, yet, at the end of the day, what is most important is this story kept true to the main plot.

If you are a writer and you are looking for examples on plots that stay true but have a lot of interesting subplots going on, read this book. It’s a fantastic example of how important the main plot is to any subplot.

As far as criticisms, I have social ones, not book related ones. The ones I have are all spoilers, so I’ll do my best here to be cautious and not spoil anything. I am not a fan of the under eighteen romance plots, even if they are skirting eighteen. It’s tiny this nitpick especially for YA, but it’s mine, and hey it’s a small criticism at best. What is there isn’t huge and it’s nothing to write letters to Congress over.  The other issue I had, the media subplot, I didn’t feel it was fully fleshed out enough at the end. If there were that much media attention to the situation, I’d expect a lot more trouble. There should be some twitter moment action in this or some something aside from just hiding from people for a day. I’m astonished that there wasn’t more to it, but I do see how that could have been messy to the ending, but still, it felt somewhat dropped.

Aside from my tiny nitpicks, this was a fantastic story. It was heartwarming, it was fun, and it also was heartbreaking. This is perfect for a rainy day read, or one on the beach.




Score
I am going to 94% because of how much I enjoyed it and all the good that came from the story. I have ZERO issues with spelling, grammar or appearance of this book, which is fantastic. I want to let the Editor know how awesome they did and the author was excellent in putting this together.  That is a five star on Goodreads and Amazon, and yes it is worth it to purchase so you should!