By Lynn Painter
New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2025. Fiction. 310 pgs.
Since she was a little girl, Emma's beloved grandmother told tales of a pact fairies made with her town 400 years before, promising to grant the wishes of four villagers every year. After Nana Marie's passing, Emma gets the chance to make her own wishes and she jumps at the opportunity. However, when her friends' wishes all start coming true with no sign of her own being granted, Emma is worried. When her new neighbor, Jackson, starts showing signs that he may have been granted her wishes by some magical mistake, she panics. Determined to resolve this cosmic error, Emma must convince Jackson to join her quest to restore the wishes back to their rightful owner.
Emma's struggles with the shifts in her life and friends when entering middle school are genuinely portrayed, and the sweet resolution is both encouraging and emotionally grounded, offering readers a hopeful look at how relationships can evolve and heal. Emma's growing bond with Jackson is the real highlight--what begins as a reluctant partnership gradually deepens into a friendship, and then into something more. As the two of them face humorous obstacles on their quest and slowly become more vulnerable with each other, they endear and entertain. A rare and enchanting middle grade romance that balances light fantasy with a wholesome take on friendship and growing up.
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