Friday Memes: Wish by Barbara O'Connor

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader and Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice.

Wish by Barbara O'Connor. 227 p. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August, 2016. 9780374302733.

Publisher synopsis: Eleven-year-old Charlie Reese has been making the same secret wish every day since fourth grade. She even has a list of all the ways there are to make the wish, such as cutting off the pointed end of a slice of pie and wishing on it as she takes the last bite. But when she is sent to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to live with family she barely knows, it seems unlikely that her wish will ever come true. That is until she meets 

Wishbone, a skinny stray dog who captures her heart, and Howard, a neighbor boy who proves surprising in lots of ways. Suddenly Charlie is in serious danger of discovering that what she thought she wanted may not be what she needs at all.

From award-winning author Barbara O'Connor comes a middle-grade novel about a girl who, with the help of a true-blue friend, a big-hearted aunt and uncle, and the dog of her dreams, unexpectedly learns the true meaning of family in the least likely of places.

First Line: I looked down at the paper on my desk.


Page 56: When had this gap-toothed little girl turned into that sad woman in her dark bedroom in Raleigh?
     "Did y'all love each other?" I asked Bertha.
     "We sure din." Then she showed me some more photographs. Mama opening a present beside a Christmas tree. The two of them playing with a puppy in the snow. Bertha pulling Mama in a wagon on a dirt road.
     "Why don't y'all see each other anymore? I said.
     Bertha let out a big sigh and shook her head. "We grew up," she said. "When you grow up, sometimes life gets complicated."

I adore Barbara O'Connor's books. I finished this one in two big gulps and hope to review it this weekend. 

Happy Friday!