What You Wish For: A Novel (edition 2012)

I didnt expect to really like this book so I put off reading it for quite some time. Once I started it, however, I found it to be engaging and well-written. The way the stories of the main characters are woven together was done in a way where you cared about each of them and could see what motivated them. I thought the book was fairly realistic and worth reading.

Early Reviewers copy. ( )

What happens when the urge to have a baby doesn't line up nicely with being in the right place in life to become pregnant or with a person's fertility or so many of the other reasons that might keep a person from having a baby? And what about a person who truly doesn't want to have a child? There's much written about the insistant tick-tock of the biological clock but what happens when people cannot or choose not to heed that pull? Kerry Reichs' newest novel What You Wish For takes three women and one man who are all at a crossroads in their lives with regards to having children and follows them down the path of their deepest desire.

Dimple is an actress who is weighing her options. She's getting older and knows her time to have a baby is running out. What she doesn't know is whether or not her career is more important to her than her deferred dream of being a mother. Eva is single and a very successful LA agent who knows that she never wants to have children. She feels that she and her siblings turned her mother from an exciting and carefree woman into a depressed and wrung-out, colorless soul. But whenever she meets men, they assume that she will eventually change her mind about children. Maryn beat breast cancer but lost her fertility in the battle. That she and her husband frozen some viable embryos before her treatments should mean that she has a chance at motherhood except for the fact that she and Andy are no longer married and he is unwilling to let her use the embryos. And Wyatt, the high school principal wants a baby so badly he's willing to pay a surrogate since there's no one else on his romantic horizon. He'll have to face prejudice and suspicion about his desire simply because he's an unattached straight man.

Set in the high stakes world of tv, movies, politics, and Hollywood, the novel is narrated in third person focused on each member of the ensemble cast in short, staccato chapters. Initially, the characters are completely unconnected, linked only by their desires regarding babies but eventually all of the various story lines do converge. Maryn waffles on whether or not she should go ahead and have a baby but when she meets a hot shot director who may or may not want her to star in his latest movie, she puts her desire on the back burner, especially once they pair up as more than simply director and actress. Eva's nasty bubble-headed client Daisy is the other actress up for the role and her job depends on Daisy getting the job so she starts keeping close tabs on the competition, namely Dimple. Meanwhile Maryn, whose company transports horses across the country for very wealthy clients, is locked in a legal battle with her ex, Andy, over the frozen embryos. His new wife, the very ambitious Summer, pushes him to run for elected office, at which point the fate of the embryos becomes a political hot button and rising scandal. Wyatt, Eva's cousin and who has been disappointed at almost every turn in his quest for a child, meets Maryn and helps her when one of the horses she's transported has an emergency and the two of them end up becoming friends.

The drama of relationships, careers, and the pressure of wanting or not wanting a baby is at the forefront of each of the characters' stories. Although this sounds like chick lit about having babies, it is much more serious than that would imply, taking on moral and political implications, the ethics of medical intervention, and the choice of whether or not to ever bear children. The ways in which each character's life plays out, against the backdrop of Hollywood and the unreality of LA, are unusual but realistic. The novel is packed with wanting and feeling and deep emotion. Reichs has done a good job of explaining each characters' motivation and not tarring anyone as completely good or bad, even when their decisions hurt others around them. She's captured the complexity of longing and the hesitation to be found even in certainty. The struggle between reality and what you wish for weaves through all of the characters' lives, even after they've individually settled on their course, deciding what their families might look like in the future. Initially the short chapters made the book hard to follow, especially as the characters' connections to each other were not yet explained but eventually they worked in its favor, moving each story ahead quickly and decisively. And in the end, the various plot lines are all resolved, some better than expected, some worse, as is the way of the real world. ( )

After years of on-and-off baby hopes and considering all the options, I thought this book would strike a chord with me when I requested it through Early Reviewers. Maybe it was just too personal of a thing for me, but the fictional account of these people and their quests for a child somehow didn't touch me at all. The characters seemed shallow and one-dimensional; I didn't like a single one of them. I read about half the book and had to give up on it. ( )

I remember the day it hit me that I was in my mid-30's and unmarried with no children on the horizon. It was a blow to me, I'm not going to lie. I'd grown up the eldest of nine and, even as a child, fully expected to be married by 21 and a mother by 22. I envisioned a house filled with childish laughter and a white picket fence out front. Now, at 35, I'm wiser and older (although the two did not happen concurrently) and have accepted the very real likelihood that motherhood is not in the works for me, just as I accepted that marriage was not for me about four years ago.

That's a very personal thing to put out there for a review, I admit. But that's how this book affected me. What You Wish For is a novel about unconventional parents. It's about adoption, IVF, natural pregnancy, birth, death, and life. It's real, honest, and it does not pull any punches. Kerry Reichs lays the facts out with brutal honesty and follows the natural path when it comes to the story of Maryn, Eva, Julian, Wyatt, and Dimple - even if that brings harm or an "unhappy ending."

Honestly, I loved and hated this book. I loved it for being so engrossing - I didn't want to put it down. I hated it for being so real. I hated seeing the facts about being a 35 year old woman put down on the page, and knowing that - if I decide to go the same route as Dimple - I may be facing some of the same difficulties. I hated reading about how difficult it is for a single man to adopt, or seeing what happens when zealots get their hands on information for political gains. What You Wish For is more than a feel-good novel, it's a contemporary study on what life is like now, what it is like to try to be a parent in a world that says that the "normal" parents are one man and one woman.

This is an important story and Kerry Reichs does a great job of pushing past the limits to deliver it. ( )

I adored Kerry Reichs' previous book - Leaving Unknown. (review here) So, I was eager to dive into her latest release - What You Wish For.

We are rapidly introduced to the characters who populate Reichs' tale - and they all have one thing in common. Children. The desire to have them or in some cases - to not have them.

Dimple was first up. She's a moderately successful actress, closing in on the the end of her ticking biological clock. Can the role of a lifetime beat out her desire to have a child? I did find her opening chapter a bit frenetic and didn't really warm up to this character until midway through the book.

Eva has no desire to have children. Will this end her relationship with the man she loves? Or will she change her mind?

Maryn has battled breast cancer and won. Before her treatment, she froze eggs with her then husband. They've since divorced and she needs his approval to use the eggs. But his new wife says no. Will he change his mind?

And my favourite character - Wyatt. He's the principal of a high school, single and straight and he wants to have a child of his own. He's headed down the surrogacy route. Wyatt was just so warm, caring and innocent. But at the same time he's wise to the ways of his high schoolers. These were some of my favourite chapters.

And these four main characters' lives all intersect in the most interesting fashion....

Loved it! Once I had the characters and their lives straight in my head, What You Wish For was an easy, breezy read. Reichs is a clever writer. The amount of puns she worked in between two characters was truly funny. (and some of them were emminently groan worthy!) The banter is light, some situations are quite comical, but there is a depth to What You Wish For that transcends everyday chick lit. Reichs explores the desire to have children from four very different viewpoints with candor and thoughtfulness, allowing the reader to share in each character's decision making - and think about what really consitutes a family.

Reichs utilizes Hollywood as a backdrop for her novel. Her sly skewering of televison dramas and starlets made me laugh out loud.

Fair warning - have the tissue box close by for the ending. My husband looked at me and asked - are you really crying over a book? Umm - yeah, I got that caught up in the story. Thanks Kerry for yet another great read. Pop this one in the beach bag this summer - you won't regret it. ( )