The Art of Wishing was an adorable paranormal romance that surprised me by raising a bunch of ethical issues. In The Fourth Wish, Lindsay Ribar dives even further into the real-world implications of becoming/using a magical being, specifically one that is meant to be submissive.

Last time we saw Margo, she had made a fourth wish to save Oliver and became a genie herself. Now she has to adjust not only to her magical powers, but also to the loss of her autonomy. Margo is a professional control freak, and now what she does - even how she looks - will be influenced by her masters. (She has a horrible crash-course in this after her vessel is found by the class creep.) I cheered as Margo, determined to preserve her sense of self, wrangled with her magic until she was satisfied. Questions of freedom, slavery, sexual assault, consent, gender identity, and sexuality are all explored.

While I was gratified to see a YA book address these topics - and the author does it so well - Margo and Oliver's relationship does suffer a little in the process. Remember all that cute dialogue I gushed over in my Art of Wishing review? In Fourth Wish, it is far and few between. The major misunderstanding - I guess that's what you'd call it - could have been settled if they simply had one calm heart-to-heart with each other. (Perhaps Margo and Oliver don't have time for conversation, as they are both running around granting wishes. I don't know.) And Margo's big choice was given this deadline that rang utterly false to me. She has literally all the time in the world.

That's kind of a quibble, though. I hope Lindsay Ribar writes more books. We need more YA authors like her. :) ( )

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Before I get started, let me state for the record that I think Lindsay Ribar is an awesome person. I consider her a friend and got to hang out with her a bit at BEA both inside and outside the conference center. What’s awesome is that I actually got to know her after I was the first person to review The Art of Wishing, which I totally reread and loved even more (knowing a book’s in a series is super helpful) than the first time. I don’t think my admiration of Lindsay affected my reading of her book, but full disclosure and all that. The Fourth Wish is a delightful, norm-smashing, humorous sequel and all people who enjoy a well-placed pop culture reference simply must read this series. There will be some spoilers for The Art of Wishing, so if you haven’t read that yet, just go do that.

The Fourth Wish is not what I was expecting. Usually that’s a bad thing, but it wasn’t here. The Art of Wishing was partly fluffy and partly intense and dark. That might sound unbalanced, but the story really made all of that work. There was a foundation for the turn the plot took, but it’s unexpected in that perfect emotion-punching way. I expected The Fourth Wish to continue with that dark intensity and, if anything, to be darker in mood than The Art of Wishing. That’s not the case. The Fourth Wish actually does something different altogether.

In The Art of Wishing, Margo was dealing with the realization that there’s magic in the world and with her feelings for a genie. It was very much about handling the paranormal aspects while being a human being. Now, though, Margo is paranormal herself and, unlike a lot of YA fiction, Ribar delves into the impact that has on her life. Obviously, this change means that she’s got to do genie work, which is a definite alteration, but it also affects her relationships with other humans and, most importantly, her sense of who she is and what she wants to do. Ribar tackles all of this and makes something fantastical feel very true to life.

In fact, The Fourth Wish ameliorated the only remaining criticism I had of The Art of Wishing, which is that Oliver and Margo enter the “I love you” phase much faster than I’m comfortable with. While they’re still together, it’s not easy. The love declarations obviously were not a way around developing the relationship. For all that Margo felt like she was in love, she’s constantly having to reevaluate their relationship and everything is not sunny. They fight and have to reach compromises.

Even better is the way that being genies impacts their relationship. See, genies change their form every time they get a new master, meaning that both Oliver and Margo change gender throughout the book. Though both can change back to a desired form if they work at it, sometimes they’re not the Margo and Oliver they’re both used to from the first book. For Oliver, this is old hat and no big deal, but Margo has to shift her paradigm that says what a relationship should look like. As with a lot of things, Margo’s not fully embraced the potential of their unique status by the end, but she’s made progress and oh my do I want some steamy fan fiction about these two.

Margo’s character arc is wonderful. She’s very much the same girl she was before, both in good and bad ways. Margo does some seriously frustrating things and sometimes I wanted to shake her. All of it, however, is very Margo and the book is about her gaining awareness of some of her less healthy mental processes. Basically, falling love and becoming a genie in such a short period of time sort of throws her off and she has to sit back and think about her behavior. Margo may be a hard character for some to take, as most characters who push people away seem to be, but she’s trying really hard and learning all the time. Also, I love her for the way she handles her first master; it may not be the classiest way, but I want to give the girl a high five. Plus, it attacks gender norms yet again, which is fabulous.

I wouldn’t say The Fourth Wish is action-packed, but my attention never wandered. There were always things happening, but it was life happening rather than the lives are at stake norm of paranormal fiction. It’s more character-focused than plot-focused, which for me is ideal. The one thing I would have liked to see is some resolution with Margo’s family. They’ve been typically distant for the whole series, neglecting Margo partly through trust but mostly because they’re so wrapped up in love for one another. Throughout the series, they don’t have many moments and Margo never really even starts to deal with her issues there, which felt out of place next to the time Margo spent dealing with everything else important to her (and her mom at least is very important to her).

There’s a special kind of bantery magic in this series and I wish that the people who would love this series will find it. I love both of them and they’re definitely the sort of books I’ll be rereading throughout the years. ( )