It seems that people either loved this book or hated it. It was one of the five finalists for book of the year 2023 with Book of the Month Club. Since I had read the other four, I took a chance on it. While I did like parts of the story, there were other parts that made me roll my eyes. I finished the book but my eyes are a little sore. ( )

It took me a few chapters before I settled in with this fantastical, "Willy Wonka" type story which isn't my typical read. With that in mind, the quirky and unbelievable situations creates a fairy tale type story. It opens with a well-known children's author who wrote many stories which fascinated his readers with the mysteries on Clock Island. Jack Masterson was nicknamed the "Mastermind" which eluded to the protagonist who was the Mastermind in the books granting wishes with his cunning games.

It's been 15 years since he had secluded himself on his Clock Island where he struggles to ever write another book. His illustrator, Hugo Reese, has been his loyal companion not wanting to leave his long time friend alone on the island. Little does he know, Jack has been working on what would be his final novel but not for mass publication. He proses a "special" wishing game on the island with personally selected competitors. The prize is the one and only copy of his final book which the person can do with as they wish. The people chosen are thinking about how the publication of the book would help their financial situations.

Lucy Hart chooses to leave her home and controlling boyfriend, Sean, in Maine after she graduates college. She is desperate is leave her family behind and what she felt was a lonely childhood. She found respite in the Clock Island books. Her sister Angie was a sickly child with her parents focusing primarily on her and leaving Lucy feeling neglected. As a result she has always resented her sister who managed to become a lawyer in Maine.

As an adult, Lucy is a 26-year-old woman working as a teacher's aide at an elementary school in California. She is well liked by the teachers and students but she seems to form a bond with 7-year-old Christopher Lamb who is living with a foster family. Her connection to him sometimes feels "cringe-worthy" given that Christopher is being cared for by a caring family. Lucy desperately wants to adopt him even to the extent that she expresses this to the young boy. He is aware of her financial insecurity and wants to "help" Lucy raise money so she can afford to adopt him. They discuss what the future would look like when Lucy can provide a stable and financially stable home for Christopher.

When Lucy is notified about the Wishing Game opportunity, she is excited to think that she may be able to reach her financial goals sooner than she expected. But, winning the Wishing Game proves to be more challenging than she could've imagined. ( )

Read 26% of this book weeks ago but haven’t been in the mood to read it since.

Dnf for now

DNF at 80%. I feel gross listening to any more of this. At first the age fetish hints were subtle but they really ramped up in the second half. It was the reveal of a past trauma for our MC that finally convinced me I should’ve DNF’d back around the 10% mark when those feelings started.

Lucy is obsessed with a 9-year-old, and wants to be his mother. She is 26. She was intensely attracted to a 21-year-old artist when she was 13. She was even more attracted to said artist when they met again 13 years later. That now-34-year-old didn’t find it weird that he was amicably attracted to the no-longer-13-year-old. Lucy’s ex-boyfriend was her college professor. And there’s SA discussed with minor characters… who are also minors.

Actual quotes from this dumpster fire:
“Guess I’m just a big kid…” [said flirtatiously]
“Sorry that [moan] was a little pornographic…” [said after a spoonful of soup]
“No! You look *good* ‘bizarre’ [without your glasses]. Like, really young.”

Just watch Willy Wonka. Or read Mr. Lemoncello’s Library. Both are far superior works surrounding adults making a game surrounding kids that isn’t disgusting. And one of the adults was clearly disposing of the losers along the way. ( )

In all fairness, while I did give this book two stars I did not read the whole thing. Someone, somewhere described it as "a warm hug" and that should have been warning enough. Still, I forced myself to read several chapters because fans of "The Wishing Game" are very dedicated and very convincing. But from the get-go I did not like the main character, Lucy, who essentially believes that "love is all you need." Some might find her determination to adopt a young boy charming, but I found it arrogant. She has no money, no parental experience, no training as a psychologist. What she does have with the boy is shared childhood trauma and that will, what, make her capable of healing him? Then the story spins into a bit of fantasy which, as many before me have already pointed out, is pretty much a reworking of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." If Lifetime Programming for Women is your cup of tea, you may like this. I just could not take the page after page of cuteness (even its most devoted admirers often describe the book as "cute") and the cloying quality of both the story and the writing. ( )