Wow. And again wow. This was such a fun book. It’s my favorite fairy tale retelling so far
this year… and if you’ve been watching this blog, you know that I’ve been
reading a LOT of fairy tales in 2019.
Lady Gillian is a spoiled,
selfish, social-media maven who has wandered through several of the previous
books in search of a handsome royal husband.
When she receives a proposal of marriage from a random guy with a
crazy-looking beard, she turns him down cold.
Unfortunately, it turns out that her father is seriously in debt to
Crazy-Beard-Guy’s family and that her father had offered her in marriage to the
guy as payment without bothering to tell her.
But she’s not off the hook. Now
she has to go and act as the companion to Crazy-Beard-Guy’s elderly
grandmother, whose dementia and mysterious wish-granting magic make a deadly
combination. If Gillian doesn’t learn to
let go of her pride, she’s going to lose her sanity.
The Lady and the Wish is
the fourth book in Jill Stengl’s Faraway Castle series, a set of fairy tales
about a magical modern-world resort where all sorts of fairy tale creatures
live, thrive, and make mischief. Even
though it’s the fourth book, I think you could start reading the series here.
High Points
Writing a redemptive arc for a
main character is hard to do convincingly, but in this case I was definitely
convinced. Gillian’s slow progress
toward compassion makes perfect sense in context. Although she begins the story as a brat, by
the time she’s suffered from a few of Lady B’s crazy wishes, you are definitely
rooting for her. And I appreciated the
way she slowly figures out how to deal with and even care for the confused Lady
B, whose combination of vulnerability and nastiness reminded me of my own
grandmother in her last years.
I’m not sure this is a high point
exactly, but Max makes a great villain.
Such a creep! Knowing that this
is a series of fairy tale books does make me wonder, though: is he going to
turn out to be Bluebeard? Or the Beast? (Probably not the Beast, since maybe the
Gamekeeper is the Beast…)
The slow-growing relationship
between Gillian and Manny was really solid and fun to read. It was definitely not instalove, which I
appreciated. Who wouldn’t like a guy who
fixes stuff, calms dozens of agitated dogs with a word, has zero
cookie-decorating ability, and crosses continents to ensure your safety?
And so…
This book wasn’t at all what I
expected. The previous three books
mostly take place at Faraway Castle (although Siren & Scholar has
some parts that don’t) but in this book we only visit there at the very
beginning and end. The previous three
books also have heroines that have magic (… I think Ella has some magic…) and
are already pretty nice people, although both Kamoana and Rosa had some stuff
to work out. But Gillian has no magic,
has no defenses against magic (which would have been very helpful in this
book), and starts out nasty. Yet I think
she’s my favorite heroine so far. (Yes,
I know that I said this about Rosa back when The Rose and the Briar came
out. See review here.)
Cinder Ellie was fun, Siren
was smart, Rose and Briar had a wonderful heart. But Wish is fun AND smart AND full of
heart. More like this please!
Find the book here.
Find Jill Stengl’s website here.
My Faraway Castle Recommended Reading
Order
Cinder Ellie
(novella)
The Little
Siren (novella)
The Siren
and the Scholar (book 2)
Ellie and
the Prince (book 1)
The Rose and
the Briar (book 3)
The Lady and the Wish (book 4)
You can start with Wish if you like, or read Rose
as soon as you’ve read Cinder Ellie.
But don’t read Ellie and the Prince without first reading Cinder
Ellie, nor read The Siren and the Scholar without first reading The
Little Siren.
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