The Seventh Wish, by Kate Messner

I'm so behind in my book reviews.  Here's another book I enjoyed from 2021:  The Seventh Wish, by Kate Messner

I thought this was really good.

It got a lot darker than I expected, regarding the family crisis only alluded to on the book jacket, but it's an important topic and I think it was handled very well.  Not glossed over.  Not over-simplified.  The emotions were real and not always flattering.  The ending wasn't perfect, with everything fixed.  But at the same time it was hopeful and full of love. 

I liked the wishes-gone-wrong premise, though I would have enjoyed it even more if  things could have gone a wee bit more wrong. 

The writing was engaging.

I loved learning about Irish dancing.

Overall, a very good book.  I'll read more by Kate Messner. 

More accurate rating:  4.5 stars

WARNING:  SPOILER ALERT!!!  SPOILER ALERT!!!  Triggers:  drug use / opioid addiction.  I think it's presented very well, but parents may want to be aware and/or open up a discussion on the topic.

Tropes in Literature

Tropes—when you're talking about movies or novels—are common themes, plot elements, or literary devices, so popular they've often become cliché.  Some people hate them.  Some editors will throw your manuscript in the trash the moment they see a trope they're tired of.  Others will reject it because it doesn't follow a popular pattern.   People like Terry Pratchett make an art of purposely employing too many tropes, to hilarious effect.  The thing is, clichés become clichés for a reason:  we, as a people, LOVE certain story elements, and don't mind if we see them over and over again.  Entire genres are built on well established tropes that readers not only tolerate, but expect.

My opinion:  be aware of the tropes of your genre, then go ahead and use the ones you like, the ones that serve your story, but play around with them.  Make them your own.  Mix them up.  It's true that, when you boil everything down, there aren't a whole lot of truly unique stories.  It's the way you tell it that makes it unique.   

I'll be featuring individual devices and plot elements here in my Literature Tropes series, but if you want to get lost for an hour or two, visit tvtropes.org, where you'll discover tropes with creative names, like these, common in science fiction and fantasy:

Dark Lord on Life Support (A Bad Guy who's been wounded—often by the Hero—and needs a machine or a host body to survive.  Think Darth Vader, Lord Voldemort, Stargate's Goa'uld.)

E.T Gave Us Wi-Fi (Where some or all of our technology actually came from aliens somehow.  Useful for explaining why a human starship pilot, for example, can board an alien vessel and somehow figure out in two minutes how to control the ship.)

Clap Your Hands if You Believe (where the belief in something, such as magic, is what actually makes things happen.  Think Tinkerbell, or go back even further, to the Bible, where Simon Peter can walk on water until he starts to doubt.)

Conveniently an Orphan. (Let's be honest:  if someone up and answers the Call of Adventure, while leaving behind all family responsibility, he can come off as selfish, irresponsible, and unlikable.  The solution:  make him an orphan, so he has no family to leave behind.  Bilbo Baggins and many other heroes of fairy tales and fantasy fit this bill.)

Token Heroic Orc  (Where a member of a scary enemy species joins the—mostly human—good guys.  Think Worf and Seven of Nine on Star Trek, Angel on Buffy.)

Elixir, by Hilary Duff

Elixir wasn't bad, but I'm pretty sure it was only published because of the author's ready-made fan base.  That's rather a kick in the gut to all those non-famous but much better writers out there collecting rejection after rejection. 

The banter wasn't as clever as intended.  Repetition and over-drama weakened the prose.  The rather superhuman characters felt flat.  And why on Earth would a senator's daughter be so easily recognizable in places like Japan and Brazil?  SPOILER ALERT:  The ending felt very "Empire Strikes Back":  the romantic lead kidnapped, the other two members of the love triangle wounded and waiting on the space station (airplane) for the next installment.  Unanswered questions about the father.  The big difference, however? I was dying to see "The Return of the Jedi."  Hilary Duff's next book?  Not so much.     

I really liked the creepy bit about this mysterious guy showing up in the background of all her best photos.  My favorite part of the book was when she discovered this, and tested it by snapping photos around her bedroom.  It gave me chills when she found his image in her closet, staring out at her.  However, it never really explained how this happened.  Nor did it explain (SPOILER ALERT) why Clea and Ben are reincarnated over and over again.  We don't need full explanations of these type of plot elements, but when so much hinges on them, and we have no explanation at all, it feels a little too convenient.  

I'm not the biggest fan of supernatural. I like fantasy better.  Many elements that would be right at home in fantasy just strike me as corny in supernatural.  I suppose that's because fantasy is NOT our world, but supernatural's pretending to be.  Terms like the "Elixir of Life" and a secret society called "Cursed Vengeance" almost made me laugh.  But that may not be Duff's writing.  It may be the genre in general, and my own personal bias.    

Like many other reviewers, I don't really like the message, so common today in YA paranormal, that if you meet a dark, mysterious, handsome, and rather dangerous stranger, who may or may not be trying to kill you, and you decide for some reason that he's your soul mate, you should immediately sleep with him.

The plot was interesting enough, with some really nice details here and there.  It kept my attention.  Like I said, it was an OK book. 

But Hilary Duff, you've already had more than your 15 minutes of fame.  I think it's great that you're trying your hand at writing.  The rest of us, however, have to practice and polish and write and rewrite—for years, sometimes—and then pray that anyone will even look at more than five words of our query.  And we do this all without a co-author.  So if you're really passionate about it, keep writing, but never take for granted the advantage of your name in this highly competitive market. 

My rating:  3