How To Make a Wish

Gr 9 Up—For Grace, moving in with yet another of her mom's boyfriends wouldn't be so bad, but living with the one who previously made her life miserable? That's the last straw. Grace is looking for escape from the confines of her small-town life in her mother's chaotic shadow, and she finds it late at night talking to Eva. So when Grace's mom starts to horn in on Eva's own grief, Grace has to untangle her long-held feelings for her mom from her new feelings for Eva. Blake offers a painful glimpse of life with a narcissistic, alcoholic parent and a sensitive look at the complexities of grief and a growing relationship between two young women. Grace and Eva's immediate attraction and slow-building romance are well drawn, as is the way that Grace's mom's chaos intrudes on everything. Also deftly handled are the characters' multiple views of Grace's situation, all conveyed while still emphasizing Grace's perspective, which is so narrowly focused that she isn't able to pick up on the genuine concern of others. Grace is also confident in her bisexuality, and the text is clear that her more intense feelings for Eva are not due to a discovery that she is really a lesbian—a common trope that dismisses bisexuality. Eva is black, and her racial identity and how it affects her integration into both the worlds of ballet and a small New England town are less developed themes.