Disclaimer: This book was sent to me by the publisher, FictionETC Press, via NetGalley for an honest review.

Genre: Fiction/Young Adult

Plot: Lacey Linden is hiding the truth of her life–a depressed mom, a crumbling house, and bills too big to pay. While her high school classmates see a girl with a ready smile and good grades, Lacey spends her evenings seeking ways to save her family. On a get-cash-quick trip to the flea market, Lacey stumbles over a music box that seemingly begs her to take it home. She does, only to find that it’s inhabited by a gorgeous genie. He offers her a month of wishes, one per day, but there’s a catch. Each wish must be humanly possible.

Grant belongs to a league of supernatural beings, dedicated to serving humans in need. After two years of fulfilling the boring wishes of conventional teens, he is one assignment away from promotion to a challenging new role with more daring cases. Yet his month with Lacey is everything that he expects, and nothing like he imagines. Lacey and Grant soon discover that the most difficult task of all might be saying goodbye.

Opinion: This is a very sweet YA story that is sure to grab your attention and keep it. Even if you think this story is predictable and will turn out in the way you suspect, it doesn’t.

Lacey Linden is struggling with the burden of being the sole provider for her family, as well as still being in high school. Due to the death of her step-father, Lacey’s mother has become overly depressed and “checked out”. Due to her mother, Crystal, not being able to work and bring money into their home, Lacey has been left to deal with the responsibilities of taking care of her little brother Henry and paying their various bills and debt. But after Lacey purchases a music box from the flea market, her entire world changes. After Lacey arrives home and begins polishing the music box, to her astonishment, a genie by the name of Grant appears. Grant explains to Lacey that she will receive one wish each day for a month. But instead of Lacey wasting each wish on herself, she focuses on how to make money, spruce up her family’s home, and help her family become whole again.

I wanted to start out by saying that I wasn’t too thrilled about how this book began, purely because it felt rushed. Maybe I am just used to the beginning of a story being slow so that the author can allow time for the reader to get acquainted with the characters and the situations, but this felt much too thrown together. However, once Grant gets introduced into the picture the story keeps a steady past until the end.

The character of Lacey feels highly realistic to me. She has been placed into the role of being the parent of her household, and tries very hard to keep her family together. She over obsesses about their money issues, looks over her younger brother as if he were her child, and tries to manage school and a job all at once. I think that Lacey was extremely hard on her mother, even considering the circumstances that her mother has placed her in. I think she has a right to be angry, but obviously that wasn’t helping anyone’s situation. The idea of bringing a genie into this story and giving it a nice twist by only allowing the wishes to be completed if they were humanely possible was brilliant. I think it helps the reader appreciate the character of Grant more because he has to learn each skill that he possesses, as well as do all of the work on his own. The romance between Lacey and Grant was cute, but not as thrilling and exceptional as I hoped it would be. I think it could have been a little more developed and lead into something more special than how it was portrayed, simply put, this felt rushed as well. But other than those few things, I loved reading this book. I was addicted and stayed awake so that I could finish it and find out what happened.

Overall, this is perfect for young adult readers (maybe a little bit of a younger age group) who love a little romance and some magic. I also received the second book, Wishing For You, which I cannot wait to read…purely because I need to know what happens after the author just left me HANGING at the end of this book. 😉