Author: Kim Strickland
Three Rivers Press
Crown Publishing Group
ISBN: 030735282X
ISBN-13: 9780307352828 

Wish Club is a zany and witty story that you are sure to love.  It involves five women, Claudia, Lindsay, Gail, Mara and Jill who are members of a book club.  Their book club seems just like any other book club, five women sitting around talking, drinking wine, and even discussing the book they have been reading.  Things in their book club had been going rather well until one of the women in the group introduces a book on witchcraft.  Being out of the norm, the women are intrigued and decide to go ahead and try their luck at casting a few spells.  They start out with a small spell that is to chant and the rain will stop; then they begin to chant and the rain does indeed stop.  Due to their success they then decide to cast a spell on a cat that is a diabetic and the cat heals, its a miracle.  The women decide to embrace their new found powers, now they begin to pursue their new powers further.  The women decide to just make wishes to help out themselves in their daily lives, they wish for money, creativity, a baby, time to themselves and a perfect man.  This all should be harmless as they are only focusing in on positive thinking and making wishes right?

Now, instead of being called the book club, they are the wish club.  Claudia is a school teacher and wishes to have a baby of her own as soon as possible, she also wants to write a novel. Gail is a housewife and a mother of three and she wishes to have peace and quite time and to get her life back. Lindsay is a socialite and has a trust fund; she wishes to lose weight and wants to be in the Women’s Foundation spring fashion show.  While Mara, a former singer wishes for money and to resume her singing career once again; and Jill, an artist wishes for creativity and inspiration, and a perfect man in her life.

As the Wish Club members get all too consumed with casting spells in order to improve the various areas of their lives they find themselves in a web of wishes that have gone haywire.  What started as an innocent and fun set of small spells has now turned their lives inside out, and everything is out of control.  Now they turn to the only person they can think of who might be able to help them get their lives back under control and regain some normalcy, a real witch, someone who can undo what they have done, undo their spells, and finally return their lives back to normal.

Strickland’s characters are very well developed, believable, charming and funny.  This highly entertaining well-written novel with its great intriguing story line and with humor and magic thrown in is in my opinion without fault. I will strongly recommend it as a choice for our reading group.  

Incidentally, Kim Strickland is a pilot for a major airline flying 767s.  She lives in Chicago with her husband, her twin boys, two cats and a dog.

The above review was contributed by: Terry South, RN, BSN, LNC, DON, CNSA, COS-C. Terry has been an avid and voracious reader all her life who reads several books a week. She enjoys discovering new authors and loves to let other readers know about these exciting new works. To read more of Terry's reviews CLICK HERE