I happened to receive a galley copy of Hedgebrook alumna  Kamy Wicoff‘s new novel Wishful Thinking and since I was invited to write a review, I did. It’s a delightful book. Here’s the review on Goodreads but I’m also posting the text of the review below. Please share!

We’re all pretty much trying to do our best in this life, and Jennifer Sharpe, the hardworking single mother of two young boys, is no different. She’s got an unreasonably demanding public sector job, only a little bit of outside help, a feckless ex-husband, and not much money. She runs from one obligation to the next, shorts herself on sleep, and would give anything for a few more hours in the day. Then she loses her phone (her phone!) and it comes back to her with a strange new app already installed. Wishful Thinking, it’s called — An App for Women Who Need to Be in More Than One Place at the Same Time.

Jennifer’s first reaction is, of course, disbelief. But she’s also a little bit desperate. When she sees an opportunity to show up at her son Julien’s guitar recital and therefore not disappoint him for the umpteenth time, she decides to give it a try. On the one hand she’s in the middle of a critical business meeting, but on the other, she’s watching her son play his guitar only for her.

Once she meets Wishful Thinking’s brilliant and mysterious creator, Dr. Diane Sexton, Jennifer makes up her mind to use this enticing technology — under controlled conditions of course — just to keep her head above water. Her best friend Vinita, who happens to be a doctor, is more than skeptical of the enterprise, but everyone else in her life is delighted with her sudden transformation into Superwoman. Now, she even has time to develop a relationship with Julien’s intriguing guitar teacher, Owen. Just like that, all her troubles are over. Or are they?

Among the joys of Kamy Wickoff’s warm, funny, and touching novel are its gentle insights about motherhood, friendship, love, loss, being human, keeping secrets and living in the moment. I found myself often reading with a smile on my face and at a certain point I could no longer put it down. I had come to care very much about Jennifer, her bright and lively boys Jack and Julien, her tough loving friend Vinita, the imperfectly perfect Owen, Dr. Diane Sexton (the eccentric genius behind it all), and even her ex-husband Norman. Once the app’s abilities and all of Jennifer’s obligations and relationships began to converge, I had to know what was next.

Can Jennifer have it all? Can any of us? Wishful Thinking — the book, not the app — just might have the answer.