Wish Our Hearts Away is a coming-of-age book with a really unique twist on the age-old adage of “be careful what you wish for.”

I’m not just saying that because I know the author, even though I do. Which you should know before I get into it, although it’s not influenced my review at all. In fact, I’m likely even harder on her, given that we’ve been critique partners, which means it’s my job to whip her into shape, even if she’s already weeping in the corner forsaking life.

I do it out of love, okay? Love hurts.

❧ There are four main characters (two point-of-view characters), and they were all really relatable in different ways.

✿ Girija: An immigrant with attention-hogging little siblings, who’s afraid her parents are ashamed of who she is.

✿ Lily: Afraid of being stuck in a small town and unable to leave, even if she wants to, but also afraid of leaving her friends behind. Also totally fell in love with her best friend, which she believes is an impossible relationship.

✿ Michael: Caught between his dreams and his father’s expectations. Doesn’t feel like he belongs in his family.

✿ Sam: Has no hope for the future, because he feels his path has been decided already by others. Afraid of being trapped in the small town and eventually withering away there. Keeping major secrets and just keeping up appearances.

I was surprised by how much I saw myself in these characters, and rooting for them felt a lot like rooting for a younger me.

I have to say, younger me got a pretty happy ending, and I was hoping for the same for all these characters. They deserved it. We deserved it.

❧ Despite being character driven, there’s a really compelling pseudo-mystery subplot that kept me reading just to find out all the secrets.

Because I am horribly nosy and predictable. Wish Our Hearts Away takes place in a small town, and like most small towns, people tend to be interconnected, and cycles have a way of repeating themselves. So not only are the four main characters stuck in their own ruts regarding their futures, but they’re also caught up in the past and what had taken place with the previous generations.

Uncle Ben always talked about finding a place that granted wishes, but it refused to grant his because they were impossible — but what happens to impossible wishes?

This was probably my favorite part of the story. We’ve all been teenagers. We’ve all had wishes, both simple and impossible, and it’s often the impossible ones that mean the most. The impossible wishes the characters made were all ones I would have made at some point in my life, too, and I just loved the exploration of that.

I mean, wishes always seem like an easy way out until they start backfiring, don’t they?

 

 

❧ I’m pretty sure I am Sam. Or Sam is me? Talk about an identity crisis …

The great thing about four main characters is that you’re almost guaranteed to find one that you can relate to. For me, that was Sam. And not just because we share a nickname, okay? That just makes him cooler is all.

Sam is the character who:

✿ Is terrified of ghosts. (And rightly so. I mean, who wouldn’t be?)

✿ Is terrified of being in a graveyard at night. (Again, who wouldn’t be?! Dead people are creepy. No offense, zombies.)

✿ Is more worried about his friends’ and their well-being than his own.

✿ Has all the logic of the group. (I’m convinced that he’s just siphoning it off the others without their permission.)

✿ Doesn’t want to let anyone down.

✿ Hides his emotions and problems so he doesn’t worry his friends.

See? We’re obviously twinsies!

Wow. I’m also probably waaaay more proud of that than I should be, considering.

❧ So. Much. Representation.

First, this takes place in Australia, which means all the characters are Aussies, which makes them cute and cuddly, right?! I mean, how can you not want to hug them with that accent? Despite the fact that they live on a continent where nature is actively trying to kill them and they could probably murder you with their pinky. Some risks are just worth it, am I right?

Marginalized groups included in various ways:

✿ LGBT romance(s)

✿ Asexuality (implied, though it doesn’t go into details)

✿ One of the lead characters is an immigrant from India

✿ Drag

I feel like this is important, because as a little brown girl, I never saw myself in books. Until Animorphs and suddenly, there was Cassie, and that just blew my mind. I’m not, well, any of these things, so I guess it’s hard for me to say if they’re proper representations, but I didn’t feel, personally, like they were tokens or done in a harmful way.

Trigger warning for abuse.

❧ There are places where the story seems to drag. Like, there’s no explosions or dragons or gruesome deaths. Can it even qualify as a book if that’s the case?

So Wish Our Hearts Away isn’t exactly the genre I typically read. I knew that going in, but I wanted to give it a try. I enjoyed it anyway, but it was a bit slow.

The book is character-driven, which means there are spots where it lulls, and since I don’t generally read this genre, it was noticeable for me.

I just came off of reading Neal Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe books, okay? If someone’s not getting stabbed, it’s a slow day. If you enjoy character-driven work, this isn’t a problem and you may not even notice.

So, I’m joking about most of that (I mean, dragons do make everything 100% better), but most literary books end up reading slow to me, and this was no exception.

❧ The magic realism isn’t explained or elaborated on. It just … is.

Which really bothered me with The Girl Who Chased The Moon, too, even though I think I’m in the minority with that. I’ve been spoiled with fantasy, where there are grand, elaborate systems.

The magic itself, I thought, was well done as far as how it worked, but as to why it existed there in the first place or how it came to be, particularly in that one spot in the “real” world, there was no mention of it.

Now, maybe that doesn’t matter to you. Maybe it shouldn’t matter to me. Maybe I should stop being such a nerd and want to know why and how about everything. Those are all totally fair statements.

   

“We never used to have secrets, but these days there were walls of them between us.”

As high school comes to an end, Lily, Sam, Michael, and Girija secretly wish for the same thing—to escape their small town. When they stumble on a magical place called The Grove, they believe their wishes might not be so far out of reach after all.

But they soon discover that as much as they wish to leave, they also wish to stay … with each other. The answer isn’t easy, particularly when the lines between friendship and love are blurring, and the lines connecting love and identity are growing stronger day by day.

As their wishes become more conflicted, the magic begins to change, withering away as it unearths ghosts and buried secrets. The four friends are forced to make a choice. Will they choose to stand alone, or can they finally let down their walls to save The Grove, and one another?

Magic listens to the heart, not the mind. And sometimes when things change, they stay that way forever.

Goodreads Amazon

 Ellen Jane Phillips is an Australian author who writes an assortment of paranormal mystery, queer romance, and speculative fiction. She is the author of the paranormal cozy novella, Magic, Murder & Mistletoe, and the recently released YA novel Wish Our Hearts Away—a story about secret wishes, untold truths, and hidden romance.

Her books are split across two pen names (Ellen Jane and E.J. Phillips), and you can find her on most social media as @ellenjanewrites.

 

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I’m going to cheat and start with an easy question. Because who says cheaters can’t prosper? How did you come up with the idea for Wish Our Hearts Away? Where did you start?

At first, I just wanted to write about Lily and Girija. I wanted to write a love story between two girls who didn’t quite know how to open up to each other and recognize that their love was returned. But when I first wrote it… it was crap. So bad. The genre was entirely wrong, and it came out far younger than I wanted because I hadn’t let the character’s needs shape the story enough; I’d just shoved them into a ridiculous mystery plot that they didn’t care about.

So then, I stopped and thought about it—about what the characters wanted and what story I wanted to tell. And I realized I wanted to tell two things: a story about characters taking charge of their own agency, and a romance where romantic love wasn’t put on a pedestal above platonic love.

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All of your characters are highly relatable, in different ways, and I thought that was a really unique dynamic. I saw myself in all of them, but particularly Michael. Is there any character in Wish that you relate to more than the others?

I’m so glad! And I particularly love that you see yourself in Michael. Only a handful of people have read Wish so far, but I’ve been amazed to see the spread of who identifies with who the most. That was one of the most difficult things about writing it—trying to have four main characters with equal depth. But it seems as though readers identify with them each equally.

As for me… it’s a hard one to answer. There’s something of me in all of them, of course, but if I had to pick… I think I would say Michael too. I spent the most time in Lily’s head, but when it comes down to it the way that she responds to things isn’t quite the same as how I do. Of them all, I think Michael’s outward expression matches my own the most. Twinsies!

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Ooor maybe one of us is just a copycat. Not naming names, though.

There were a lot of fantastic themes in Wish, and I felt like there were so many lessons we get to discover with the characters. What is the biggest message you want people to take away after reading Wish (or the top two, since you had a lot of really great messages).

Thank you! This one is difficult to answer… I had a lot of things in mind as I wrote it, but I also firmly believe in death of the author. So, whatever it was that I intended isn’t necessarily the way it will—or should—be interpreted.

One thing I did try to do with Wish was have a story where the main characters are the heroes of their own story, and that’s it—no more, no less. Their only contribution to resolving the conflict that belonged to other characters was to enable those characters to be their own heroes as well. That was why it was important to me that Rose’s (and Agatha’s) story ended the way it did.

I feel like this isn’t something we see a lot of in fiction. The heroes tend to solve everyone’s problems, and I much prefer the idea of searching for ways to give other people their own agency, and to reclaim our own when we’ve become trapped or powerless. Instead of using our power to solve problems that aren’t about us and that we may not truly understand, we can find ways to give other people some of that power for themselves.

I also would be over the moon if people finished reading Wish and felt as though the love between all four friends was as important as the love between the couples. Romantic love gets a lot of credit these days, when platonic love is just as important. It’s a different kind of love, but neither one is more or less.

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Behind every great writer is a fluffy tyrant that interrupts their work and demands their attention. Who are your partners in crime when you’re writing?

I have two! And several recurring house guests. Mowgli, the cat, likes to sit on my shoulders while I write, while Nova, the border collie, gets jealous of this and tries to squeeze all 28 kg behind me on my chair…

Then I’m often visited by the Gerberian Shepsky, Zeus, and the Great Dane, Baloo, who both come over for play dates with Nova. And by play dates, I mean they all pile in at my feet and stink out the room. Why must I stare at the silly screen for hours? Why am I not throwing the ball? Why am I not feeding them or cuddling all of them at once with eighteen sets of hands? It’s a mystery…

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Now for the question everyone’s dying to know: which Hogwarts house are you? (Because we’re totally going to judge you for it.) How about your four main characters?

Haha, I’m about to split the room and be judged on both sides, I think! I’ve always been proudly Slytherin, according to Pottermore and every other test ever. But… I recently did the Pottermore quiz again and… I got Gryffindor. Don’t tell anyone.

And I can answer this easily actually! I worked out their houses right at the start of the book! Lily is Slytherin, Michael is Gryffindor, Girija is Hufflepuff, and Sam is a Gryffindor, even though he doesn’t feel like it. Mind you, I think by the end, Lily embraced her inner Puff… what do you think?

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I think that behind every good Slytherin, there’s a bit of Hufflepuff … even if they just dabble in it for a little while.

And now for the most important question … Sam’s personality is totally modeled after me, right? It’s okay, you can be honest.

Busted. But you know what this means, right? You’ve totally confessed to being a proud Gryffindor, too 😉 I knew you had it in you!

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*sniffs* Durmstrang doesn’t have Gryffindors. *torches last Pottermore test that also came up Gryffindor*

Thank you so much for stopping by the blog today. Do you have any final words of wisdom you’d like to share with our readers? Predictions for the future? Maybe the secrets to immortality, hm?

Thanks for the excellent questions! Hmm… if you’re after immortality, might I recommend the lost fountain of youth or the elixir of life? Both just sound so much nicer than becoming a vampire, and if you’re going for immortal life you have to consider the aesthetic…

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Where can readers follow you, if they’re interested in finding out more?

My website is at www.ellenjanephillips.com , and I’m on most social media as @ellenjanewrites (Twitter, Tumblr, FB, and IG to be specific). Come and say hello any time! I love to chat

**Giveaway ends Sunday, August 13, at 12:00 AM.**
**Winner will be announced on Monday.**

Please be aware this is a giveaway for a Kindle version from Amazon.
Open to international participants.

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Which character sounds most like you? If it’s Sam, we’re obviously destined to be BFF, because you must be cool. Not that the rest of you aren’t. Just maybe not quite as cool.