Along the lines of 'be careful what you wish for...' comes this engaging tale of a twenty-something woman who, as a very young child, wished her little brother would get lost.
He did. Permanently.

Her family lost all knowledge of his existence while she began years of hospitalization for psychosis related to an imaginary brother. So began her experience with her special gift of granting wishes. She didn't really know what she was doing and the results were random and seemingly cruel. Her world fell apart and she finds herself in the middle of Nowhere, North Carolina where other types of magical skills abound and perhaps she might find a home. Finally.

With a deft touch and a pie lover's skill at describing mouth-watering creations at regular intervals, this book is a delight on many levels. Just be sure and have desserts at hand when you start reading. You won't want to stop and go shopping midway through the book. -Suzanne R.

This book is SO CLOSE to being very good. It almost makes me angry.

It has this lovely mixture of magic, whimsy, tragedy, and folksy-small-town. The atmosphere is lovely-- full of southern heat and lots of pie. The main characters are decent, but the secondary characters are both dynamic and flat: they behave in strange ways which should add depth but isn't fleshed out enough and instead feels incoherent. But it's such a pleasure to read, I didn't much mind a few stale characters.

What really got me was the ending. It was abrupt, with very little resolution. I read it as an ebook, and I checked several times to see if there was a chapter I'd missed. It just--- stops. There's no real denoument, but not in the artsy french-film way, just in a jarring, bizarre way that leaves me feeling like the author just got bored of writing this book and wanted to move onto something else. Which is such a shame, because she laid such a lovely foundation! I wanted that follow through!

I still give it 4 stars because the bulk of the book is excellent, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes cozy mysteries or rural romances.

2 stars. The premise for this book was interesting; it just didn't execute it in a way that it kept my attention. The romance was unbelievable. The magic system made absolutely no sense (you'd have Rachel making the pies and yet they still somehow used Catch's magic, how did that make sense?) We never really got a sense of how the wishes worked and why Rachel wasn't bombarded with all of the wishes ever (because we're only told that she doesn't have to be present for them to come around toward her so clearly there should have been billions (literally billions) more).

The only thing that kept me reading was Michael and the author made it super obvious who it was at the mere mention of a standard feature very early on. I then had to wait over 200 pages for it to even be brought up again. This novel's focus was just off. I would have rather had the scene where Michael learns who he is, rather than the copout and have the story build up from there. For once, I would have gladly went without the romance.

Also, way too much eating of pies. They should have keeled over dead years ago from the sugar intake.

This book was so lovely and heartwarming and it contained beautiful elements of magical realism, which I've come to enjoy very much. A perfect debut novel.

The plot should have been fun (nope).
The characters should have been interesting (yawn).
The story telling should have been magical (it wasn't).

There's just nothing here. There are no glaring errors (although the style veers toward romance novel territory) but it just never ignites, despite the potential.

And, before you say "But at least there's pie!" let me just point out that no Southern pie artist worth her flaky crust would top a pie with canned whipped cream. Fluffy, mile high meringue or bust, honey!

Enjoyable light summer read in the style of Sarah Addison Allen, with equal parts magic, romance and delicious descriptions of food. Rachel leaves Tennessee in hopes of escaping her secret ability to make wishes come true. Finding herself in a small town called Nowhere, Rachel begins to uncover truths about herself and some of the characters in Nowhere. A galley from Netgalley.

This was a fun premise, but kinda got washed up into the cheesy romance category. Yes, things happened too easily and the "coincidences" where sometimes close to too much, but some of that added to the whimsy of the story. What drove me crazy was that Rachel was not a stronger female lead: her hands were constantly shaking, being ultra-petite she had to use tiptoes for everything, she was a "tomboy" who felt uncomfortable in dresses even though they made her look super hot, she was always on the verge of passing out, and couldn't even form a coherent thought when the hot-neighbor-guy was around. I also found that Crispell's lack of description of the scenery often led to the reader questioning character's actions because it was unclear exactly where they were or what they were doing. Without all of the "romance" filler (its fine to have romance, just don't make the female a total waif) and a little more description, I think the story would have been quite enjoyable. There was just enough magical realism to make it work. Also, pie recipes would have probably bumped this review up from just ok to liked it :P

(2017 Reading Challenge: Book about Food)

Very good book! Magical is one word I can think to describe this book!

Magical story

I liked this one. I liked seeing Rachel find the place where she belonged. I loved the magic in this book, from the pies and wishes to the town itself. This was a good one.