Dinca’s review of The Secret Ingredient of Wishes by Susan Bishop Crispell
Women’s Fiction published by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 6 Sept 2016

If you want a little magic and not be overrun with it, here is your story – wishes floating in the air waiting to be read and a town that captures all the lost things wished away and the secrets that bind them into a sound future.

A very unusual story of a girl, Rachel Monroe, who can grant wishes just by reading them as they pop into the air, feathery pieces of paper, along with an old woman who could keep secrets just by having people eat her pies, all in a town called Nowhere where wishes and secrets end up.

This town also has the ability to not let Rachel leave until she cones to terms with her special gift. Catch is the old woman who found Rachel and helps her master her special ability.

Ashe is the love interest. Scott is the brother who Rachel wished away when she was twelve years old, and it has plagued her life ever since. Michael (Scott) ended up in Nowhere as a lost boy, and Catch directed him to a family across the way from her and they accepted him into their family. Michael became Ashe’s brother. One of Catch’s pies given to the family has kept them from revealing the secret of how Michael became part of their family.

Lola is Ashe’s ex-wife who cheated on him – with his father of all people. This took place under a plum tree that Ashe planted for Catch and it became diseased and has since spread its poison to anyone who comes near it.

Mary Beth is Lola’s sister and Rachel’s best friend and in the end Mary Beth and Lola are reunited and at peace with each other.

I feel the book just ends without closure on almost every turn of event, except Lola and Mary Beth, who I couldn’t have cared less about. That’s just a little side line in the story.

It’s an interesting tale.  At the end, I kept trying to turn the page and finally realized my reader was fine. I was just at the last page. The chemistry was good between Rachel and Ashe, I just wish it would have gone somewhere.

I was not in love with this book. It had its enjoyable times, but mostly I felt it was left unfinished.

Grade: C

Summary:

26-year-old Rachel Monroe has spent her whole life trying to keep a very unusual secret: she can make wishes come true. And sometimes the consequences are disastrous. So when Rachel accidentally grants an outlandish wish for the first time in years, she decides it’s time to leave her hometown―and her past―behind for good.

Rachel isn’t on the road long before she runs out of gas in a town that’s not on her map: Nowhere, North Carolina―also known as the town of “Lost and Found.” In Nowhere, Rachel is taken in by a spit-fire old woman, Catch, who possesses a strange gift of her own: she can bind secrets by baking them into pies. Rachel also meets Catch’s neighbor, Ashe, a Southern gentleman with a complicated past, who makes her want to believe in happily-ever-after for the first time in her life.

As she settles into the small town, Rachel hopes her own secrets will stay hidden, but wishes start piling up everywhere Rachel goes. When the consequences threaten to ruin everything she’s begun to build in Nowhere, Rachel must come to terms with who she is and what she can do, or risk losing the people she’s starting to love―and her chance at happiness―all over again.