Psssst!!! Come a little closer. I have a secret to share.

the Genie Scheme by Kimberly K. Jones

a review from a writers perspective

Do you ever have things magically disapper? Socks, toys, jewelry, books? Psst . . . . ! Come a little closer. I've got a secret to share with you.

I've done a little research on this "disappearing epidemic" and I found some interesting intel. The answer to this phenomenon? Genies. Yep. That's right.

I learned this info from Janna, a teen who feel like she lives in poverty because her mom drives an old car and they have to shop at second hand stores, showed a random act of kindness to a bag lady. Turns out this wasn't your run-of-the-mill bag lady. Nope! She was a Genie. Apparently when you show kindness to a Genie, this binds them to you as their master.

Janna was finally able to have everything she had ever dreamed about. Unfortunately, she learned very quickly that genies don't just *poof* things out of thin air. Anything that they give to you has to *poof* out of the possession of someone or someplace else. Janna learns that there are consequences to our greed and materialization of our wishes.

So . . . all those socks that you've lost, they've gone to some poor sap that needs to learn how to make better wishes. Missing books? Gone to some lucky reader who has a magical-endless supply of reading material.

Story: The Genie Scheme is a cute and humorous story best suited for the tween reader. I think an older teen audience would think the moral of the story might be too preachy.

Chracterization: The main character has realistic problems and realistic reactions to them, her character was written well. The genie is funny and likeable. I love the Genie!
The only downside to the characterization is that the "bad guys" fall flat. There seems to be little (if any) redeemable qualities in the antagonists making their personalities unrealistic. Also, there seems to be a blanket idea that all "rich" people are self serving and bad.

Voice: Each character had their own distinctive, consistent and believable voice. Great job on voice!

Overall this is a cute, fast and fun read. And with all our hopes and dreams building up in anticipation of the New Year, this is a good book to remind us to "be careful what you wish for because you just might get it!"

That lead me to ask . . . what do you wish for 2011 to bring?