My Wish List: A Novel
*Starred Review* At 47, Jocelyn Guerbette is fairly sure nothing in her life is going to get remarkably better. Owning a fabric shop is stable if unexciting work, her grown children only fill her in on the barest details of their lives, and her husband seems to desire nothing more than a flat-screen TV and every James Bond DVD ever produced. Still, small glimmers of happiness, like catching up on small-town gossip with the twins who work at the hair salon next door, make Jocelyn content. When Françoise and Daniéle convinceher to buy a lottery ticket, Jocelyn never expects her spur-of-the-moment purchase to pay off. But pay off it does, and Jocelyn quietly exchanges her winning ticket for a terrifyingly large check. While she decides how to tell her friends and family about her winnings, Jocelyn realizes just how life-changing her new fortune could be. My Wish List is about one woman’s one-in-a-million response to a one-in-a-million chance. Jocelyn is an immensely likable narrator, and Delacourt’s fluid, elegant prose brings layers of depth to a relatively simple story. Fans of Chocolat (1999) and The Elegance of the Hedgehog (2008) will adore My Wish List, an emotionally wrenching yet ultimately uplifting story of ambition, risk, and acceptance. --Stephanie Turza