A quirky and endearing enemies to lovers romance about a unique librarian who has a second chance with her first crush and their search for love while overcoming fear. A redemptive novel with Center’s consistent hopeful spin.

Blurb: Samantha will stop at nothing to protect her beloved private school, so when her long time crush Duncan Carpenter comes waltzing back into her life and wants to change everything about said school, Sam hatches a plan with her friends to take Duncan down.

My thoughts are all over the place with this novel. While I’m a huge Katherine Center fan, I wasn’t wild about this one. I felt disconnected from the characters, mostly because their justifications in certain situations didn’t seem believable. I loved the fact that Sam is quirky and she fights hard for what she believes in, but I really had a hard time with the change in Duncan’s character and the fact that their was little to no romance between the two characters.

Even though the story is disjointed, what with the reasoning behind hiding certain things from Duncan and their inability to connect, the ending with the whale was my favorite part. Overall, a sweet and redemptive story that fell a bit flat for me.

I will leave a review on Amazon or B&N on July 14,, 2012

Once again Katherine Center has another winner! I fell in love with this book from the beginning and until the end it kept me engaged with Sam and Duncan's storyline. I would definitely recommend this book to others.

I received and ARC from NetGalley and St Martin's Press, and am under no obligation to give a good review. All thoughts and opinions here are my own.

Katherine Center’s books offer the full gamut... a traumatic experience or two, self-discovery, friendship, and a bit of romance, and What You Wish For delivers all of this and more. Focused on a private elementary school that is going through some rough bumps with the sudden death of its beloved principal, the reader rides along with Sam, the self-doubting librarian, Babette, the newly-widowed matriarch of the school, Duncan, the new principal disguised as a prison warden, and of course, Clay,the smart, sweet, lonely third-grader who simply needs some love. As traumas, past and present, are revealed, these characters respond in the perfectly flawed ways that we would all react. And learn a lesson in living with “joy on purpose”.

This book was a quick read, simply because I became totally engrossed in the story, and the characters. I rooted for them all, and was pleasantly pleased with the outcomes. And I really want to see the butterflies! This will make a perfect summer read.

If a book could feel like a warm hug, this one does. Grounded in a sense of community (with vivid descriptions of the school and beachside setting) complete with quirky-lovable characters, Center's book promotes finding joy amidst hardship, and choosing courage over fear.

Strengths:
-As a teacher, I loved the descriptions of the school setting and the teacher/staff dynamics.
-Epilepsy representation
-Thought-provoking discussion of risk-aversion, emergency-preparedness, PTSD, school violence, overcoming loss
-Lovable main characters
-Celebration of life's joys (in all their forms)

Weaknesses:
-The ending was abrupt and a tad over-the-top (that being said, I'd love to see more from these characters - I didn't want to say goodbye!)
-Weak/broad strokes characterization of the "bad guys"/antagonists (with no opportunity for redemption)

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publishing house for providing early access to this title. Katherine Center, you've released another great one!

Katherine Center's What You Wish For is a delight to read. The story follows a young woman who struggles to overcome her fear of relationships. Following a year of her life full of disappointment and loss, Sam eventually understands how to overcome her fears and truly love someone. Even though this book touches on some difficult topics, Katherine Center's writing is light and cheerful. This is the perfect book for a quick and light-hearted pick-me-up.

Set within school life, What You Wish For did hook me and keep me reading. possibly because of my teaching career.  It has two main characters who had known each other a few years back and now meet up again at a different school.

Sam has just lost her beloved Principal and the whole staff are still grieving his loss. Duncan appears and he comes in with a bang. He is completely different to what Sam knew of him before. And so for awhile there I was totally horrified by his actions. However when we get to know Duncan more we come to understand.

There are minor characters who are rather sweet, especially the nine year old boy with the very remote and rather unlikeable Dad who also happens to be chairman of the board at the school.

I liked the emphasis on however life is going, take the moments you can, to celebrate and to choose joy - even be a little wacky at times. I also loved Sam's library set up.

It's a pleasant story, and if you are looking for a light summer read and you like Katherine Center's work you can pass a few happy hours with it.

Thank you to Netgalley for giving me the chance to read and review, "What You Wish For" by Katherine Center. I am quite torn with this book. I loved certain aspects of the book but disliked other things. This is my 3rd book by Katherine Center and I really do enjoy her writing style. I just felt like a lot of the events that occurred in this book were not very realistic... I also had a hard time relating to the main character Sam. While we are the same age, it felt like she very immature and just obsessive in nature. I did like how Sam dealt with epilepsy since that does affect so many people in the world. Other than that , I enjoyed the story and the other characters. I am still looking forward to many more books from Katherine Center in the future!

I went into this book being intrigued by the plot and setting, while also being worried I wouldn't connect with the main character since teaching is about the last profession I would choose for myself.

While I didn't love this book as much as I did Things You Save in a Fire, I liked it WAY more than How to Walk Away. Katherine Center did a good job making the book atmospheric, in both the description of the school and the city itself. I enjoyed the descriptions of how they'd decorated the school, and really loved mention of the sea wall and other things you'd find in a town on the ocean.

There was only one section of the book where I felt it really, really dragged, and I was able to look past that due to the overall enjoyment I was getting from the book in its entirety.

I think the way they tackled the subject of a school shooting and safety measures was done really well.

I have very mixed feelings about What You Wish For.

I spent the first half of the book questioning a lot. Am I supposed to feel bad for Sam? Am I supposed to think she's kind of immature? Is this kind of school something that actually exists? Is the pacing weird or is it just me?

I felt the entire book got bogged down a bit in the details of Sam's inner thoughts. If those had been cut down by half, so we got back to the dialogue faster, I think it would have been a far more successful effort.

Duncan's backstory was totally predictable but I don't think that was a bad thing. I think it was a subject that was well handled in the end. Sam's health situation wasn't as well handled. I kind of had a hard time believing it. I don't know if that was how it was all written or if it was fictionalized and not well researched.

The second half was better, albeit somewhat silly and rushed. Duncan's evolution seemed too quick. If we had spent less time in Sam's head throughout maybe there would have been more time to deal with this.

The writing itself was fine it just seemed like it needed a bit of fine-tuning. I will say there were definitely some standout moments that made me laugh, swoon or nearly cry, but they were too infrequent and certainly didn't come during the first half when I spent most of my time with one eyebrow raised.
2 stars for the first half and 4 for the second so 3 for the entire book.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Last summer I devoured Things You Save In a Fire on my vacation and I’ve been saving What You Wish For for this summer’s vacation and it didn’t disappoint. The perfect “feel good”, “find the joy”, “life is too short” type of book to submerse yourself in. Quirky characters, laugh out loud dialogue but poignant topics that hit all the feels.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for allowing me to read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Center had me pulled into this story and rooting for the teachers, our librarian, Sam and even the prison warden, principal, Duncan. This book had me feeling so many emotions from joy and fun to frustration and anger. The message of choosing joy because sometimes it doesn't happen on it's own is beautiful. Center did a great job of using Max's character to embed little snippets of wisdom and teach the reader life lessons in a sweet and loving way. I, also, loved the imagery of the school in this book. I wanted to visit this place and send my daughter to school there. The library had me dying it sounded so amazing and beautiful with a tunnel of books and reading nooks and a view of the ocean. And the butterflies sounded unreal, but were written in such a way that I felt as though I could see them and I was devastated when they were gone. The school was just so bright and colorful and then Duncan happens and he's very grey and wants to paint the world grey. Sam is also bright and colorful from her pink bangs to her clown socks whereas Duncan is just grey. There is quite the clash between these 2 opposites who definitely attract building into a hate to love relationship where they learn about each other's struggles and weaknesses and help each other to grow. Each of them had their own story and background making them feel real and adding to the story to bring it more depth. The story is so sweet and touching and I was so immersed in it; I was even reading it sneakily while at work.

I discovered Katherine Center's books a little late to the game with Things You Save In A Fire, and have been catching myself up on her delicious novels ever since. You know you are going to get a consistently good story, great characters, and pages you need to turn. I am grateful for an ARC from NetGalley of What You Wish For.
Sam is a funky school librarian, always looking out for her students, as school librarians do, and always focusing on the positive. She is a make lemonade person who wears bright colors, rides her bike everywhere, and has just discovered that the newly hired principal at her private school is a former crush. Duncan, the new principal, hired by the school's trustees when their founding principal dies suddenly, is intensely focused on school safety, to the point that Sam feels he is taking away the school's essence and character. Her whimsical spirit clashes over and over with Duncan's rules and regulations, and the hard line he takes on safety. Things come to a head when the son of the president of the school's Board of Trustees disappears and the entire community searches for him, Sam and Duncan included.

What You Wish For is a great summer read, perhaps a little contrived, but oh so satisfying. Grab a copy for the beach (or backyard) and dig in!

In Katherine Center's What You Wish For, Sam has chosen to embrace joy. She's a librarian at a local elementary school and loves quirky things like polka dots and dying her hair pink. She loves the leadership at her school and has found other teachers who embrace joy just like her.

She moved from another school a few years ago and hasn't really kept in touch with the other teachers she used to work with. She mainly left because of a crush on another colleague who didn't return any of the feelings that Sam had for him and she needed a new start.

When tragedy strikes and a new principal enters her elementary school none of the teachers know what to make of it. But Sam knows Duncan or rather she used to know Duncan when they worked together a few years ago. This is the same Duncan that Sam had a crush on.

Sam knows that Duncan used to be so great with kids! He was funny and kind and was always a shining light. But principal Duncan is not the same Duncan that she knew when they taught together in the past. This Duncan is hell bent on re-doing the schools security. He sees everything that Sam and the other teachers love as a potential hazard and way for intruders to get in to the school and harm children. With the rising amount of school shootings in America, Duncan is out to make a change. And to make matters worse he doesn't seem to remember Sam. Will Sam be able to get through to him and to preserve the school that she loves so much.

Katherine Center is such a talented author. I love her prose and the ability and ease in which I can read her books. But I wasn't clicking with the characters in What You Wish For. I felt for Sam and Duncan respectively, but also felt that at times there was too much going on in the story. The ending felt rushed and I didn't really care much for the side story that was woven in at the end. A lot of character arcs felt incomplete and I didn't feel emotionally connected to them.

What You Wish For was still an enjoyable read, but I wanted to love it more than I did. Overall I would give it 3.5 stars.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher.

Katherine Center never lets me down. She combines real life and medical issues with romance and produces a winner. Sam is a great flaky kooky character who has found her people at Kempner School. Max, Babette and Alice along with Sam have created the perfect school- until Duncan shows up. It took some time to discover why he was so against fun and creativity but he did have his reasons. Between his PTSD and Sams epilepsy, their future seemed hopeless. Leave it to 9 year old Clay and a. beached whale to save the day. A truly delightful read.

Thank you Netgalley for an early copy for an honest review,
Katherine Center writes such beautifully flawed characters that take you on a ride of heartache , forgiveness , love and growth. Her novels are so uplifting even during the saddest moments. Great job as usual.

I stayed up late and read this beautiful tome last night! Katherine Center has done it again....of course she has. She has SUCH a way with words; it's like she is talking right to you, and you're both covered up in a soft blanket. She never rushes, but she gets right to the main conflict, which I love. I will forever be a fan!

Katherine Center does it again! I devoured this book, not wanting to put it down after i began. I found myself rooting for the characters and wanting them to love themselves despite their trauma and difficulties. It was a heart warming, feel-good kind of book and I loved it

Thanks so much to NetGalley, St Martin's Press, and Katherine Center for the opportunity to read and review her latest novel. 5 joyful stars! Katherine Center is a must-read author for me and this book is just as wonderful as her previous ones.

Samantha (Sam) is a school librarian at a very progressive, encouraging elementary school in Galveston, TX. After leaving CA escaping an unrequited love, Duncan, she has fought to become a different person - one who embraces joy, loves bright colors, has pink bangs! This transformation was put into place with the loving attention of her surrogate parents, Max & Babette, owners of the school. But when Max suddenly dies and Duncan is hired as his replacement, it's an unrecognizable Duncan. This Duncan no longer is joyful - he's changing the school into a fortress for protection, wiping away the very fabric of the school.

As in her other books, this author is a master of feel-good novels that make you want to live better! This one is all about joy - how it is something we choose, not something that just happens. A good lesson for all of us! But her writing style just pulls you into the story until you turn the last page. There is a group of fabulous characters in this book - Alice and Clay were favorites! Plus - the descriptions of these teachers and how they made school such a fabulous place to be for students is truly inspirational. I wish I could see that library! Highly recommended!

I loved loved loved this book! Sam screams Jess from the TV series New Girl, and I found myself reading this novel as the transcript of a full season. Being a huge New Girl fan, I gobbled every word and could not read fast enough! It was the perfect read at the perfect time for me and I could not be happier to have read it. I can’t even say enough good things about it; the writing, the characters, the storyline were all spot on perfect. Five out of five solid stars!

An excellent, poignant and heartwarming story that made me smile and think.
I loved the storytelling, the style of writing and the great characters.
Highly recommened.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine