I love a middle grade with just the right dose of magical realism. This reminded me of Wendy Mass’ Willow Falls series. I love Cindy Baldwin’s books and can’t wait to see what she comes up with next. All her books are unique and explore different genres and themes.

Not my favorite book by Cindy Baldwin, but she never disappoints.

A heart-wrenching story of family and finding ones own place in the world. Finding permanence and a place to call home are the key points of this beautiful book. I highly recommend.

Couldn’t bring myself to finish this one. Unfortunately, the narration is incredibly hard to follow.

There was nothing wrong with this book per se. I'm just not a fan of middle grade novels. I always like to try one here or there to see if I stumble upon a great one. (It doesn't happen very often.) This had fun world-building and interesting characters. I got to 62% before I realized I didn't care what happened to the MC or how the story ended. It just got too middle-gradey for me. Too much lame mystery and kids striving to be good students and love learning, etc. blech.
Thanks NetGalley for the chance to review this robotic-audio-version.
ps. the cover looks nothing like a fantasy book. It screams feel-good slice-of-life middle grade... which, come to think about it, was more in line with the books actual contents. The magic seemed totally incidental to the plot of fitting in to a new place and uncovering a boring (for me) town history.

This book explores the complicated business of wishing. Sometimes the things we think we want are not the things we actually need, and sometimes the answers to our problems are unexpected. Ivy’s family has always lived on the road in an RV. Her mother is a star—no she’s not famous; she is an actual fallen star who travels the country granting wishes and helping the world to stay in balance. But Ivy wants a true home; she’s tired of her nomadic life where she can’t form relationships that last. So, she uses her mother’s wishes, knowing full-well that her plan could go very awry. They end up with her aunts in Whistling Ridge, and Ivy starts to feel like she might actually belong there—that this might be her forever home. But when Whistling Ridge starts to die, sickening her aunt along with it, Ivy wonders if it all might be her fault and if the cost of her dreams might be too high. Ivy learns to deal with loss and finds that her definition of a forever home might have been missing some key ingredients.

A note about narration: I listened to this book via NetGalley with a computerized voice, meant just for review purposes. I was interested to find that I didn’t mind the fact that the computer wasn’t perfect about inflection. I thought the “voice” that they chose for the book fit extremely well, so it worked for me. I’d definitely try listening to another of these review audiobook galleys.

***Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley for review. No other compensation was given and all opinions are my own.***

The moment I saw the cover, I was enchanted by this book-- and that magic continued through to the very last page. This story is woven together with layers of sisterhood, loneliness/longing, friendship, wishes, science and stardust-- and it all comes together quite brilliantly! The story is so enchanting that you won't even realize that it leaves you glowing with self-reflection/growth until you've finished. I could definitely see this story being turned into a film, someday! Well done!

This is a unique and intriguing MG story about magic, family, finding your forever home, growing up, and starting to figure out life and find yourself at the age of 13. This was in an audiobook format with a synthetic voice known as a voice galley so I can't comment as to the narrator or full audiobook experience.
At first, this story seemed to have a bit of a slow start for me, but then suddenly it picked up and I became very engrossed in it. This story ended up being a bit more on the heavy side than I was expecting or than I'm used to when reading some MG books and it took me a bit longer to process so I could do my best to formulate and write a review here.
This is about a girl who's 12 almost 13 and lives in a cramped motor home/RV with her family, which consists of her two sisters and her parents. They're always on the move, traveling from place to place because her mother is a fallen star and goes wherever there's a problem with the magic in and surrounding everything. Ivy gets tired of having to go from place to place and decides to take the wishing jars her mother has and steal wishes for herself. She uses the magic and wishes to wish for herself to get a forever permanent home and they end up visiting one of her aunts in Whistling Ridge, where there is something very wrong.
Ivy is very much a normal 12/13 yr old girl that's neither extra heroic or extra whiny. She has good and bad days and goes through some hard times trying to figure out things about herself, how she feels about her home, her family, and everything in general. The corrupted magic in Whistling Ridge and where it comes from and the way the magic is used and described in this story is really well done. This story can help talk about and bring up topics with others this age and how they're feeling and doing with life, their families, their dreams, fears, and how to handle and process all these things as well as deal with their emotions.
There are incredible depth and layers to this story that can be used and enjoyed in a lot of ways by more than just the target audience of Middle-Grade readers. Make sure to put this on your list and check it out, you won't want to miss it. It's one of those stories that sticks with you long after you're done.
Thanks so much to Harper Audio and NetGalley for letting me listen and review this great MG story. All opinions are my own.

I first want to say that although I knew the audio would be synthetic, it did make it somewhat hard to truly get into the story. As for the story itself, it was average for me. At times, I felt like there was a bit of redundancy in words and such. Other times, I wish there was more depth to what was written. I think that it would be a good book for middle grade since it revolves around magic, family and finding roots where you are.

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to review!

Ivy lives in a cramped motorhome with her parents and two younger sisters. They travel around the country so her mom can help people with magic.

Ivy's mom is a falling star made human and her duty is to gather magic into wishes and give them to people. So one day Ivy just wants to stop moving, she happens to make nine wishes. What are those wishes?

She wants a permanent home.

So after one of her wishes they end up stuck in her aunt's town.

I’m grateful to Net Galley, Harper Audio and Quill Books for the audio arc to this book. Ivy and her family live in their motor home and travel around the country where Ivy’s mom grants wishes to people and helps correct the magic in the places where they travel. Ivy and her 2 sisters are homeschooled and their dad is a writer. But in Ivy’s pursuit of a more permanent home, she uses all of her mother’s lightning bugs to make it happen. The family ends up back in Whistling Hills, where Ivy’s mother grew up. The town is going through some unexplained disasters at the same time that the family is going through many disasters and in the end they are all connected through magic. I want to give props to the author for an accurate portrayal of one way some people homeschool. It was honest and not exaggerated. I adored the cover art for this book - so beautiful! The premise of the book is creative and I wanted to love it. In the end, I didn’t have a connection with Ivy. Through a majority of the book she acted like a spoiled brat and others suffered because of the choices she made. She would even acknowledge that she knew people wouldn’t like her decisions but she “wanted” to stay in town and so went through with them. I liked her sisters and wished that the story would have been told from their POVs. I enjoyed the beginning and ending of the book but the middle section dragged. I think if readers enjoyed the other books written by Baldwin they might be disappointed with this one.

Honestly I was a bit confused for most of this. If I hadn’t just finished a book along the same story line I may have given it more stars. I like reading middle grade because I get to recommend them to the 5th graders but I’m not sure this will make the cut for them.

The audio was synthetic which is fine, it doesn’t bother me at all. The story seemed to flow nicely, and the character developed well enough. I’m sure middle grade will do ok with it, but as a whole I don’t think the school I work at would.

Thanks for the advanced audio copy! It definitely help with my 9.5 hour drive! :)

When I signed up for this book I did not realize that I had requested the audio book. The voice was synthetic, and for me the narrator makes a huge difference when listening to an audio book. Because of the voice I was unable to focus, but I will be checking this book out in some other format.

I read a lot of middle grade books as an elementary school librarian, and I do think that students will like this book. I wanted to like it, but at the beginning of the book I was struck by the similarities to "A Snicker of Magic" and just didn't find the narrator to be as likable as Felicity Pickle. I've seen many reviewers talk about the beautiful writing, but I found it a little uneven. There were some passages that felt overwritten and too lyrical while others a little sloppy and out of place. I wanted to see how the author was going to resolve the growing conflicts, between the sisters, the aunts, as well as the historical conflict. In the end it all felt like it was wrapped up too neatly and as an adult I found myself a little confused by how quickly and neatly everything happened. The ending didn't really feel authentic to me.

Ivy Mae Bloom's goal is to find her 'forever home.' At thirteen (well, almost thirteen), Ivy wishes the magic of a place to settle on her and her mom so that they can stop the constant moving. Ivy's mother is a fallen star who travels the globe to fix the magic that surrounds everything. Even magic needs repairing now and then.

But Ivy steals her mother's supply of 'wish jars' and now the Blooms are stuck in Whistling Ridge, North Carolina. It's not such a bad little town, Ivy decides, and hopes beyond everything that this can be her forever home.

There's something going on in Whistling Ridge, though. Even Ivy can feel the magic draining away and her mother seems powerless to fix it. With some new friends and acquaintances, Ivy believes she might know what the problem is and how to solve it, but if the magic is restored, will her mother move them along again?

This book is incredibly poetic. Author Cindy Baldwin's prose is lyrical and she makes it easy to be drawn in to the book. I didn't pick up on the magic right away (a little more on that in a moment) and the subtlety of magic in a very real world added to the beauty of the story.

I received an advanced digital audio copy of this book. This is different from a regular audio book. In a regular audio book, a narrator reads the story with added inflections and pauses and sometimes different voices for the different characters. But this advance audio book uses a 'synthetic voice.' It's a bit strange, listening to something that sounds real but emotionless, and it definitely took me out of the book early on, which is why I may have missed the early introduction of magic in the story.

The character of Ivy is really well developed. She's strong (for her age), with just the right amount of youthful inexperience. She could easily become whiny, but she's not, and she could easily be made almost super-heroic, but she is not.

Given that this particular audio did not really support the book, and yet I still found it easy to enjoy, I will look forward to picking up the physical book and/or the true audio edition.

Looking for a good book? Do your middle-grade/young adult readers a favor and put a copy of The Stars of Whistling Ridge by Cindy Baldwin in their hands.

I received a synthetic voice audio edition of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

A sweet, lighthearted contemporary fantasy about a girl who moves around a lot with her mom, because she is in fact, a fallen star who grants wishes wherever they go. I liked the premise and the storytelling was good, but it lost me in the middle when the pace slowed and the story felt a bit stagnant. Overall a nice, solid story but not very memorable or unique enough to stand out on crowded MG shelves.

Beautiful story of sisters and family and home--the true meaning of home and happiness. Ivy Mae is a grounded girl, growing up in the wistful family. While her mother's family is magical, Ivy Mae simply wants to stop traveling, but to have a "forever home" where she can have roots. So she takes her mother's magical wishes and wishes for a forever home, without fully understanding the consequences of implications of her wish. And then her family and Whistling Ridge begins to fall prey to those unforeseen consequences. I found it a beautiful metaphor for "be careful what you wish for," teaching the lesson to count the cost of what you truly want. I love the parallel's between the Star sisters and Ivy Mae with her sisters. Beautifully done.

The audiobook, however....I really don't like the way these review audiobooks have been done with their mechanical narrators. While they have some inflection, since they are computer generated, the inflection is often in the wrong places. Any humor or sadness or sarcasm is completely lost.

Thanks to #NetGalley for the early copy!
I loved the imagination of this story. I loved how Ivy eventually learns to love her gift and to use it for good to help other people. I think this book would be great for my students! I look forward to buying a copy and having it in my classroom library.

I received a free digital galley (computer generated audiobook) of this title from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I was introduced to Cindy Baldwin through this year's NC Elementary Battle of the Books with Where the Watermelons Grow. Though I struggled a bit with the narration (the computer generated voice was okay, but lagged or skipped at times that didn't work with the story), the story of Ivy Mae Bloom and her family was excellent. I couldn't help but think a little of Neil Gaiman's Stardust and how a fallen star might act when it falls to the Earth and becomes human.

Thank you NetGalley for the audio ARC of this delightful book. The story follows Ivy May Bloom and her family as they travel the countryside in their RV. All Ivy has ever wanted is a home that doesn’t involve traveling. Her mother is truly a fallen star and barters wishes for a living. Ivy decides to take matters into her own hands and uses her mother’s wishes, a total of 9 of them, to try to get the life she wants. Well, adventures ensue making Ivy question her desire to stay in one place and what family really means. This was a well written story regarding family relationships. Enjoyable read.

This is a book targeted for middle age readers.

Ivy Mae Bloom (one letter away from a sentence) is tired of being confined to an RV with her parents and two little sisters.

When given the opportunity to wish, let’s all go with Charlie’s wish. Wouldn’t the world be such a better place?

I love the role that the librarian played in this book.

This book especially resonated with me because we enjoy our RV (but with 2 people, not 5) and a very wonderful aunt lived in the mountains of North Carolina and this story kept taking me back to her magic and love.

Thank you NetGalley, the publisher (Quill Tree Books) and the author/Cindy Baldwin for the opportunity to listen to the advance copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.