"Readers love to hate a villain and cheer for the protagonist's heroism. In real life, none of us is all evil or pure goodness."

Do we have free will? If you had the tools to grant you every wish (although perhaps not in the way you might think), would you use it?

These are the questions Emerson, our narrator, grapples with throughout the book. She steals her father's typewriter, realizes that it has the power to grant wishes, and spends the rest of the book trying to figure out the rules of the typewriter and more importantly, rationalize her decisions to use the typewriter. Sadie, her daughter, and Deb, her mother's, stories also play a part in this book, but the book really is centered on the question of - if you could control every part of your life, would you do it?

There were many things I enjoyed about this book, but the two that stood out:
1. I generally don't like books that have unlikable characters, and while Emerson isn't strictly unlikable, there are some times where her rationalizations are less than logically sound. In some ways, though, that gave her a depth of character, and I found myself rooting for her to figure out the answers to the questions she was asking herself.

2. The pacing of the book. There was some chapters that opened with a bang, some chapters that has a turning point in the middle, and some that had it at the end. That, plus the use of foreshadowing, kept me hooked.

I definitely enjoyed reading this book, and recommend it to anyone who has ever thought about these questions as well!

I wanted to love this book. The premise -- a magical typewriter that manifests our heartfelt desires -- is certainly promising. The writing style is a bit flowery for my taste, but the author does a credible job portraying the main character, Emerson, her teen daughter Sadie, and Emerson's mother, Dorothy.

The problem, for me, is that none of these characters are remotely likeable, Following the death of Emerson's narcissistic father, all three women are deeply mired in years of emotional trauma, and engage in an endless loop of self-soothing behaviors: For Dorothy, it's a lifetime of alcoholism and denial. For Sadie, it's teen angst and emotional withdrawal. And for our main character Emerson, self-soothing takes the form of an endless internal dialog: overthinking, ruminating and obsessing over the same questions, over and over again. "Why does my teenaged daughter hate me?" "Why can't my Mom stop drinking?" "What do my Dad's cryptic notes mean?" "Should I take a new career path?" "Am I losing my mind?" (Um, yeah, probably. ) And the lucky reader gets to share all of this, page after page, for chapters on end, without Emerson ever actually doing anything constructive to move forward.

The magical typewriter idea takes a far back seat to the constant internal dialog looping in Emerson's head, to the point that, 50% through the book, we aren't any farther down the story path than we were after the first few chapters. I simply couldn't read any further. I wanted to unscrew my head to let Em's endless blathering escape and let some fresh air flood in.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The way it works through all three women in their lives is so captivating and wonderful! It was such a magical journey to be on with the story unfolding in each page