WISH YOU WELL

“You’ve got to keep on adventuring, even when it’s messy and especially when you don’t think it matters.”

Violet Marino reluctantly attends a Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital party, where she meets fellow Nashville eighth graders Wyatt Cass and Noor Singh. Wyatt, an irrepressible heart transplant survivor, prods Violet, who’s going blind, and Noor, who has cancer, to apply to the Wish on a Star Organization, requesting trips as a group of best friends. Because the nonprofit has budgetary constraints, the trio create a GoFundMe campaign to raise enough money so that all of their families can participate too. This heartfelt story follows the 13-year-olds as, despite a rocky beginning, they genuinely become close and help each other through crises. Their emotions are raw as ace soccer player Violet struggles with the prospect of losing things she loves to advancing macular degeneration, foodie Noor’s cancer thwarts her dream of traveling to New York to meet a famous chef she admires, and Wyatt learns to follow his own passion for tech instead of his family’s obsession with football. The three diverse personalities pop off the page in this narrative that lays out the highs and lows of dealing with life-altering illnesses and the bonds that are created as the characters learn to understand each other’s dreams and support one another. Violet and Wyatt present white, and Noor is Indian American.

A compassionate, compelling story of reaching for one’s dreams.